– ‘Significant underestimate’ –
The UN’s top climate science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has projected adaptation costs in developing countries to reach $70-100 billion per year by 2050, based largely on World Bank figures from 2010.
But the new UNEP report said this was likely a “significant underestimate”, even if warming can be limited to two degrees Celsius this century – which many scientists say is unlikely.
Data gathered by research institutions, based on a wider and more detailed database, found that “at a minimum, the costs of adaptation are likely two to three times higher,” it said. READ: World leaders urged to change course at UN climate summit.
And on some calculations, based on national-level rather than global-level studies, “adaptation costs could climb as high as $150 billion by 2025/2030 and $250-500 billion per year by 2050” – and double that if the global average temperature rise is allowed to approach 4 C.
Senior climate change advisor Mohamed Adow of Christian Aid said some developing countries were already at their financial limit for climate adaptation.
“It’s a cruel irony that it is the rich countries whose carbon emissions helped create these climate change impacts that don’t want adaption to be a central part of the Paris agreement,” he said.
Sandeep Chamling Rai, adaptation policy advisor to green group WWF, added that the report “opens up a window onto a nightmarish future, where the global economy is crippled and the most vulnerable countries are even further disadvantaged.
“This is not a gap, it’s an abyss. We can avoid falling into it, but we’re running out of time.”
Gathering 195 states and the European Union bloc, the 12-day Lima meeting has as one of its tasks to draft guidelines for nations when they make emissions-cutting pledges next year — commitments that are at the heart of the new pact.
The climate negotiations have been bedevilled for years by rifts between rich and poor nations over who should shoulder the burden of emissions cuts, which require a politically and financially difficult shift from cheap and plentiful fossil fuel to cleaner energy sources.
Finance remains a sore point, with developing nations insisting that rich economies must show in Lima how they intend to honor promises to muster up to $100 billion in climate finance per year from 2020.
To date, nearly $10 billion in startup capital had been promised for the Green Climate Fund, the main vehicle for channelling the money.
Norway on Friday said it will provide $258 million to the fund over the next four years.
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