Tracking Adaptation Finance: Advancing Methods to Capture Finance Flows in the Landscape

This briefing by the Climate Policy Initiative (CPI) examines the challenges of tracking global adaptation finance and proposes a new framework and technical methodologies to better capture these flows, particularly within the private and domestic public sectors.

• Tracking adaptation finance is significantly more difficult than tracking mitigation finance because adaptation is 'largely context dependent', meaning the resilience outcomes of an investment depend on specific local or regional vulnerabilities.
• CPI identifies three primary barriers to effective adaptation tracking: context dependency and outcome uncertainty, a lack of standardized accounting and causality links, and data confidentiality and reporting gaps, particularly in the private sector.
• To improve measurement, CPI proposes a three-category framework: Category 1 (asset-focused) for direct investment in adaptation outcomes, Category 2 (system-focused) for assets that benefit from primary resilience investments, and Category 3 (sectoral benchmark) for total sectoral investment used to measure the progress of mainstreaming resilience.
• CPI suggests four technical approaches to identify adaptation flows in large, unlabeled datasets: keyword searches, sales data analysis for specific technologies, policy matching against National Adaptation Plan priorities, and geographic matching against climate risk data.
• An initial assessment of Climate Bonds Initiative (CBI) data revealed USD 2.6 billion in bonds allocating proceeds to adaptation and resilience, with USD 1 billion going to land use and agriculture, USD 380 million to wastewater, and USD 240 million to infrastructure.
• Analysis of 139 'A-rated' companies in the 2018 CDP Climate Change questionnaire showed these firms identified USD 13.9 billion in costs associated with managing physical climate-related risks in 2018.

APA

Richmond, M., & Hallmeyer, K. (2019). Tracking Adaptation Finance: Advancing Methods to Capture Finance Flows in the Landscape. Climate Policy Initiative. https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Tracking-Adaptation-Finance-Brief.pdf

Chicago

Richmond, Morgan, and Karoline Hallmeyer. Tracking Adaptation Finance: Advancing Methods to Capture Finance Flows in the Landscape. Climate Policy Initiative, 2019. https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Tracking-Adaptation-Finance-Brief.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Richmond |first1=Morgan |last2=Hallmeyer |first2=Karoline |title=Tracking Adaptation Finance: Advancing Methods to Capture Finance Flows in the Landscape |publisher=Climate Policy Initiative |date=December 2019 |url=https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Tracking-Adaptation-Finance-Brief.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{richmond2019tracking, author = {Richmond, Morgan and Hallmeyer, Karoline}, title = {{Tracking Adaptation Finance: Advancing Methods to Capture Finance Flows in the Landscape}}, institution = {Climate Policy Initiative}, year = {2019}, month = dec, url = {https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Tracking-Adaptation-Finance-Brief.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }