Developing countries need more money to protect themselves from climate change

A man walks over his collapsed mud house after heavy monsoon rains in Pakistan in 2022. Climate change makes heavy rain more common, because a hotter atmosphere can hold more moisture.

Fida Hussain/AFP via Getty Images

The world is facing more extreme weather that scientists say is fueled by human-driven climate change. The poorest countries have done the least to cause the problem, but they are being hit the hardest by more intense droughts and floods and storms. Yet as the threats from a warming planet grow, the United Nations says in a new report that less money is being sent to developing countries to help them adapt.

Developing countries, which have less wealth than developed countries like the United States, were promised $100 billion a year from their richer neighbors to help pay for cutting climate pollution and coping with the impacts of rising temperatures. Developed countries didn’t deliver on their pledge. In 2021, they actually gave poorer nations 15% less money for climate adaptation than they did the year before. That meant less money for things like flood defenses, drought-resistant crops and early warning systems to help people evacuate emergencies.

The UN estimates the gap between how much money developing countries need to pay for adaptation projects, and the amount of public funding they’re getting directly from wealthier countries and from institutions like the World Bank now stands at between $194 billion and $366 billion every year. Put another way, poorer countries need at least 10 times more money for climate adaptation than the $21.3 billion in public funding that they received in 2021.

The longer that gap persists and countries are forced to put off investments that could help…