Adaptation Finance: The Adaptation Gap Report 2023 and the Need to Scale Up Climate-Resilient Finance

When: Monday 4 December at 10:30-11:15 (GST)

Where: UNEP Pavilion (Zone B7, Building 87), COP28

The 2023 UNEP Adaptation Gap report includes a review and assessment of the costs of adaptation for all developing countries. In this panel session, experts will present and discuss new financial data and analysis from this year’s Adaptation Gap Report. The new numbers reflect the real costs of adaptation and the growing needs of developing countries reflected in NDCs and NAPs. Clearly these revised figures will place ever greater pressure on public finance and private finance will increasingly need to respond to a changing climate. 

The second part of this session will explore how financial institutions can scale climate-resilient finance and mainstream the assessment of physical climate risks across the finance sector. Key challenges remain:1) Identifying the risks to businesses and how to identify adaptation opportunities, 2) Shifting from risk management to positive impact through innovative financing, 3) Shaping the policy landscape leverage private finance for adaptation.

The session will bring leading thinkers together from the scientific community, with representatives of the development and private finance communities to highlight the challenges we are facing from a changing climate and how the global finance sector can respond systematically to the Paris Agreement’s Article 2.1(c) to make global financial flows ‘climate-resilient’.

Panelists:

• Henry Neufeldt, UNEP-CCC (moderator)
• Pieter Pauw, Eindhoven University
• Amal-Lee Amin, British International Investment
• Lina Osman, Standard Chartered Bank