OECD Says Developed Countries Miss 2025 Target To Double Adaptation Finance For Vulnerable Nations

A new OECD report says developed countries are not on course to meet the 2025 target of doubling adaptation finance for vulnerable countries, even as climate impacts intensify.

“En 2025, los países debieron lidiar con una serie de crisis y turbulencias económicas, que incluyeron desde conflictos en curso e incertidumbre económica hasta eventos climáticos catastróficos que pusieron a prueba a las comunidades”

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The OECD report ties the pledge to COP26 in Glasgow in 2021, where countries agreed developed nations should collectively double adaptation finance from $18.8 billion to $40 billion annually by 2025.

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The report also puts 2024 adaptation finance at $34.7 billion, up from $33.6 billion in 2023, and says developed countries would still need to provide an additional $5.8 billion in 2025 to meet the doubling target.

The same reporting frames the gap against UNEP’s Adaptation Gap Report estimate that developing countries could require between $310 billion and $365 billion annually by 2035 for climate adaptation.

António Guterres, the United Nations secretary-general, is quoted as appealing to developed countries to honour their $40 billion adaptation finance pledge before the end of 2025.

Climate Home News reports that data for 2023 and 2024 suggests wealthy countries are highly unlikely to have met their pledge to double adaptation funding to around $40 billion a year by 2025.

It says the OECD figures released on Thursday show that in 2024 adaptation finance was just under $35 billion, and that the OECD called the increase between 2022 and 2024 "modest".

Climate Home News

The outlet adds that meeting the doubling target would require "strong growth" of close to 20% in government funding for adaptation in 2025, even though the OECD’s figures do not go up to 2025.

Climate Home News also describes cuts to overseas aid budgets and notes that the most notable change was the abandonment of US pledges to international climate funds by the new Trump administration.

In its account of the consequences, the piece quotes Mohamed Adow, Power Shift Africa director, warning that when adaptation money fails to arrive, "people lose homes, harvests and livelihoods - and in the worst cases, their lives,".

TheCable reports that adaptation finance concerns are emerging alongside uncertainty around global climate commitments, including the United States’ decision to withdraw again from the Paris Agreement under President Donald Trump.

“A new report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has shown that developed countries are not on course to meet the 2025 target of doubling adaptation finance for vulnerable countries”

TheCable

It also notes that developed countries exceeded the broader $100 billion annual climate finance target for the third consecutive year, with climate finance provided and mobilised for developing countries rising from $132.8 billion in 2023 to $136.7 billion in 2024.

The report says mitigation finance reached $86.9 billion in 2024, more than twice adaptation funding levels, while cross-cutting projects targeting both adaptation and mitigation rose to $15.1 billion.

Attention is shifting to the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) agreed at COP29 in Azerbaijan, where countries aim to scale climate finance for developing nations to at least $1.3 trillion annually by 2035 and expect developed countries to mobilise at least $300 billion annually.

Climate Home News adds that Imane Saidi, a senior researcher at the North Africa-based Imal Initiative, called the $35 billion in adaptation finance in 2024 "a drop in the ocean" given the United Nations estimate of annual adaptation needs of developing countries at between $215 billion and $387 billion.