The world is dangerously off-track in funding the measures needed to protect billions from worsening climate disasters, the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Adaptation Gap Report 2025: Running on Empty warns. Released ahead of COP30 in Belém, Brazil, the report reveals that developing countries will require at least USD 310 billion annually by 2035 to adapt to climate change — 12 times more than current international public finance flows.
The report highlights the deepening divide between climate ambition and reality. Current adaptation finance from developed to developing nations stood at just $26 billion in 2023, down from $28 billion in 2022, despite record-breaking heat waves, floods, and storms around the world.
“The adaptation finance gap is now between $284 and $339 billion every year,” the report states. “This is not just a financial shortfall — it’s a crisis of survival.” UN secretary-general António Guterres described adaptation as “a lifeline, not a cost,” warning that failure to scale up finance would “leave the world’s most vulnerable exposed to rising seas, deadly storms, and searing heat.”
Glasgow Pact off track
The 2021 Glasgow Climate Pact set a goal to double international public adaptation finance from 2019 levels to approximately $40 billion by 2025. UNEP’s analysis shows that, on current trajectories, that goal will not be met. “The world is running on empty,” said Inger Andersen, executive director of UNEP. “Every person on this planet is living with the impacts of climate change — wildfires, heat waves, floods, and rising costs. Yet adaptation finance is not keeping pace. If we do not invest now, we will face escalating costs every year.”
Even as global mitigation efforts stall, adaptation costs are ballooning. When adjusted for inflation, the estimated $310–365 billion required annually could rise to $440–520 billion by 2035, the report warns. Meanwhile, the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) for climate finance — agreed at COP29 in Baku at $300 billion a year for mitigation and adaptation combined — falls far short of needs.
Progress in planning, but outdated strategies
Despite the grim financial picture, progress in adaptation planning continues. As of mid-2025, 172 countries — nearly 90 per cent of UNFCCC parties — have at least one national adaptation plan, policy or strategy. However, 36 of these plans are outdated or over a decade old, raising concerns about maladaptation.
Countries have reported over 1,600 adaptation actions across sectors such as biodiversity, agriculture, water, and infrastructure through their Biennial Transparency Reports (BTRs). Yet few provide impact data. “Nearly three-quarters of reported information relates to direct outputs like training or risk assessments,” UNEP notes. “Only 16% cover outcomes and 12% report actual resilience impacts.” This gap in measurement “makes it difficult to assess whether adaptation efforts are truly reducing vulnerability,” said Dr Timo Leiter of the London School of Economics, one of the report’s authors.
Health neglected
Beyond headline figures, the report highlights one of the most overlooked casualties of adaptation underfunding, which is public health. “Developing countries like India are experiencing increasing heat stress, water scarcity, and air pollution amid climate change, adding to health challenges in our regions,” said Dr Harshal Salve, additional professor at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi. “Real adaptation finance for health systems remains abysmally inadequate. In a post-pandemic world, this is not just an economic issue but a serious public health emergency in the making.”
Health, along with poverty alleviation and livelihoods, remains among the least-funded areas in adaptation budgets, even though climate-linked diseases, malnutrition, and heat-related deaths are on the rise across Asia and Africa.
Mounting debt risks
The report also warns that the quality of finance matters as much as quantity. Between 2022 and 2023, 70 per cent of international public adaptation finance was concessional — but debt instruments still made up 58 per cent of total flows. Worse, non-concessional loans now exceed concessional ones, particularly to middle-income countries.
“This is creating an ‘adaptation debt trap’,” said co-author Paul Watkiss of the UNEP Copenhagen Climate Centre. “Countries are borrowing to protect themselves from climate impacts they did not cause, risking long-term indebtedness.” For the world’s Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) — the most vulnerable yet least responsible for emissions — such debt burdens could undermine their ability to invest in resilience altogether. The private sector, UNEP says, has a potential role to play in closing the gap — but not a dominant one. Current private adaptation investments are only $5 billion annually. With supportive policy and blended finance models, this could rise to $50 billion per year by 2035 — still only 15–20 per cent of total needs.
“The private sector cannot replace public finance,” said Harjeet Singh, Climate Activist and Founding Director of the Satat Sampada Climate Foundation. “This report confirms a staggering betrayal. The adaptation finance gap is a death sentence for communities on the frontline. Rich nations have offered only lip service — with finance flows actually decreasing last year.”
He added: “This monumental gap — now at least 12 times what is provided — is the direct cause of lost lives, destroyed homes, and shattered livelihoods. It’s a deliberate political choice by rich countries to abandon the developing world to climate impacts they had no role in causing.”
Farmers on the frontline
The shortfall in adaptation funding is already hitting the world’s food systems. Esther Penunia, Secretary-General of the Asian Farmers’ Association (AFA), said smallholders are struggling to finance even basic resilience measures. “New research shows that small-scale family farmers need an annual investment of $952 per hectare — about $2.19 per day — to adapt to climate change,” she said. “Since we produce half the world’s food calories, surely this is a no-brainer investment. Yet funding is massively falling short.”
Penunia called for shifting “financial flows away from harmful, chemical-intensive agriculture and into nature-friendly family farming,” which she described as “a win for governments, communities, and the planet.”
The report’s findings will shape negotiations at COP30 in Brazil, where countries will debate the Baku to Belém Roadmap, a plan to raise $1.3 trillion annually in climate finance by 2035. UNEP stresses that this roadmap must prioritize grants and non-debt instruments, and ensure “climate resprioritiseilience becomes an integral part of all financial decision-making.”
Dr Jemilah Mahmood, executive director of the Sunway Centre for Planetary Health, Malaysia, said the message is clear: “We are dangerously underinvesting in climate resilience. The finance gap is not just a number — it’s a reflection of growing risks to people’s health, safety, and dignity.”
She added, “From heat waves that strain healthcare systems to floods that contaminate water supplies, the impacts are intensifying, and the most vulnerable are paying the highest price. Climate resilience must be built on fairness, care, and global solidarity.”
A call for a ‘mutirão global’
With COP30’s Brazilian Presidency calling for a mutirão global — a global collective effort — UNEP’s report insists that both public and private actors must act decisively to prevent the gap from becoming a chasm.
“Adaptation investments pay back many times over,” Andersen reminded policymakers. “Every dollar spent on coastal protection avoids fourteen dollars in damages. Urban nature-based solutions reduce summer heat by more than one degree Celsius. The economics are clear. The question is whether the world has the will.” As the climate crisis accelerates, Running on Empty serves as both a warning and a rallying cry. Without urgent, scaled-up adaptation finance — rooted in equity and justice — billions risk being left behind on a rapidly warming planet.