More Funding is Critical for the Most Vulnerable to Survive Climate Change | Opinion

More Funding is Critical for the Most Vulnerable to Survive Climate Change | Opinion

Our climate emergency is global, yet it does not affect everyone equally. For the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF)—a group of 48 countries spanning four continents—climate change is quite simply an existential threat. This is not hyperbole.

Small island states such as Vanuatu, the Maldives and the Marshall Islands are being engulfed by rising sea levels. The vast and low-lying Delta region of Bangladesh, home to and food basket for more than 160 million people, is being poisoned by saltwater infiltration and may soon become infertile wasteland. Extreme temperatures and severe droughts threaten to make large swathes of the Middle East, which is warming at twice the global average, uninhabitable. For the countries that make up the CVF, action on climate change, already urgent, simply cannot be delayed any longer.

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), between $6 trillion and $10 trillion needs to be invested over the next decade to green our economies. Yet most CVF members are least developed, low or at best middle-income developing nations. They need support through both funding and expertise to help devise adaptation strategies to counter the effects of climate change, which scientists warn are already locked in for centuries.