Despite Kenya being a small contributor to climate change through industrial pollution, Kenyans will nonetheless suffer more as the cost of adapting increases.
In UNEP's Adaptation Finance Gap Report, the reality is that failure to cut emissions will dramatically increase the annual costs of adaptation, which could be up to five times higher by 2050 than previously thought.
The cost of adapting to climate change in developing countries, which Kenya is part of, could rise to between $280 and $500 billion per year by 2050, a figure that is four to five times greater than previous estimates.
Released as nations sign the landmark Paris Agreement on climate change, the report assesses the difference between the financial costs of adapting to climate change in developing countries and the amount of money actually available to meet these costs – a difference known as the “adaptation finance gap”.
The report, the second in UNEP’s series of Adaptation Gap reports, finds that total bilateral and multilateral funding for climate change adaptation in developing countries has risen substantially in the five years leading up to 2014, reaching $22.5 billion. But, the report warns that despite this increase, there will be a significant funding gap by 2050 unless new and additional finance for adaptation is made available.
“It is vital that governments understand the costs involved in adapting to climate change,” said Ibrahim Thiaw, Deputy Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme.
“This report serves as a powerful reminder that climate change will continue to have serious economic costs. The adaptation finance gap is large, and likely to grow substantially over the coming decades, unless significant progress is made to secure new, additional and innovative financing for adaptation.”
The Adaptation Finance Gap Report is written by authors from 15 institutions and reviewed by 31 experts and it builds on earlier estimates by reviewing national and sector studies.
On the downside, and which could see the effects bite even more, the report notes that there is no agreement as to the type of funding that shall be mobilised to meet this goal. This hampers efforts to monitor progress toward meeting the goal.
The Green Climate Fund, which was set up by the UNFCCC, with its stated goal of splitting funding equally between mitigation and adaptation efforts, is expected to play a significant role in efforts to fund adaptation, the report states.
Adaptation costs are already two to three times higher than current international public funding.
Closing this gap will be vital if the world is to address future adaptation needs, especially those of developing countries.
The Paris Agreement on climate change, which 195 countries negotiated in December, includes several key provisions designed to advance adaptation. Three are particularly momentous: the adoption of a global goal on adaptation, the commitment to increase developed country funding to developing countries and the requirement that all parties draw up and regularly update adaptation plans and strategies.
In an unprecedented move, the Paris Agreement also calls for a balance between adaptation and mitigation finance and support in a bid to meet the longstanding demand for adaptation finance from developing countries.