We must act now to ensure the poorest nations avoid struggles in a climate chaos
Natural hazardsArticleJuly 30, 2020
Michael Szönyi, Head of the Zurich Flood Resilience Program, calls on the wealthiest nations to stand by their climate commitments in addition to financing the response to COVID-19 and provide targeted support countries most vulnerable to climate change.
An estimated 200 million people will need humanitarian aid by 2050 unless climate finance is urgently directed to the poorest nations most vulnerable to climate change.
This is one of the findings of a report from the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance (ZFRA), “At What Cost? How chronic gaps in adaptation finance expose the world’s most vulnerable people to climate chaos”, that warns we risk leaving people behind if we do not better target funding to cope with the threats posed by climate change, like rising sea levels, floods and droughts.
A decade from now, the cost of helping the poorest communities adapt to climate change will soar to between USD140bn and USD300bn annually, rising to between USD280bn and USD500bn by 2050. But the ZFRA report found that poor countries only received an estimated USD15bn a year in climate finance. A massive shortfall.
It also found that these funds are not being targeted according to need. For example, Niger is ranked as the second most climate vulnerable country, but it does not make the top 20 countries to receive climate finance per capita of extreme poverty.
Countries most vulnerable to climate change
1. Somalia
2. Niger
3. Solomon Islands
4. Chad
5. Micronesia
6. Guinea-Bissau
7. Sudan
8. Liberia
9. Mali
10. Eritrea
Source: ND-GAIN index
Wealthy countries need to keep promises
At the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2009, a goal was agreed in the Copenhagen Accord to raise USD100 billion a year in climate finance by 2020 to support developing countries. But they are in danger of missing this deadline. To prevent natural hazards from becoming avoidable humanitarian disasters, wealthy nations must fulfill this promise.
Ambitious new climate finance targets need to be set for the next five years distributed according to need, targeting the most climate vulnerable countries with the poorest populations.
Investments in these communities help people cope with the devastating impacts of threats like droughts and floods. Economic losses are reduced, economic activity stimulated, and essential services such as hospitals and schools protected from damage and destruction.
It is key that we help these countries meet both the climate change mitigation and adaptation needs. On one hand, the global community must fulfill the commitments of the Paris Agreement to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C.
But we also know climate change is already having a significant impact. We need to take a long-term investment approach to fragile and vulnerable countries, support them to adapt to the impacts of climate change and build resilience to natural hazards. And do so in a fair and equitable manner.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, wealthy nations have mobilized trillions in a blink of an eye to unite in their fight against the virus. But climate change remains a grave threat to humanity and that’s why wealthy countries must keep their promise to the world’s poorest nations and help them prepare for climate change and build community resilience to natural hazards.