John Kerry promises ‘significantly’ more climate finance at adaptation summit

(Climate Home News, 26 Jan 2021) The US will “significantly increase” funding to help vulnerable communities cope with the impacts of climate change, including through concessional finance, presidential climate envoy John Kerry has said.

Speaking at the first global summit on adaptation hosted by the Netherlands on Monday, Kerry said: “In the long term, driving towards net zero emissions no later than 2050 and keeping a 1.5C [warming] limit within reach remain the best policies for climate resilience and adaptation.

“There is simply no adapting to a 3 or 4C world, except for the very richest and most privileged.”

Under the Paris Agreement, countries have agreed to limit global temperature rise “well below 2C” and strive for 1.5 – a tougher goal on which the survival of vulnerable communities depends.

In the shorter term, Kerry said the world needed to “protect communities from the impacts of climate change that are already built in to the emissions that are in the atmosphere” or risked facing “dramatic reversals in economic development for everybody”.

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Climate Home News, 26 Jan 2021: John Kerry promises ‘significantly’ more climate finance at adaptation summit