BANGLADESH INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AND STRATEGIC STUDIES

POOR ADAPTATION FINANCE: A PROPOSAL FOR TURNING AROUND

Author: Mizan R. Khan, Sirazoom Munira

DOI Link: https://www.doi.org/10.56888/BIISSj2021v42n2a2

ABSTRACT

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Paris Agreement (PA) have provisions of support for mitigation and adaptation, but it continues to remain poor, relative to the estimated needs by different agencies. The lack of agreement on what climate finance (CF) or adaptation finance (AF) is compounds the problem of their estimations. While the bilateral channels and multilateral institutions indicate widely differing amounts, there is a consensus that adaptation finance is quite inadequate. This poor financing can be attributed: (i) to the inefficacy of market mechanisms for adaptation and (ii) to the problematic framing under the regime that conceptualizes adaptation as national territory-bounded response. But different types of cross-border climate change impacts, or borderless climate risks, are already evident and the Paris Agreement also frames adaptation as a global responsibility. Still, climate regime does not consider adaptation as a global public good. This paper argues that the conceptual lacuna is rooted in the neoclassical economic understanding of public good only at the local or national scale. Further, we put forward two more claims: that it makes conceptual and political sense to consider adaptation as a global public good, and that framing adaptation as such should make a difference in boosting adaptation finance. In a multi-polar world with a wide diversity in views on adaptation finance, multilateral agencies may lead in promoting the proposed framing.