Here’s the hard truth: we are living through a climate crisis. We must halve greenhouse gas emissions to avoid a catastrophe. But there’s another part to this puzzle. We need to both lower emissions and adapt to climate change. This means better preparing for rising temperatures, floods, drought, wildfires and other calamities - the impacts of which are felt the hardest by the most vulnerable people in the world. This second part - adaptation - doesn’t always get the attention it deserves. But, along with mitigation, it is our key to becoming resilient. So how can we adapt to climate change? There are three components to adaptation: planning, finance and implementation.

PLANNING
On planning, there is progress. More than 80% of countries have put in place adaptation plans and targets - and many of these take into account the needs of those living in poverty and indigenous people.

FINANCE
On finance, we need to do much more. Developing countries alone need about 70 billion dollars per year to adapt to the climate crisis. But only a fraction of that is available. The adaptation finance gap is widening. We need to scale up both public and private-sector funds to close this gap.

IMPLEMENTATION
We have been implementing more solutions to help us adapt. 
These include ‘Nature-based solutions’ that draw on the natural world to build climate defenses. For example, restoring mangrove forests can prevent erosion and create a natural defense from storms, cyclones, and coastal floods. And investing in early warning systems, through weather stations and communication networks, allows communities to prepare in advance for natural disasters by stockpiling resources or evacuating to safety.
As climate impacts accelerate, we need to step up our implementation.

There’s a lot we can do to adapt to the effects of the climate crisis. This is a race to build resilience. It’s a race we can win but only if we start today.

UNEP’s A"daptation Gap Report 2022: Too Little, Too Slow – Climate adaptation failure puts world at risk" looks at progress in planning, financing and implementing adaptation actions as well as adaptation effectiveness and adaptation-mitigation linkages and co-benefits.

Read the report: [ Ссылка ]

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