International Funding to Support Urban Adaptation to Climate Change

While estimates of the costs of adaptation to climate change remain vague, especially for low- and middle-income countries, recent approximations of current needs are in the range of tens of billions of dollars per annum ¹ and well in excess of levels of official development assistance (ODA). The World Bank estimates that climate-proofing development investments (including ODA and concessional finance, foreign direct investment and gross domestic investment) in low- and middle-income countries alone will cost between US$10 billion and US$40 billion annually. ² This figure has since been criticized for not taking into account the costs of climate-proofing existing supplies of natural and physical capital where no new investment is planned, the costs of financing new investments specifically to deal with climate change, or the costs to households and communities to fund their own adaptation needs. ³ More recent estimates by Oxfam that do acknowledge these factors put the costs of adaptation closer to US$50 billion annually, ⁴ while the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) suggests this could spiral to US$86 billion annually by 2015. ⁵ The longer it takes to implement an effective international agreement to reduce and then halt greenhouse gas emissions, the higher these costs of adaptation will be and the more likely that the limits to adaptation will be reached and exceeded.