As COP31 nears, India’s heatwave disaster tag puts spotlight on global adaptation finance gap

As India officially recognised heatwaves as natural disasters nearly three months ahead of the UN climate change conference (COP31) in Türkiye, officials and experts have pointed out that the move exposes a stark reality of a global climate finance system that pushes vulnerable nations to pay for immediate climate survival entirely on their own.

“This task would have been much simpler if we had a good amount of international assistance that allowed us to access funds for various heat adaptation measures,” Krishna S Vatsa, National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) member and Head of the Department, told PTI Videos in an interview.

Stressing that the resources available for adaptation are “inadequate and unpredictable", Vatsa emphasised the need to improve access to the right kinds of technologies, including those required for efficient cooling.

According to India's first Adaptation Communication to the UN Climate Change Summit in 2023 (COP28), the country alone estimated a cumulative need for expenditure for adaptation of ₹56.68 lakh crore by 2030.

Adaptation finance refers to the funds spent to help communities prepare for and survive the unavoidable impacts of climate change. The Indian government’s economic survey data 2025 shows that 98 per cent of India's adaptation finance is sourced domestically.

The gap between what developing countries need to adapt to a hotter world and the money that actually reaches them is expected to resurface at COP31 in Antalya.

“In terms of both finance and technology, we are at a disadvantage. Heat is a very important concern for us, and therefore we decided to address the impacts of heat with our own national and state disaster mitigation funds. We would definitely like to encourage states to develop heat action plans and implement them on the ground,” the NDMA HoD told PTI.

Vatsa underscored that international adaptation finance can complement national efforts and make a significant difference to the scale and speed of implementation.

Sustained support for a long-term adaptation strategy would be helpful and for that, steady, predictable, and consistent access to finance is a prerequisite, he added.

“Heat is an atmospheric hazard, and its impact is felt across the country, so solutions need to be tried at the national scale. The resources need to match the scale of the intervention, and it is therefore very important that international resources are made available,” he said.

Benjamin Hickman, who leads UNEP’s Cool Coalition programme in India, noted that bringing finance down to the most vulnerable is not just about availability, but also about working and co-designing with governments to put forward sensible proposals that let finance flow.

The UNEP Cool Coalition is a global multi-stakeholder network, collaborating on science, policy, finance, and technology to meet growing demands for sustainable cooling in a comprehensive manner.

“We are working with countries to be ready for climate finance and to build their institutional capacity to apply for it. What is really needed is for climate finance to scale. For that, we also need pilots that test finance mechanisms and ways of incentivising or getting money into people’s pockets so they can afford this — whether protecting their home from heat or purchasing a more efficient AC,” Hickman told PTI.

He said that the mechanisms need to be piloted and tested in countries; thereafter, scaling up could be done via climate finance. “But of course, the climate finance needs to be there, and countries would also need to integrate heat action into climate finance as well,” he added.

The UN official further cited the UNEP’s Adaptation Gap report 2025 that projects public capital required for climate survival in developing nations will exceed 310 billion USD annually by 2035 — a requirement at least 12 times greater than current international adaptation flows, and the recent UNEP ‘Limiting Overshoot’ report which points to a significant gap in mitigation finance.

Earlier, Hickman also flagged that public buildings like schools, shelters, and care homes which protect the most vulnerable still need upgraded, heat-resilient specifications.

“We can’t just say at the global level that passive cooling needs to be done. We need to localise it, and that is not only what governments can do. It also means working with communities and the private sector on what they can do, and co-designing with them,” he said.

Referring to the UNEP Emissions Gap Report 2026, Sanjay Vashist, Director of the Climate Action Network South Asia (CANSA), highlighted that adaptation becomes a super urgent priority for every country and developed countries should be held responsible under Common But Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities (CBDR-RC).

The report indicated that current global policies put the world on a path toward a 2.8 degrees Celsius temperature rise by the end of the century. With warming currently at around 1.4 to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the window to avoid breaching the 1.5 degrees Celsius limit has officially closed, forcing the world into a temperature overshoot scenario, it said.

The CBDR-RC principle stresses that each country is responsible for addressing climate change and that developed countries should bear primary responsibility, as they account for most of the historical and current GHG emissions.

“Adaptation has to be a priority, even though it is not being treated as one. The reality is that we need almost 120 billion USD per year for adaptation by 2035. That is the scale we are looking at, and it is still a floor. It needs to go up, and it needs to triple. That is also the demand of CAN,” Vashist told PTI.

“Right now, adaptation is left to countries to manage on their own, but I really commend what India is doing (recognising heatwaves as a disaster),” he added.

Vashist argued that developed nations are stepping back, having never wanted to take up the responsibility earlier either, even as climate impacts now reach their own doorsteps.

COP31 will be held in Antalya, Türkiye, from November 9 to 20. Adaptation finance for developing countries is among the issues expected to come up in the negotiations.

Published on October 25, 2026