COP30 highlights growing need of countries for resilience to storms, flood and fires

FE Team | Published: November 11, 2025 23:48:03

BELEM, Nov 11 (Reuters): With typhoons tearing across Southeast Asia this week while areas of Jamaica and Brazil are still clearing debris from damaging storms, delegates at Brazil's COP30 summit began grappling with how best to help the vulnerable withstand worsening weather and other climate extremes.
The topic of "adaptation" has grown more important as countries fail to rein in climate-warming emissions enough to prevent extreme warming linked to increasingly frequent weather disasters across the planet. A U.N. report last month said developing countries alone would need up to $310 billion every year by 2035 to prepare.
Where that money will come from is unclear. Ten of the world's development banks, under pressure to free more cash for climate action, said on Monday they would continue to support the need.
"Lives, well-being and jobs cannot be sustained where homes, schools, farms and businesses are under threat from flooding, drought, or other climate extremes," the banks said in a statement. Last year, they channeled more than $26 billion to low- and middle-income economies for adaptation.
Separately, the director of a multipartner U.N. fund told Reuters it would soon announce a new impact bond aimed at raising $200 million by the end of 2026.
"The whole bond idea started exactly one year ago at the previous COP in Baku," said Markus Repnik, who leads the Systematic Observations Financing Facility backed by the World Meteorological Organization, U.N. Development Programme and U.N. Environment Fund. "We were getting the sense that things are going to change significantly from an international perspective."
The fund, which also works to plug gaps in weather data for developing countries, hopes for country donations this week during COP30.
On Monday, Germany and Spain pledged $100 million to a different effort, the multilateral Climate Investment Funds (CIF), which is financing projects to boost climate resilience in developing countries.
The organization's chief praised Brazil for featuring the issue as a COP30 focus, after years of seeing the issue slide down U.N. climate summit agendas.
"We're really thrilled that, for the first time, adaptation is Day 1 and Day 2 of the COP," CIF Chief Executive Tariye Gbadegesin told Reuters.
Vietnam estimated initial costs from Typhoon Kalmaegi at nearly $300 million, a month after Typhoon Bualoi delivered $436 million in property damages. The Philippines is still tallying damages from Kalmaegi and the deadly Super Typhoon Fung-wong that hit this week.