GS Paper III

News Excerpt:

The recent UNEP’s Adaptation Gap Report 2023, titled “Underfinanced, Underprepared – Inadequate investment and planning on climate adaptation leaves the world exposed”, finds that the progress on climate adaptation is decelerating instead of accelerating to keep pace with the increasing impacts of climate change.

About:

• Adaptation refers to reducing the vulnerability of countries and communities to climate change by enhancing their ability to absorb its impacts. 
• The adaptation gap, the difference between the adaptation implemented and the society's set goals, is determined by climate change impact-related preferences reflecting resource limitations and competing priorities.

Key highlights of the report:

• The need for adaptation finance is 10-18 times higher than the current public flows, and the adaptation finance gap is expanding, now standing at US$ 194-366 billion annually.
• The action plan on loss and damage has neglected non-economic losses such as cultural heritage and indigenous knowledge.
• Despite pledges made at the 26th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Glasgow to double 2019 adaptation finance support to around $40 billion per year by 2025, public multilateral and bilateral adaptation finance flows to developing countries declined by 15% to US $21 billion in 2021. 
• Five out of six Parties to the UNFCCC have established at least one national adaptation plan/strategy/ or policy, and just under half of them have two or more national instruments that replace or update the initial ones.
• A Climate Vulnerable Economies Loss Report indicates that the 55 most climate-vulnerable economies alone have experienced losses and damages of more than US $500 billion in the last two decades.
• The report estimates that adaptation costs will increase significantly by 2050 for most sectors, especially under high-warming scenarios.
• For example, the annual costs of adaptation for coastal protection will increase with sea-level rise by 2050.
• The world has already warmed by 1 degree Celsius since the pre-industrial era, and current climate action is inadequate to meet the Paris Agreement goal, which aims to limit temperature rise to 2°C, preferably to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
• Adaptation projects in developing countries receive funding from public and private sources, with multilateral development banks such as the World Bank and IMF being the largest providers of adaptation finance. However, their financial commitments decreased by 11% in 2021 after seeing an increase from 2017 to 2020.
• The report analysed the integration of gender equality and social inclusion in nationally determined contributions (NDCs) and national adaptation programmes (NAPs).
• It finds that only 20% of these plans have a dedicated budget for such activities, and the amount allocated is generally low, averaging 2%.

Need for bridging the adaptation gap:

• The increasing global temperatures and the associated dangers of climate change necessitate swift global adaptation efforts.
• The NDCs predict an additional 2.4°C to 2.6°C increase by the end of the century.
• The IPCC has concluded that despite the Paris Agreement's objectives being met, residual climate risks, despite significant adaptation efforts, will persist, resulting in non-economic and financial costs and damages.
• Climate change may worsen social identity inequality -
• Only 2% of global public money for adaptation is gender-responsive, while the remaining 24% is gender-specific or integrative.
• Research indicates that investing USD 16 billion annually in agriculture could prevent over 78 million people from starvation or chronic hunger due to climate change, reducing economic impacts by 14 billion for every billion spent.
• More work has to be done to narrow the remaining gap in one out of six nations that do not yet have a national adaptation planning tool.
• In 2022, international climate funds funded fewer adaptation measures than the previous year, but their worth increased due to significant investments in large projects.

Suggested Approaches:

Prelim PYQ

Q. "Momentum for Change: Climate Neutral Now" is an initiative launched by (UPSC 2018)

(a)The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

(b) The UNEP Secretariat

(c) The UNFCCC Secretariat

(d) The World Meteorological Organisation

Q. The ‘Common Carbon Metric’, Supported by UNEP, had been developed for​ (UPSC 2021)

(a) Assessing the carbon footprint of building operations around the world​

(b) Enabling commercial farming entities around the world to enter carbon emission trading ​

(c) Enabling governments to assess the overall carbon footprint caused by their countries​

(d) Assessing the overall carbon footprint caused by the use of fossil fuels by the world in a unit time