Donors failing to deliver aid for climate adaptation

Laurie Goering in Reuters AlertNet: A promised $30 billion in "fast-start" climate change aid will go largely to emissions-curbing projects rather than efforts to help vulnerable nations adapt to more extreme weather and rising seas, new research suggests.

Only between 11 and 16 percent of the money promised so far by wealthy countries will go to support climate adaptation actions such as building sea walls and promoting new farming practices, according to a report published on Wednesday by the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).

Just $3 billion of the $30 billion pledged for the period 2010 to 2012 at last December's Copenhagen climate negotiations has been clearly allocated for adaptation projects in the world's poorest countries, and some of the commitments are in the form of loans rather than grants, the report said. It noted that this estimate was "very rough and perhaps low", partly due to a lack of information from donors. Under the non-binding Copenhagen Accord, donor nations agreed that their "fast-start" funding would be split in a balanced way between adaptation and mitigation projects.

But David Ciplet, a researcher at Brown University and one of the report's authors, warned that, so far, "the big promises for adaptation funding made at Copenhagen are not being met. Adaptation is absolutely crucial for the billions of people who face the rising intensity of climate disasters," he said…