Debt Service Watch Briefing Climate COP28_FINAL 281123

DEBT SERVICE AND CLIMATE ADAPTATION SPENDING: THE FINDINGS 1/ FINANCING NEEDS AND CURRENT SPENDING ON CLIMATE ADAPTATION According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), approximately 3.3–3.6 billion people live in contexts that make them highly vulnerable to climate change.1 They are located mostly in the Global South, which is already disproportionately suffering from the worse. [...] While there has been an agreement on a historic loss and damage fund to help compensate poor and climate vulnerable countries from climate breakdown, the extent to which this will be sufficiently capitalised by wealthy countries to the tune of the trillions of dollars needed by the Global South remains unclear. [...] In 2021, these 42 countries reported a total of US$12.7 billion in climate adaptation spending: of this, US$4.6 billion is in Sub-Saharan Africa, US$1.36 billion in Asia, US$1 billion in Latin America and the Caribbean and US$5 billion in the Middle East and North Africa – but only US$178 million in SIDS. [...] In terms of the worst affected countries (measured as debt service over 50% of revenue), 18 are in Sub-Saharan Africa, 6 in Latin America and the Caribbean, 5 in the Middle-East and North Africa and 5 in Asia. [...] In the 42 countries of the Global South analysed for this report, debt service represented on average 32.7% of the public budget in 2023, while climate adaptation spending came in at only 2.5%.