National Adaptation Funding: Ways Forward For the Poorest Countries

Abstract

"Rising sea levels, shifting rainfall and other impacts of climate change present a huge risk to some of the world’s poorest countries. Faced with such challenges, many LDCs or Least Developed Countries have found themselves juggling the need to adapt to climate impacts with other essential concerns. In 2001, LDCs began to develop National Adaptation Programmes of Action or NAPAs to identify their most urgent and immediate adaptation needs. Since then, 39 of them have gone through this rigorous process, but only a handful of the projects they identified have been submitted for funding. Even fewer have been accepted for implementation. To avoid wasting the massive investment in NAPAs so far, it is key for richer nations to give NAPAs the fiscal and institutional support they need."