FILE: A man drags a table through flood waters at Goth Muhammad Yusuf Naich in the Dadu district of Sindh province, Pakistan, on Thursday, Sept. 1, 2022. (Photo: Asim Hafeez/Bloomberg) (Photo: Asim Hafeez/Bloomberg)

By Nathaniel Bullard

(Bloomberg) — The UN Environment Programme recently published its annual Adaptation Gap Report, examining how much funding the world’s developing countries will need to withstand the impacts of climate change. The report provides a complex but constructive understanding of the investment required, beginning with the striking shortfall today. According to UNEP, “ Adaptation finance needs are 10 to 18 times as great as current international public adaptation finance flows – at least 50% higher than previously estimated.”

There is not one assessment of the investment required for adaptation; in fact, there are two, and they have significantly different dollar figures. The first is the “modelled” cost of adaptation, which is based on an “analysis of the adaptation needed to reduce incremental climate risks, relative to a reference period, without consideration of how this is financed.” UNEP gives this cost investment requirement as US$215 billion dollars per year this decade.

Source: UN Environment Programme