COP30’s $365 Billion Question: How Do You Measure Adaptation?

The 30th annual United Nations climate conference, which kicks off in Brazil next week, arrives on the heels of one of the strongest hurricanes ever to make landfall in the Atlantic. After Hurricane Melissa, which brought destructive wind and rain to the shores of Jamaica and was made stronger and more intense by climate change, it’s fitting that one of the most concrete outcomes expected from COP30, as the conference is known, has to do with climate adaptation.

By the end of the two-week session, leaders from around the globe may finally decide on how to measure how much progress their countries and the world at large are making to adapt to the warming we already know is coming.

Exactly 10 years ago, the landmark Paris Agreement instructed parties to establish a “global goal on adaptation.” In the years following, however, developed countries pushed to keep the focus of the annual gathering on reducing emissions and preventing the worst climate outcomes. Thus, to date, there is still no global goal on adaptation.

While part of the holdup has been an age-old debate over whether to prioritize mitigation or adaptation, another part has been the complex nature of the task. Setting a mitigation goal is straightforward — the world can aim to limit warming to a certain temperature, or to reduce emissions by a certain amount by a certain date. Adaptation can’t be distilled into a single global metric.

Countries finally made some strides at COP28, when — in the typically glacial, bureaucratic United Nations fashion — they agreed to a “framework” for action on adaptation. The framework established vague, qualitative goals across the categories of water, food, health, ecosystems, infrastructure, poverty eradication, and cultural heritage. The water goal, for example, calls for “significantly reducing climate-induced water scarcity and enhancing climate resilience to water-related hazards towards a climate-resilient water supply, climate-resilient sanitation and access to safe and affordable potable water for all.”

The framework also set four higher-level targets relating to the process of adapting to climate change. It asked that by 2030, countries conduct a risk assessment, create a national adaptation plan, make progress in implementing the plan, and establish a system for monitoring and learning from the outcomes.

For the past two years, delegates have been working to compile a list of potential metrics by which to set more specific adaptation targets and measure progress. For example, countries could measure the water goal described above by the proportion of bodies of water with good ambient water quality, or by the proportion of water and sanitation systems that are ready to withstand climate-related hazards. At COP29 in Baku, countries agreed to adopt a final list of metrics, called “indicators,” this year in Brazil. Experts from member countries initially proposed nearly 10,000 indicators, but have since narrowed down the proposal to 100. Whether negotiators will try to set more specific targets within each indicator is an open question.

Looming over the final talks will be a question that has been at the heart of every annual climate conference since the start — the question of finance.

Funding for adaptation has increased over the years, but still lags far behind funding for mitigation. At COP26 in Glasgow, countries tried to change that by agreeing to double climate finance for adaptation in developing countries by 2025. While it’s still too early to say what the actual numbers are for this year, it is safe to say that this has not been achieved. A recent UN report found that from 2022 to 2023, financial flows from developed to developing countries for adaptation declined from $28 billion to $26 billion.

While countries have since agreed to increase overall climate finance to $300 billion per year by 2035, the UN estimates that the cost of adaptation alone in developing countries will be anywhere from $310 billion to $365 billion per year by 2035.

Developing countries have pushed to establish discrete indicators and targets for finance during past negotiations over the global goal on adaptation, but developed countries have successfully punted the question. We’ll see if they can continue to dodge it.