Will Private Finance Support Climate Change Adaptation in Developing Countries?

This research paper by the Stockholm Environment Institute examines historical private-sector investment patterns to assess the potential for private finance to meet climate change adaptation needs in developing countries. The author argues that private finance is unevenly distributed across regions and sectors, often failing to align with the most pressing adaptation needs of the poorest populations.

• Private-sector finance, including foreign direct investment (FDI) and international bank lending, is heavily concentrated in a few major emerging economies, leaving Least Developed Countries (LDCs) with a very small share of total FDI flows to developing countries.
• Private investment tends to favor natural resource extraction over tertiary sectors like health and education. In critical adaptation sectors such as water and agriculture, investment is either unattractive to the private sector or focused on large-scale export activities rather than the small-scale production necessary for local livelihoods.
• There are significant regional disparities in the types of finance accessed; for example, Africa has lower access to debt finance as a portion of overall foreign capital, which is problematic because many adaptation measures are not suited for equity investors.
• Current methods of quantifying 'private climate finance' are flawed because they prioritize what can be measured over what is actually needed, and often fail to distinguish between different financial instruments or between new resources and simple changes in asset ownership.

APA

Atteridge, A. (2011). Will Private Finance Support Climate Change Adaptation in Developing Countries? Stockholm Environment Institute. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Climate/SEI-WP-2011-05-Private-Sector-Adaptation-Finance-ES.pdf

Chicago

Atteridge, Aaron. Will Private Finance Support Climate Change Adaptation in Developing Countries? Stockholm Environment Institute, 2011. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Climate/SEI-WP-2011-05-Private-Sector-Adaptation-Finance-ES.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Atteridge |first1=Aaron |title=Will Private Finance Support Climate Change Adaptation in Developing Countries? |publisher=Stockholm Environment Institute |date=November 2011 |url=https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Climate/SEI-WP-2011-05-Private-Sector-Adaptation-Finance-ES.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{atteridge2011will, author = {Atteridge, Aaron}, title = {{Will Private Finance Support Climate Change Adaptation in Developing Countries?}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2011}, month = nov, url = {https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Climate/SEI-WP-2011-05-Private-Sector-Adaptation-Finance-ES.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }