$28.1 Bn in funding for adaptation in 2024, against an estimated annual requirement of €305 Bn (UNEP)

With international public funding of between €28.1 and €31.7 billion in 2024 (an increase of $1 billion compared with 2023), less than 10 per cent of developing countries’ needs are being met. “Ready? Not”: the title of the 11^th annual report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), published on 4 November, focusing on climate adaptation finance, summarises the scale of the needs and the limitations of global financial resources allocated to this area, five days before the opening of COP 31 in Antalya on 9 November.

“We have now exceeded the 1.5°C threshold, and the list of disasters that have punctuated the summer is proof enough of this. We must continue to fight to prevent every further tenth of a degree of warming, and to bring the overshoot back down to 1.5° by the end…