Africa’s push to triple adaptation finance left off official COP31 agenda

The first day of talks saw friction between the two sides, as the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) sought a dedicated slot on the issue. The group has been pressing for this since the climate talks in Bonn, Germany, in June.

Adaptation finance

The proposal failed to reach consensus at Monday's opening session, and Cop31 president Murat Kurum ruled that it could instead be discussed under existing agenda items. The European Union had signalled before the summit that it would not accept a separate agenda item on the issue, according to Agence Europe. After the African Group's request, the EU and Britain took the floor to restate the climate finance commitments they had already made.

As a result, there will be no formal negotiating track to define, monitor and enforce the pledge to at least triple adaptation finance by 2035. That pledge was made at Cop30 in Belém, Brazil, under the Global Mutirão decision, the main outcome of the Belém talks. Delegates at COP31 in Antalya, Turkey.

Dr Antwi-Boasiako Amoah, chair of the AGN, said tripling adaptation finance was one of the group's core demands at COP31.

“It is important to set the better structures right for better implementation of the tripling of adaptation finance,” he told a press conference in Antalya on 10 November.

“Where are we starting from? Are we starting from the doubling? Which numbers are we starting from? If you do not know the baseline, you cannot measure how much has come in. That is important.”

He added that a clear timeline for reaching the target was just as important.

“Without trajectory, you will not be able to track progress being made,” Amoah said.

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African Group's position

The African Group is now pushing for the target to be given priority in the cover text, the non-binding political declaration adopted by consensus at the end of the summit.

It remains unclear which figure is to be tripled. If the baseline is the one set by the Glasgow Climate Pact, international adaptation finance would rise to between $85 billion and $120 billion a year by 2035.

Adjusted for inflation, however, that would cover just 20 to 29 percent of developing countries' adaptation needs in 2035, according to the UN Environment Programme's Adaptation Gap Report 2026.

International public adaptation finance from developed to developing countries reached between $28.2 billion and $31.7 billion in 2024, up $1 billion on the previous year.

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Africa and the climate crisis

Amos Wemanya, senior climate adviser at Kenyan research group Power Shift Africa, said the negotiations gave priority to mitigation over adaptation. But with climate change devastating communities, he argued, countries must put adaptation first.

“Africa is spending much of its own budgets, trying to adapt. We cannot allow a continent that has contributed the least to the climate crisis to be spending its own resources to adapt,” he told RFI.

“We need support. But this is not the end. We will find every room to discuss adaptation finance.”

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For the tripling to succeed, Wemanya said, it must come with the means to deliver it.

Africa accounts for about 4 percent of the global greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change. Yet the continent suffers some of its harshest effects, from drought and floods to food insecurity.

Southern Africa is now bracing for El Niño, which is forecast to bring dry conditions from the end of 2026 until February 2027.