The case for early action on climate adaptation

Building a more climate-resilient world requires new approaches to agriculture, industry, and infrastructure. It means investing in flood defences, natural disaster early warning systems, and agriculture technology. If governments and institutions around the world turn their focus to adaptation and mobilise capital early enough, we can make emerging economies more resilient to a changing climate.

To fight climate change, we must mitigate its impact by reducing carbon emissions. However, at the same time, we must urgently adapt to protect communities from increasingly frequent and severe weather events and other climate change effects.

While the global focus of the financial markets has largely been on financing the mitigation of climate change, the urgent need to adapt to our environmental reality has attracted less attention. The Adaptation Economy shines a light on this underexplored side of the climate-finance equation.

The report examines the need for adaptation investment in 10 developing markets: Bangladesh, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, the UAE and Vietnam.

The case for adaptation is clear: even if the world succeeds in limiting temperature rises to the Paris goals, the 10 markets in this study could be facing an estimated cost of USD377 billion in damages and lost economic growth by 2030.

The need for adaptation will become more urgent after 2030, with a minimum estimated investment of at least USD317.4 billion required between now and 2040, rising to USD1.4 trillion between now and 2050.

The markets we call home are some of the world’s most dynamic places. At Davos 2023, we met with industry leaders – in partnership with CNBC Catalyst – to discuss growth where emerging markets could play a massive part: trade, technology, and sustainability.