There was a lot at stake when more than 35,000 climate experts, negotiators, scientists and hopeful activists attended the UN Climate Change Conference (Cop27) from 6-16 November in Egypt this year. The whole world looked on, eager to see tangible agreements on how to tackle climate change in a year that has seen record-breaking heatwaves across the Northern Hemisphere, persistent droughts in the Horn of Africa, and extraordinary flooding in South Asia.
Historically, UN climate change conferences have predominantly focused on the question of climate mitigation – i.e., ramping efforts to reduce atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions. But as each year goes by, climate disasters grow, and adaptation – building the preparedness and resilience towards climate impacts – is gaining an ever-increasing share of the world’s attention. As warned by the United Nations Secretary General António Guterres: “Adaptation must not be the neglected half of the climate equation.”
After two weeks of discussions, side events, workshops, and intense negotiations that ran 40 hours over the intended deadline, a major breakthrough came when countries agreed on funding arrangements for responding to climate-related loss and damages in vulnerable countries.
A transitional committee was established to make recommendations on how to operationalize the fund by November or December 2023. Cop27 also established that the Santiago Network – a platform for countries and organizations to identify opportunities to mobilize technical assistance to address loss and damage – should comprise of a hosted Secretariat, an Advisory Board, and a network of member organizations. You can learn more about the fund in a recent UNEP article here.
But what does Cop27 and its final agreed outcome, known as the Sharm el-Sheikh Implementation Plan, mean for adaptation?
Adaptation Finance
The tone for adaptation was set early on by UNEP’s Adaptation Gap Report 2022, published 3 days prior to the Cop27 kick off, and the outlook was not reassuring. Global efforts in adaptation planning, financing and implementation are lagging far behind the growing climate risks.
The report found that, despite increasing efforts to plan for adaptation, estimated costs of adapting to climate change in the developing world are set to reach as high as $340 billion per year by 2030. Today, adaptation support for developing countries is only around 10% of that figure.
“The most vulnerable people and communities are paying the price. This is unacceptable,” said Guterres at the official launch of the report.
All the way back in 2009, developed countries agreed to collectively mobilize $100 billion per year for climate action in developing countries by 2020. Two years passed the deadline, this promise is still unfulfilled (combined adaptation and mitigation finance in 2020 was $17 billion short of the target). This led to tense exchanges in the early days of Cop27, where developing countries expressed “serious concern” over “broken promises” and the need to dedicate finance for loss and damage.
At the same time, there was some modest progress in terms of adaptation finance. The European Commission announced a new program worth 1 billion euros to support adaptation in Africa, and new pledges totalling more than $315 million were made to the Adaptation Fund, the Least Developed Countries Fund, and the Special Climate Change Fund.
Perhaps most notable was the Sharm El-Sheikh Adaptation Agenda, launched by the Cop27 Presidency as an attempt to mobilize an ambitious $140-300 billion per year from private and public investors to help the world’s poorest adapt to climate change. The plan aims to benefit 4 billion people by outlining 30 goals to be achieved by the end of the decade.
Global Goal On Adaptation
While climate mitigation action has been focused and channelled through the setting of global targets (i.e., the 1.5°C and 2°C temperature rise limits), there is no currently agreed target and metrics for assessing progress on adaptation. Many experts believe a Global Goal on Adaptation would spur ambition and action by providing a system for enhancing adaptive capacity, strengthening resilience, and reducing vulnerability to climate impacts.
Under the Glasgow Sharm El-Sheikh Work Programme on the Global Goal on Adaptation, set up last year in Cop26, a series of workshops were held in 2022 leading up to Cop27, which advanced negotiations for the development of a framework by 2023. The framework would assess the current progress in achieving the global goal, feeding its findings into a global stocktake process set to end next year. In 2023, four workshops will held, with the aim of adopting a final decision on the framework at Cop28 in 2023.
“There were high expectations for adaptation at Cop27, and the outcomes set the right tone for initiating the development of a framework for the Global Goal on Adaptation,” said Alvin Chandra, Head of UNEP’s Global Adaptation Network. “What is needed now is countries and stakeholders utilising the workshops in 2023 to hash out the various dimensions, themes, metrics and indicators to enhance adaptation action.”
Nature-based Solutions
Nature-based solutions are increasingly recognized as essential for helping the world adapt to climate change, technically referred to as ecosystem-based adaptation. For the first time, the final agreed text from this year’s climate Cop includes the term ‘nature-based solutions’.
“The inclusion of nature-based solutions in the final Cop27 decision is a critical milestone, especially for those of us that have been emphasizing the interlinkages between climate action and biodiversity protection,” said Jessica Troni, Head of UNEP’s Climate Change Adaptation Unit.
The Sharm El-Sheikh Implementation Plan “encourages Parties to consider, as appropriate, nature-based solutions or ecosystem-based approaches, taking into consideration United Nations Environment Assembly resolution 5/5,31 for their mitigation and adaptation action while ensuring relevant social and environmental safeguards.”
For the first time in climate Cop history, the final text also includes a designated chapter on forests and their importance for tackling climate change. During the conference, the three countries that together host half of the world’s tropical rainforests – Brazil, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo - launched a partnership to aid cooperation on forest preservation and establish a ‘funding mechanism’ for that purpose.
Early Warning Systems
Early warning systems that provide high quality forecasts for extreme weather are widely acknowledged as one of the most important life-saving measures in the face of climate disasters. Just 24 hours warning of an approaching storm or heatwave can reduce the subsequent damage by up to 30 per cent.
Currently, as recognized in the Sharm El Sheikh Implementation Plan, “one third of the world, including sixty per cent of Africa, does not have access to early warning and climate information services.”
At Cop27, the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres launched the Executive Action Plan for the Early Warnings for All initiative, which calls for new targeted investments of $3.1 billion over the next five years to improve early warning networks across the world. The initiative has an ambitious goal – to ensure every person on earth is protected by early warning systems against extreme weather within the next five years.
