COP28 cannot end without financial commitments to reach the Global Goal on Adaptation
A Global Goal on Adaptation without financial substance will render this Goal insincere. Countries most vulnerable to climate change are entitled to clear financial commitments.
Climate ministers from across the world have a final opportunity to prevent the COP28 from becoming a failure. In order to achieve that, they need to ensure that the framework for the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) will support climate-vulnerable countries in becoming more resilient to climate change with the necessary financial substance.
The Global Goal on Adaptation is not the same as the Loss and Damage Fund, which is designed for high-income countries to compensate low-income countries for the losses and damages climate change inflicted on their natural, social, and economic resources.
Actual solutions to the most vulnerable
An indispensable part of a successful GGA framework are the finances. While the current text issues a call to high-income countries to double their adaptation finance to low-income countries by 2025, it lacks a clear roadmap and thus clear commitments to reach this goal.
Lobby and advocacy officer Esin Erdoğan from Simavi comments: "Without a clear financial roadmap, the GGA framework would be insincere. Although we are content with parts of the current text, for example the inclusion of locally-led climate adaptation and the protection of ecosystems, COP28 cannot end without a GGA framework that will provide finances and actual solutions to the most vulnerable countries.”
“These countries have contributed the least to the causes of climate change but are impacted the most, and they don’t have the sufficient resources to contend with severe climate-induced disasters. They are entitled to clear financial commitments."
Trust eroded without financial substance
The establishment of an ambitious GGA framework would also close the currently increasing adaptation finance gap which climate-vulnerable countries face. This gap is estimated to be US$194-366 billion per year according to the Adaptation Gap Report 2023. Despite this gap, the public multilateral and bilateral adaptation finance flow to climate-vulnerable countries declined by 15 per cent in 2021.
“A framework without financial substance will erode trust between countries that had just started to recover after the adoption of the Loss and Damage Fund and will more importantly cause yet another human-made disaster”, Erdoğan concludes.
