As COP 30 winds up, IFRC calls for ‘a giant leap forward’ on adaptation

By the Climate Centre

As COP 30 closes with what UN organizers are calling a global Mutirão – a Portuguese word of indigenous Brazilian origin that translates as “collective effort” – the IFRC has called for “a giant leap forward” on climate adaptation.

“While progress was made on adaptation indicators under the UAE Framework for Global Climate Resilience, more work is needed to translate this into action,” IFRC Secretary General Jagan Chapagain said on social media yesterday.

“The weakening of the new adaptation finance goal is concerning, pushing out the tripling of adaptation finance until 2035 rather than 2030.

“For communities already living through heatwaves, floods and rising seas, they cannot afford delays. What matters now is implementation and achieving this goal as quickly as possible.”

An IFRC policy brief authored jointly with the Climate Centre and rolled out at COP 30 last week argued that only through locally led adaptation to climate change will vulnerable people feel the benefits soon enough.

“Everyone everywhere will have to adapt to climate change – some will be able to, many will not. Vulnerability – often driven by poverty, exclusion and humanitarian impacts – will continue to be the dominant factor that prevents people from adapting,” it adds.

Scientists have for years said some serious climate impacts are now locked in because of past emissions, even in the most optimistic future scenarios for mitigation.

Expectations were high that COP 30 “would include explicit reference to phasing out fossil fuels [but the] adopted outcome refers only to the UAE consensus, the COP 28 decision calling for ‘transitioning away from fossil fuels’,” the UN reported.

‘D&C Days gets us back to basics. Why are we actually doing this? How do these indicators help what’s really important?’

Last Wednesday the IFRC’s penultimate side-event at the UN climate talks covered local leadership with global adaptation – “connecting ambition, action and resilience” – and finally later the same day, in the WWF pavillion, another side-event centred on a road map for expanding nature-based solutions.

This year’s Development and Climate Days was divided, firstly, into a one-day online event held slightly ahead of the Belem COP itself that generated key messages for negotiators.

Then at an in-person reception last Saturday (pictured), “we put the spotlight back on why we’re here: to protect lives and build resilience in the face of climate change,” joint organizers IIED said on social media.

The reception “gathered contributors and COP experts to pressure-test the D&C Days messages, sparking honest conversation on what it takes to make locally led adaptation a reality,” they added.

“D&C Days offers something rare and essential,” said May Aung, IIED Senior Researcher and focal point on the theme of adaptation finance for the event. It “gets us back to the basics. Why are we actually doing this? How do these indicators help progress what’s really important?”

Among the voluntary agreements reached at COP 30 of immediate relevance to the humanitarian sector, the Belem Health Action Plan aims to enhance “surveillance and monitoring, building capacities, promoting evidence-based and participatory policies.”

COP 30 overall “showed that climate cooperation is alive and kicking. Keeping humanity in the fight for a liveable planet,” UNFCCC Executive Secretary Simon Stiell said on social media, while “194 countries have said in one voice that ‘the Paris Agreement is working’, and resolved to make it go further and faster.”

Climate Centre Director Aditya Bahadur moderates the in-person segment of the COP 30 D&C Days – “an important annual highlight for all those who are passionate about placing adaptation at centre stage in global climate policy discourses,” he says. (Photo: Paul Mitchell/IIED)