New Publication: “Understanding and Increasing Finance for Climate Adaptation in Developing Countries”

A woman transports plants on a bicycle

Photo © GIZ / Ursula Meissner

The study by the Climate Policy Initiative (CPI) and adelphi explores the current state of finance for climate adaptation and proposes practical, near term solutions to both fill in knowledge gaps and to increase investment. While many of the suggestions can also be applied in developed countries, which often face similar challenges in measuring and deploying adaptation finance, the focus of the report and selected examples highlight the role for developing country national governments and stakeholders in supporting increased knowledge and investment in adaptation. Latter comprise development finance institutions, local governments, and civil society organizations including academic institutions.

Key takeaways:

  • Despite the significant climate risks at hand, investment in the sector has not taken off, with just USD 22 billion of tracked global investment to address climate change in 2015 and 2016 going towards adaptation activities.
  • Increasing investment in climate resilience will require increasing the ability of organisations to identify and evaluate climate risks, increase their awareness of resilient business models, implement climate risk reduction projects and policies, and harness the business opportunities deriving from them.
  • However, especially in developing countries, a set of barriers prevents or slows down the adoption of adaptation practices, services, and technologies at the scale that is needed. These include context, business model, and internal capacity barriers.
  • Finance ministries in developing countries could analyse the threat that climate risks might pose to their sovereign debt, and incorporate considerations regarding their mitigation as part of their strategy to ensure financial sustainability.
  • Developing country governments will need to support a multitude of efforts to meet their adaptation goals. These include efforts that help increase demand for climate adaptation products and services that measure, reduce, and/or transfer climate risks; increase supply of these products in local markets; and de-risk adaptation investments using different policy and financial tools. The interventions should seek to address specific, identified barriers to investment in adaptation by both the public and private sectors.

Please find the complete study here.

Recent News

Global Programme HMCCC: Share-Fair Event

The GIZ’s Global Programme on Human Mobility in the Context of Climate Change celebrated the end of the first Programme phase. For this, partners from the Philippines, East and West Africa, the Pacific and the Caribbean came together at the GIZ Campus Röttgen in Bonn. The three-day long event took place from 24th until 26th October and incorporated a networking experience on the last day with experts from politics, decision-making, academia and civil society.

Read More »

New e-learning course on Human Mobility in the Context of Climate Change

The newly developed eLearning course by GIZ in collaboration with UN University is now available! In this interactive self-paced course, policy makers, development professionals, researchers and students will learn how climate change influences human mobility. By introducing key concepts like climate related migration, disaster displacement, planned relocation and trapped populations, this training will build capacities needed to consider human mobility in the context of climate change (HMCCC) in your respective field of work. The training showcases diverse examples from different countries on the phenomena of HMCCC as well as options how to manage it.

Read More »

New movie series “Living Adaptation” is out now!

Now available on Adaptation Community: The new movie series “Living Adaptation” showcases best practice examples of climate change adaptation measures in agriculture and rural development. It contains four short video clips presenting best practices from GIZ India, Madagascar, Ethiopia, and a regional project in southern Africa. The accompanying overarching movie, titled “Pathways to Climate Resilient Agri-Food Systems” and published by BMZ, briefly introduces the topic of climate change adaptation in agriculture and rural development more broadly – and gives a quick glimpse into the various country experiences.

Read More »

2nd cohort of the Private Investment in Adaptation Bootcamp (PrivABoo) kicks off

During June and July 2023, Private Adaptation Finance (PAF) organized the kick-off events for the second cohort of the Private Adaptation Investment Bootcamp (PrivABoo) program. The main objective of these events was to formally launch the program and outline the activities and expected outcomes for 18 selected small and medium enterprises (SMEs) from Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda and Pakistan.

Read More »