Earth Today | UNEP, GCF step up support for climate change adaptation
Published:Thursday | July 3, 2025 | 12:07 AM
GHANA, THE Maldives and Mauritania are set to benefit from a more than US$120 million in new funding from the Green Climate Fund (GCF), in order to improve their resilience.
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) made the revelation in a July 2 news release in which it also disclosed that it had developed the projects for benefiting countries at their request.
The intent, UNEP noted, is to “help vulnerable communities anticipate and adapt to increasingly severe impacts of climate change through nature-based solutions, climate-resilient agriculture, early warning systems and improved water security”.
“The approval of these projects demonstrates how GCF is supporting country ownership of national climate action priorities in Ghana, Maldives, and Mauritania. These investments will positively impact key areas of climate resilience in all three countries,” added Henry Gonzalez, the GCF’s chief investment officer.
The move is considered a step in the right direction for making available adaptation finance where it is most needed.
“These new projects reflect UNEP’s deep commitment to supporting countries on the frontlines of climate change,” said Martin Krause, director of UNEP’s Climate Change Division, in the release.
“Our focus is on contextualising climate solutions to the benefit of the most vulnerable nations and communities with tailored, locally led, and science-based solutions,” he added.
The climate change challenges facing the three benefiting countries, meanwhile, are many and varied.
Ghana, for example, faces, the UNEP revealed, increasingly erratic rainfall and long dry seasons that have led to “chronic food shortages, drying water bodies, and the destruction of infrastructure from flooding”, while in the Maldives – regarded as the world’s “most exposed country to climate change” – there exists the prevailing threat from rising sea levels, in addition to more frequent and severe storm surges, floods, heatwaves, coastal erosion, and other hazards made worse by the changing climate.
Over in Mauritania, there are prolonged droughts and sand encroachment, together with water scarcity. They have also seen “accelerating dune movement, siltation of water sources, and growing pressure on socio-economic infrastructure such as roads and schools”.
The UNEP projects are designed to tackle those challenges. In Ghana, some 619,000 people are to benefit directly, while early warning alerts will reach up to 2.9 million people. For the Maldives, more than half a million people are to benefit and in Mauritania, 85,000 people will directly benefit while improve resilience is expected for 145,000 more.
Adaptation as a response to the changing climate and its numerous effects has been a major focus for vulnerable SIDS and other developing countries, which contribute far fewer greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions compared to the developed nations that are the main polluters.
GHG emissions, including from the transportation and energy sectors, drive the climate impacts that SIDS are especially susceptible to due to, given their small size and fragile economies. Consequently, these countries need substantial financial support to adapt.
Adaptation, according to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, is concerned with making adjustments in ecological, social or economic systems in response to “actual or expected climatic stimuli and their effects”. Specific actions include but are not limited to the construction and/or installation of flood defences; making the switch to drought-resistant crops, as well as the establishment of early warning systems for cyclones and policy shifts.