China News Service, United Nations, January 25. At the climate adaptation summit that opened on the 25th, UN Secretary-General Guterres delivered a video speech calling for an urgent increase in funding for climate change adaptation and disaster resilience building to withstand drought and floods. And sea level rise and other major events, and provide truly lasting protection.
Climate adaptation refers to the need for countries to enhance their various abilities to better adapt to corresponding changes based on climate changes that have already occurred, so as to reduce the various losses and impacts of climate change on life, property and health.
Climate adaptation is one of the two main strategies of the United Nations to deal with climate change. The other strategy is mitigation, which mainly refers to reducing greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activities and slowing down and preventing the occurrence of climate change.
Guterres called for half of all climate funds provided by developed countries and multilateral banks to be allocated to climate adaptation and disaster resilience.
He expressed the hope that this goal will be achieved before the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, UK in November this year; otherwise, it should be achieved by 2024 at the latest.
According to a report issued by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in the middle of this month, the current annual adaptation cost of developing countries alone is as high as about 70 billion US dollars; this figure will rise to 140 billion to 300 billion US dollars in 2030, and it will reach US$280 billion to US$500 billion.
However, climate adaptation financing is far from meeting the needs. Among the 197 countries surveyed in the report, only about 30% of the direct funding for climate adaptation projects is provided.
Guterres said that countries should cooperate to establish an early warning system covering the world to minimize losses.
He suggested that countries should pay attention to including anticipation and response to climate risk in allocating budgets and planning infrastructure construction; it is necessary to substantially expand the scale of existing financial instruments "related to disaster reduction", such as through bonds or investment Disaster-affected economies should provide support; attention should be paid to the fair distribution of climate public funds, with special attention to supporting the least developed countries and small island developing States. These two types of countries face the most severe climate risks, but access to climate funds only accounts for 14% and 2% of the total.
Guterres expressed the hope that this summit will help make breakthroughs in climate adaptation and disaster resilience, and promote countries to achieve ambitious results at the 26th Climate Change Conference.
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