How to Increase Financing for Urban Climate Adaptation and Resilience

The document argues that urban climate adaptation is severely underfunded compared to mitigation, with only 9% of global urban climate investments flowing to adaptation projects as of 2017-2018. It highlights the extreme vulnerability of cities to flooding, heat, and water stress, noting that coastal cities could face annual costs of USD 1 trillion by 2050. To address this, the brief recommends that national governments declare climate emergencies, integrate local governments into national planning (NAPs and NDCs), boost technical project preparation, collaborate with development banks, mobilize private capital through PPPs and insurance, invest in early warning systems, and develop standardized adaptation metrics.

• There is a significant funding gap between urban climate mitigation and adaptation; for the 2017-2018 period, annual investment in urban adaptation and resilience averaged USD 7 billion, while mitigation projects received approximately USD 69 billion.
• Urban areas face severe economic and human risks from climate change, including the potential for coastal cities to lose USD 1 trillion annually by 2050 and the risk that 1.6 billion city residents will face extreme heat by 2050 if solutions are not scaled.
• Public funding is the primary source of urban adaptation finance, with multilateral development finance institutions (DFIs) providing the largest share at USD 4.1 billion annually in 2017-2018.
• National governments often exclude subnational governments from key climate planning documents; in a study of 60 countries' Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), only nine mentioned subnational governments for adaptation, and only seven identified a specific role for them.
• Investment in preventive measures like early warning systems offers high returns; spending USD 800 million on such systems in developing countries could reduce annual climate-related disaster losses by USD 3-16 billion.
• A primary barrier to private investment in adaptation is the lack of a universal metric to quantify financial returns, unlike the CO2 emissions reduction metrics used for mitigation.

APA

Knight, L., & Negreiros, P. (2022). How to Increase Financing for Urban Climate Adaptation and Resilience. Climate Policy Initiative. https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Policy-Brief-How-to-Increase-Financing-for-Urban-Climate-Adaptation-and-Resilience.pdf

Chicago

Knight, Lauren, and Priscilla Negreiros. How to Increase Financing for Urban Climate Adaptation and Resilience. Climate Policy Initiative, 2022. https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Policy-Brief-How-to-Increase-Financing-for-Urban-Climate-Adaptation-and-Resilience.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Knight |first1=Lauren |last2=Negreiros |first2=Priscilla |title=How to Increase Financing for Urban Climate Adaptation and Resilience |publisher=Climate Policy Initiative |date=November 2022 |url=https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Policy-Brief-How-to-Increase-Financing-for-Urban-Climate-Adaptation-and-Resilience.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{knight2022how, author = {Knight, Lauren and Negreiros, Priscilla}, title = {{How to Increase Financing for Urban Climate Adaptation and Resilience}}, institution = {Climate Policy Initiative}, year = {2022}, month = nov, url = {https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Policy-Brief-How-to-Increase-Financing-for-Urban-Climate-Adaptation-and-Resilience.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }