Sunday, December 7, 2014

UN report urges more funds for climate change adaptation, warns on temperature rise

UN News Centre: Despite public funding of climate change adaptation measures reaching as high as $26 billion in 2012-2013, a new United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report predicts a significant funding gap after 2020 unless new and additional finance for adaptation is made available.

The first UNEP Adaptation Gap Report finds that even if global greenhouse gas emissions are cut to the level required to keep temperature rise below 2°C, the cost of climate change adaptation in developing countries is likely to reach two to three times the previous estimates of $70-100 billion per year by 2050.

“Debating the economics of our response to climate change must become more honest,” said UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner in a press release on the challenges ahead, released as the first week of UN climate talks in Lima, Peru wrap up. That conference is set to conclude its work on 12 December.

“As world leaders meet in Lima to take the critical next step in realizing a global agreement on climate change, this report underlines the importance of including comprehensive adaptation plans in the agreement.”

The report assesses global adaptation gaps in finance, technology and knowledge, and lays out a framework for future work to better define and bridge those gaps. It calls for further action to cut emissions to prevent adaptation costs from soaring as wider and more-expensive action is needed to protect communities from the intensifying impacts of climate change...

A panorama of Naajaat in northwest Greenland, Image shot by Slaunger and stitched together by Herbythyme, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

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