Time for a reality check on adaptation finance

published on Climate Home 24.11.2015

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Climate finance will be a key element of the negotiations at COP21 in Paris and beyond, reflecting the urgent need for investment in both mitigation and adaptation in developing countries. Developed countries have pledged to “mobilise” US$100 billion per year by 2020 in climate finance for developing countries. Yet only part will come from public coffers; the rest – a still-undetermined amount – is expected to flow from private sources. How all this private climate finance will be mobilised remains unclear.
Political leaders, development banks and others working to increase private climate finance often assume that private actors can support climate action in developing countries in much the same way as public entities. Yet especially with adaptation, our research and experience suggest, that is unrealistic. Private and public actors have completely different motivations for supporting and enabling adaptation, and that is unlikely to change anytime soon.
This Blog discusses private adaptation and private adaptation finance, based on our recent paper in Climatic Change (open access, available here)