Mar 07, 2022
The Climate Investment Funds’ programs are singled out as important examples of best practise in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) sixth assessment. The report is clear on the solution to our climate vulnerabilities - more adaptation and more climate finance
"An atlas of human suffering”
So said Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary-General, referring to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) sixth assessment report Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability
The report is a clarion call for action. It reconfirms what climate scientists have been alerting us to for a long time – warnings which are echoed in the remarks of Hoesung Lee, Chair of the IPCC.
“This report is a dire warning about the consequences of inaction, it shows climate change is a grave and mounting threat to our wellbeing and a healthy planet. Our actions today will shape how people adapt and nature responds to increasing climate risks.”
The scale of the challenge ahead
A staggering breadth of climate impacts were revealed, and in many cases deemed irreversible, or approaching irreversible.
The exponential increase to temperature and its effect on species extinction rates stood out – even if we limit the temperature at the 1.5 degrees threshold, 14% of all species in terrestrial (land-based) ecosystems are highly likely to become extinct. At double the threshold (3 degrees), 29% face the same risk.
The inequality of climate change was also brought into sharp focus.
Much of South Asia, much of sub-Saharan Africa, South and central Americas, the Artic and almost all Small Island Developing States (SIDS) were shown to be existing in a state of climate emergency. The underlying causes of their vulnerabilities are interlinked and impact approximately 3.6 billion people. They include poor governance, poverty, unsustainable use of natural resources, gender inequalities, and access to basic services such as water (50% of the world population suffer annual water shortages).
In many highly vulnerable nations, the likelihood of dying in an extreme weather event between 2010-2020 was 1500% greater than many countries in the West. As one of many references that illustrate this point, the IPCC report projected that extreme droughts in Amazon regions will push Indigenous Peoples to migrate into cities. There they risk being forced to live on the margins and even here, there is no shelter from climate change; cities were singled out by the IPCC as ‘hotspots’ of climate impacts and risks.
Moving from the challenges to potential solutions - a consistent theme runs through the report…
Adaptation and the role of Climate Finance
Loud and clear in the nearly 4000-page document is the role of climate finance; its power to scale climate adaptation solutions to counter our global vulnerabilities to climate change.
Adaptation solutions are the changes that countries need to make to their processes, practices, buildings, civil infrastructure, and the way they manage their natural resources - to limit the potential damages of climate change, or even to benefit from opportunities associated with rapidly changing environmental conditions. The report observed that lots of countries possessed climate policies which include adaptation strategies – but they came under criticism too; many have yet to move from the planning stage to implementation.
There’s also a large gulf between adaptation levels existing currently, and those that are needed to safeguard the future. Presently, adaptation investments only account for somewhere between 4% and 8% of all climate finance (which totalled USD$579billion in 2018).
Oxfam, in their response to the IPCC report, reminded everyone of the agreement at COP26 to double adaptation finance (to USD$40billion) by 2025, noting that this figure was still not enough, and that only a quarter of climate finance to vulnerable countries is directed towards adaptation.
Returning to the IPCC sixth assessment; the report estimates that the adaptation needs of developing countries will reach $127 billion annually by 2030, increasing to $295billion per year by 2050.
Notably, the Climate Investment Funds and its programs, including the CIF Pilot Program for Climate Resilience (PPCR) and the CIF Clean Technology (CTF) Fund, are referenced multiple times inside the IPCC report. They were said to be successful examples of multi-level governance (in context of adaptation programs) due to their programmatic and pragmatic approach, describing the enabling factors (of the PPCR - page 46 of Chapter 15) as relating to the strategic placements of funds and responsibilities in the relevant ministries, and their alignment with national priorities. They noted it as an important adaptation focussed program (page 87 of Chapter 10).
The Clean Technology Fund is referenced for the scope of its funding (USD$483million) in 2018 across 24 projects, mainly in South America (page 87 of Chapter 12).
The CIF are not deaf to the clarion call contained in the report.
As a global leader in climate finance, with a unique model of delivering flexible, secure, highly concessional, and effective finance to support developing countries with their climate strategies, clearly the CIF, and its partners, have a significant role to play; to help developing countries successfully adapt to climate change, and counter the inequalities they face under the storm clouds of extreme climate events.
