Adaptation to climate change ‘sacrificed’ at COP28 –

As the United Nations climate change summit drew to a close in Dubai this week, with most of the focus on fossil fuels, another key priority was seemingly overshadowed: how vulnerable countries will adapt to damaging climate impacts now and in the future.

In 2015, the Paris Agreement established a Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA), aimed at enhancing adaptive capacity, strengthening resilience and reducing vulnerability to climate change.

The GGA is meant to serve as a unifying framework that can drive political action and finance for adaptation on the same scale as mitigation, according to the World Resources Institute. This means setting specific, measurable targets and guidelines for global adaptation action as well as enhancing adaptation finance and support for developing countries.

The GGA is a playbook for how the world is going to adapt to the climate change that is already happening and will continue to happen, “even if we stopped using fossil fuels today”, Climate Action Network International said on Monday.

“The new text on the global goal on adaptation highlights serious gaps on securing a strong outcome on adaptation from COP28. Communities on the front line deserve far better.”

Adaptation is not optional. “The most vulnerable cannot be made to choose between preventing dangerous climate change by delivering a phase-out of fossil fuels and dealing with the inevitable impact of climate change,” it said, noting how the new text falls short on what developing countries have been asking for.

The goal for 2023 was to raise $300 million for the Adaptation Fund, but at COP28, “we’ve only seen $169m in pledges, a mere 56% of the intended amount”, it stated.

Adaptation is a “matter of life and death for Africa”, said Collins Nzovu, the chair of the African group of negotiators on climate change, who called out the slow progress on adaptation, specifically on the GGA.

He told a briefing this week that a strong agreement on adaptation was the “most important outcome” for Africa at COP28.

“If we are serious about saving lives, livelihoods and protecting ecosystems, then the GGA framework must have ambitious, time-bound targets with clear means of support for implementation.”

This includes finance, capacitybuilding and technology transfer, which are a “cornerstone” of the GGA. African countries, he said, could not agree to an adaptation framework featuring “process-based targets” without specified outcomes.

Despite the strain on African budgets and the increasing debt burden, governments have committed significant domestic resources on adaptation. “However, only scaled-up, adequate and predictable international public finance can close the widening gap. Means of implementation is therefore the cornerstone for realising the GGA and its framework.

“Africa cannot accept a GGA framework without means of implementation from developed countries for developing countries, especially on the targets.”

Last month, the United Nations Environment Programme’s Adaptation Gap report 2023 found that the adaptation finance needs of developing countries are 10 to 18 times as great as international pub