When Hurricane Dorian smashed through the Bahamas in 2019, Selwin Hart was the Caribbean board member at the Inter-American Development Bank and saw for himself the “absolute devastation” of island communities razed by the powerful storm.
“It looked as though a bomb had landed,” said the Barbadian, who now works as special adviser on climate action to the UN secretary-general.
Yet despite island nations being increasingly exposed to the wrath of storms made stronger by a fast-warming ocean, they are struggling to access the international funding they need to keep their people safe from the threat and from rising sea levels.
Wealthy governments are under pressure ahead of November’s COP26 UN climate talks to deliver on an unmet promise to channel $100bn a year to vulnerable countries from 2020 to help them adapt to global warming and adopt clean energy.
The latest official numbers on climate finance to vulnerable nations show a drop in the money flowing to small island developing states, from $2.1bn in 2018 to $1.5bn in 2019, Hart noted.
One huge barrier facing many debt-ridden island nations — whose tourism-reliant economies have been battered by the Covid-19 pandemic — is their relatively high per-capita income, which bars them from accessing most sources of aid.
Hart called for “a common-sense look at the crisis” and new ways to channel much-needed support to such states, not least because building climate-resilient homes and other infrastructure will work out cheaper in the long run.
“There is a very clear business case for helping to support these countries to prepare for the climate disaster that they did not cause rather than stepping (in) to help them clean up after a hurricane,” said the former climate change negotiator.
His boss, UN chief Antonio Guterres, has in recent months repeatedly urged donors to “balance” their funding between emissions-cutting efforts and measures to adapt to climate shifts — an aim enshrined in the 2015 Paris Agreement.
Specifically, Guterres has called for “at least 50%” of climate finance for developing nations to go to adaptation, with most of it given as grants that do not have to be paid back, rather than loans.
Despite years of lobbying by aid agencies and countries suffering most from more extreme weather and rising seas, that goal is far from being met.
Data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, published last month, shows just a quarter of the nearly $80bn mobilised in 2019 went to adaptation, while grants accounted for only 27% of public climate finance.
Clare Shakya, director of the climate change group at the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), said while total climate finance contributions “are finally getting close to $100bn” a year, using the cash mainly to boost clean energy is not enough.
“Least developed countries (LDCs) are already dealing with a changed climate and need at least half of that finance to spend on adapting to the new reality,” she said, calling for more to be provided as grants and handed directly to local communities.
“The world owes it to the people who have done least to cause climate change but who are already suffering its effects,” she said.
Her organisation has convened a new group of donor countries committed to increasing the share of climate finance spent on adaptation and resilience, particularly for LDCs and small island developing states.
The hope is that the initiative can create political momentum for a strong statement on boosting funding for adaptation at the COP26 summit, now less than a month away.  – Thomson Reuters Foundation