This brief outlines the current state of global finance for climate adaptation by sources and intermediaries, sectors, financial instruments deployed, and region of destination. It also presents the significant data and theoretical gaps that exist in adaptation finance reporting and includes a brief overview of potential new data sources and recommendations to improve adaptation finance tracking towards adaptation and resilience.
The report finishes by concluding that despite its critical importance, adaptation finance is a nascent field and suffers from gaps in knowledge and investment. Further scoping is needed in the public and private sectors to identify additional promising approaches to understand adaptation finance. Ultimately, improving information availability and quality on investment in adaptation will provide the necessary analytical foundations for increasing investment in climate adaptation from both the public and private sectors, helping to reduce the impacts of climate change on human and ecosystem health and well-being.