Climate
Climate Adaptation

Climate Adaptation: Seizing the Challenge ... including paper presented at the World Economic Forum in 2015

Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

Climate Adaptation: Seizing the Challenge

World Economic Forum ... Seizing the Challenge, captures some of the latest thinking in the field of climate adaptation and financing, with the goal of assisting decision-makers in the public and private sectors gain a better understanding of the issue. By World Economic Forum

Human intervention to reduce emission of greenhouse gases and so reduce the damage through climate mitigation is one way to address this.

But international agreements and action on mitigation have not appreciably slowed or reversed global emissions to date. Thus, the policy, business and academic communities are beginning to pay increased attention to the need for climate adaptation, defined as adjusting to the effects of climate change.

This includes changes in processes, practices and structures to moderate potential damage e.g. power plants investing in different cooling systems or building sea walls. According to the World Bank, up to US$ 100 billion annually in climate adaptation financing will be needed throughout the next 40 years in developing countries alone.3

Making progress on this issue requires assessment of where the problem is greatest, what the costs will be, how to target investment cost effectively, and how to finance it. However, current adaptation funding is relatively miniscule.

Multilateral development institutions are expanding their resource commitments, but have failed, so far, to provide all the funding required. It will be difficult for cash-strapped governments to fill this void on their own. The private sector will have to step in, and this provides it with an opportunity to not only mitigate global risk in its value chain due to climate change but also to strengthen resilience in developing countries.