COP30 needs a dedicated political commitment addressing how to put the global goal into action, write two climate diplomacy experts
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Evacuees with their tents at an evacuation centre in Quezon City, Philippines, as Super Typhoon Uwan hit the country in early November 2025 (Image: Aaron Favila / Associated Press / Alamy)
The world is at a crossroads. The year 2024 was the first in which the global average surface temperature rose over 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. This signals we have very probably entered the 20-year period in which that threshold of the Paris Agreement will be crossed, scientists say.
Protecting people from the harms of this new climate chapter will require adaptation on a completely new scale. This is especially true of the most vulnerable nations, where extreme weather impacts are worsening disproportionately.
A breakthrough came in 2023 at the COP28 climate summit, when a framework for the global goal on adaptation was created. The subsequent process of agreeing the details of the framework, and which indicators will be used to measure progress towards the goal, is supposed to culminate at COP30, currently taking place in Belém.
The need and ambition to enhance adaptation is increasing, as stressed by the UN’s latest Adaptation Gap and NDC Synthesis reports. However, current global climate politics continue to neglect the fact that a just transition requires scaling adaptation, especially in developing countries.
With current implementation rates, the 11 targets agreed in the COP28 framework are set to be missed. Far more financial and other resources, such as technology transfer and capacity building, are needed to support developing countries to act effectively.
Against a challenging backdrop, developing countries are seeking a major outcome on the global goal and its implementation in Belém, with many dubbing COP30 the “Adaptation COP”.
A challenging context for adaptation finance
The essential role of public finance in securing adaptation as a public good is underscored by the limited contributions of the private sector. Private flows for adaptation in developing countries are about USD 8 billion per year. This represents less than 3% of the need, according to a recent report from the Zurich Climate Resilience Alliance. Increases in these flows could occur, but mostly in limited contexts and specific sectors that offer suitable risk-adjusted returns on investment, the report explains. That would leave many vulnerable communities without the adaptation they desperately need.
While the majority of adaptation finance is public, not all public finance is just. A deeply concerning trend is the high proportion of adaptation finance channelled as debt, which traps climate-vulnerable countries in a vicious cycle. Between 2018 and 2022, 84% of adaptation finance was delivered as debt in emerging markets and developing countries (excluding the least developed countries). Research published in October by Oxfam and Care Climate Justice Center found that developing countries are paying USD 7 back for every USD 5 they receive as climate finance.
This burden is particularly severe for Africa, where 54% of adaptation finance commitments in 2019-2020 were loan-based. This means Africa is essentially paying for the majority of adaptation finance, severely shrinking the fiscal space needed for further spending on adaptation, healthcare, education and other development imperatives.
Going beyond monitoring, towards implementation
Core to the global goal on adaptation is the idea that African countries and other developing nations should not be left on their own to pay for adapting to a crisis they did not create. It was the African Group of Negotiators who first proposed the goal in 2013 and successfully cemented it in the Paris Agreement in 2015. Its inclusion had to be insisted on. Africa’s vision was not simply to establish a monitoring process for adaptation, but to establish a collective legal responsibility for meeting global adaptation needs.
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An elderly person in India reads a text message sent to them as part of an early warning system for floods (Image: Jake Lyell / Alamy)
In the years that followed, the African Group has consistently advocated for support for implementing the global goal in ways that match countries’ actual needs – in terms of finance, technology transfer and capacity building. During the Glasgow-Sharm el-Sheikh work programme in 2022-2023, the Group pushed for a target of USD 400 billion in total funding to put the global goal framework into action. That figure was based on the 2023 UN Adaptation Gap Report.
At the time, developed countries insisted that adaptation finance would instead be dealt with “in the finance rooms”, under the New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance (NCQG). However, developed countries refused to enter into any discussions in that negotiation space about quantifying adaptation finance needs or outcome-based adaptation sub-goals. As a result, last year’s COP29 outcome completely failed to meaningfully address the adaptation finance gap. With the USD 300 billion outlined in the NCQG decision at COP29, there is no proper framework around how much will go towards adaptation.
This unanswered question necessitates deliberation and a response this year, to coincide with the finalisation of the UAE-Belém work programme that is developing indicators for the goal. At this point, parties to the Paris Agreement will have built the required system to operationalise the global goal. The next important step is implementation.
Going beyond simply monitoring targets through indicators, the goal now requires a responsible global conversation on how to meet the global targets. And in addition, how to enhance, as necessary, international cooperation and the provision of finance, technology transfer and capacity building.
Without a dedicated political commitment to address implementation, COP30 risks perpetuating a “business as usual” approach to adaptation and the global goal. That would ultimately set the stage for a failure to meet the goal’s targets for 2027 and 2030.
Ensuring a needs-based approach at Belém
The last adaptation finance target – the 2021 Glasgow pledge – is set to expire this year. It urged developed countries to collectively double the provision of adaptation finance from USD 20 billion in 2019 to USD 40 billion by 2025. Whether or not this goal is met, it has served as a useful political tool for raising adaptation finance. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 2024 report on adaptation finance found a notable increase in flows from 2019-2022.
Even if one assumes adaptation finance has doubled, the target was clearly insufficient. Escalating adaptation finance needs in developing countries are estimated to be far higher, at around USD 310 to 365 billion. Recent and planned cuts in official development assistance (ODA) have significantly reversed the trend of increases. The Oxfam and Care Climate Justice Center report estimates adaptation finance may fall short, reaching only USD 29 billion in 2024 and USD 26 billion in 2025.
The framework agreed at COP28 includes 11 detailed targets and specific indicators. In light of this, the COP30 process must give rise to guidance on increasing adaptation finance that reflects the full extent of costs required to achieve these global targets.
The proposal of the Least Developed Countries group, to triple adaptation finance from 2022 levels by 2030, is a helpful short-term goal. However, as the international civil society group Climate Action Network put it, this financing must not come from or be instrumentalised by developed countries at the expense of establishing a robust process to set a longer-term, needs-based adaptation finance goal, well ahead of 2030. Failing to ensure the necessary process for needs-based adaptation finance would be a betrayal of the spirit of the global goal on adaptation and the past four years of thorough work on it. That would further deepen the mistrust developing countries have for developed countries in the UNFCCC process.
For developing countries, achieving the goal’s targets in 2027 and 2030 hinges on international public support provided through grants and highly concessional finance. This is a matter of pragmatism, justice and equity. The international court of justice’s advisory opinion (ICJ AO) established a clear legal expectation regarding climate finance, reinforcing the imperative to scale up financial support to developing countries and enhance transparency in its delivery. This also links to the ongoing struggle by developing countries under the G77 coalition to secure an agenda item on Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement, relating to provision of finance, which has so far been contested by developed countries.
Ultimately, if parties are serious about meeting objectives, whether for the global goal on adaptation targets or for temperature and energy-transition goals, a needs-based finance approach is indispensable. This is the way to ensure the timely delivery of the global goal, with all countries working together to ensure it can be achieved, validating the spirit of equitable cooperation toward the ambitious goals that gave birth to the Paris Agreement.
Authors: Imane Saidi, Luckson Zvobgo
This article was originally published on Dialogue Earth under the Creative Commons BY NC ND licence. Read the original article.
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