Earth Today | Adaptation Fund raises record US$351.6m at global climate conference

THE ADAPTATION Fund, from which vulnerable countries of the Caribbean, including Jamaica, has benefitted, received a record-shattering US$351.6 million in new support from contributing national and regional governments.

The occasion was its annual Contributor Dialogue, held earlier this week at the United Nations (UN) climate change conference in Glasgow.

A record 15 donors announced new pledges for the fund. The fund’s previous annual resource mobilisation record was US$129 million, which it reached three years ago at the 24th meeting of the conference, known officially as the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, held in Katowice, Poland.

The new amount far surpassed the fund’s 2021 resource mobilisation goal of US$120 million and more than tripled the US$116 million it raised a year ago. It will also make a considerable dent in its US$300 million-plus and rising pipeline of project proposals that are under development but have not yet been funded, and the steady stream of high demand for its work.

FIRST TIME CONTRIBUTIONS

New pledges include first-time contributions from the United States, Canada (at the national level) and Qatar. Several contributions that were significantly higher than in the past came from some of the fund’s other contributors, such as the European Commission, Spain, Quebec, Ireland and Brussels and others such as Finland, who returned to contribute after several years. It also included new multi-year commitments to the fund from Norway and Ireland, which followed Sweden’s first multi-year pledge to the fund a couple years ago.

The 2021 pledges announced included the European Commission (the equivalent of US$116.4 million); Germany (the equivalent of US$58.2 million); the United States (US$50 million); Spain (the equivalent of US$34.9 million); the United Kingdom (the equivalent of US$20.6 million); Sweden (the equivalent of US$15.1 million, applied from its equivalent of US$53-million pledge for 2019-2022); Switzerland (the equivalent of US$10.9 million); Norway (the equivalent of US$8.38 million applied from its 300 million NOK pledge for 2021-2024); Finland (the equivalent of US$8.1 million); Canadian national government (the equivalent of US$8.1 million); Quebec regional government (the equivalent of US$8.1 million); Ireland (the equivalent of US$5.8 million, applied from its EUR 10-million commitment over 2021-2022); the Flanders Region of Belgium (the equivalent of US$3.49 million); Brussels Capital Region of Belgium (the equivalent of US$2.6 million); and Qatar (the equivalent of US$500,000).

It is possible that more contributions for the fund may come in before the end of the year.

The Adaptation Fund had high hopes entering COP26, which has drawn some 40,000 attendees, as one of the conference’s top goals was to enhance adaptation action. Governments, beneficiaries and supporters of the fund’s concrete actions on the ground for the most vulnerable, and the innovative programmes, came through in the end.