The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has released a new report that shows how badly the world is doing at helping developing countries deal with climate change. The Adaptation Gap Report 2025: “Running on Empty” shows that by 2035, the money needed for adaptation finance, which is needed to lessen the effects of the climate problem, will be more than $310 billion every year.
This huge number is around 12 times as big as the present flows of international public adaptation money.
A crisis of not having enough money is getting worse.
The situation is worse because funding is actually going down. In 2023, international public adaptation funding flows to developing nations fell to $26 billion from $28 billion the year before.
There is now a huge shortfall in funding of $284–339 billion per year, which is 12 to 14 times more than what is now flowing. The annual need might go up to $365 billion based on what is needed in present climate plans, like the Nationally Determined Contributions and National Adaptation Plans. With 3% inflation per year, the demands in 2035 might rise to between $440 and $520 billion.
António Guterres, the UN Secretary-General, called the gap a “failure of global solidarity” and stressed how lethal it is. “The effects of climate change are speeding up. Guterres added, “But adaptation finance isn’t keeping up, so the world’s most vulnerable people are still at risk from rising seas, deadly storms, and extreme heat.” “This is shown by homes that are flooded, crops that fail, development that stops, and lives that are lost.”
Keeping Promises and Getting Trillions to Work
The huge gap means that the Glasgow Climate Pact objective of tripling adaptation finance from 2019 levels to about $40 billion by 2025 is likely to be missed. The New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) announced at COP29 in Baku, which says that rich countries must give at least $300 billion a year by 2035 for all climate action (mitigation and adaptation), is also plainly not enough to close the adaptation gap on its own.
Now, the spotlight is on COP30 in Belém, Brazil, to get things moving. Guterres wants COP30 to come up with a “global action plan” that makes sure developing countries have the tools they need to be strong and have enough food and water. He highlighted that developed countries must keep their promise to provide twice the amount of adaptation funding and work with all financial actors to raise $1.3 trillion a year by 2035 through the Baku-to-Belém Roadmap, with a fair part going to adaptation that “does not increase debt burdens.”
Guterres also asked for:
The business sector needs to put a lot more money into resilience.
Profits from fossil fuels help pay for the damage they inflict to the environment.
Half of the money that multilateral development banks give for climate change goes to adaptation.
The Case for Planning and Investing
The report stresses that it makes sense to spend money on climate action. For example, every dollar invested on protecting the shore saves $14 in damage, while nature-based solutions in cities can lower summer temperatures by more than 1 °C.
Global planning is common. There are national adaptation plans or policies in existence in 172 countries. Support for new projects across key climate funds expanded dramatically to approximately $920 million in 2024, which is an 86% increase over the average from 2019 to 2023. But 36 countries have plans that are out of date, and not many of them are reporting on the real results and effects that are essential to judge effectiveness.
India has finished its first national adaptation plan, which will be revealed at or near COP30 in Brazil. At the same time, India will also revise its nationally determined contribution (NDC) for the 2035 period.
Climate Injustice: Adding Fuel to the Fire
Harjeet Singh, a climate activist, termed the adaption gap a “staggering betrayal” and the “very definition of climate injustice.” He said that rich countries are purposely leaving the developing world to deal with problems they didn’t cause.
An Oil Change International report called Planet Wreckers showed that only four Global North countries—the United States, Canada, Australia, and Norway—are mostly to blame for the rise in global oil and gas production since the Paris Agreement. This makes the situation even more unfair.
From 2015 to 2024, these four countries increased their oil and gas output by about 40%. In the rest of the world, however, extraction declined by 2%. Romain Ioualalen, Global Policy lead at Oil Change International, said that the countries that are “most responsible for the climate crisis” expanding is a “blatant mockery of justice and equity.” He said they need to be the first to stop using fossil fuels and give the trillions of dollars needed for climate finance.