MARRAKESH, Morocco — Inadequate public financing for climate adaptation will likely be the issue that keeps negotiators up late the last few nights of the 22nd session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, civil society leaders told reporters Thursday morning. “Finance has always been an issue that has kept us up many nights at the end of COPs, and I have no doubt that we will be here, I hope, late into the hours of Friday rather than early into the hours of Saturday morning,” Liz Gallagher, a senior associate with E3G, said during a press briefing.
The decision will summarize the COP and set a path forward for the UNFCCC in the coming year.
At issue is the acceptance in the latest draft decision of the COP of a financing road map released by developed nations in October. The road map, developing nations say, does not adequately address the need for financing for climate adaptation.
Developed nations have committed to mobilizing $100 billion a year for climate action in developing nations by 2020. However, about 90 percent of that financing is earmarked for use in climate mitigation activities, actions aimed at trying to stop climate change from getting worse, according to Lutz Weischer, international climate policy team leader at Germanwatch. The remaining 10 percent is to help developing nations deal with the unavoidable effects of climate change that some are already feeling.
The road map suggests a doubling of public financing for adaptation, but that still isn’t nearly enough, Weischer said. “That would only be 20 percent of the $100 billion overall pie. Twenty billion is similarly inadequate, so a number of developing countries are trying to get strong language on the need that this doubling is certainly, you know, it’s good to increase adaptation funding, but doubling is not enough. We need to scale up much more aggressively.”
The prime minister of Fiji, Frank Bainimarama, highlighted the issue of adaptation Wednesday in an impassioned speech before the COP’s high-level ministerial dialogue on finance. “As the leader of a nation that was struck this year by the biggest cyclone ever to make landfall in the Southern Hemisphere, I come with a plea to gain immediate access to the means to adapt to the terrifying new era we face because of climate change,” he said.
Adaptation funds in Fiji could be used to relocate coastal communities, erect coastal barriers, improve the durability of buildings, or place power lines underground, Bainimarama said. “To do that we urgently need access to finance to strengthen our resilience and maximize our chances of survival,” he said.
“As things stand, the proportion of international climate finance to be directed toward adaptation is woefully inadequate,” he said. “It is high time to rearrange global spending priorities in the direction of those nations that are most at risk. The Paris Agreement requires us to give equal priority to mitigation and adaptation, and we must do so as a matter of urgency.”
Mitigation is the problem of the developed world, Bainimarama suggested. “For small island developing states our advocacy on climate change is not because it is fashionable, for us, it is about survival. We are forced to confront a challenge not of our own making,” he said.
Negotiations will continue Thursday and Friday, with a new draft decision expected within the next 24 hours or so, according to Gallagher. “This is still going to be an unresolved issue, and we see today there’ll be informal consultations with the presidency on how they will continue,” she said.
