The Guardian view on adapting to the climate crisis: it demands political honesty about extreme weather | Editorial

TThe record 252 mph winds of Hurricane Melissa that devastated the Caribbean islands in late October were made five times more likely by the climate crisis. Scorching wildfires in Spain and Portugal over the summer were made 40 times more likely, while the June heatwave in England was made 100 times more likely.

The science of attribution has made one thing clear: global warming is causing today’s extreme weather. It was understood that greenhouse gas emissions were warming the planet. What we can now demonstrate is that this warming is producing record heat waves and more violent and increasingly frequent storms.

What we can do to minimize, or at least reduce, the risks to life from such events – as well as more gradual changes – is what climate adaptation experts are constantly thinking about. The alarming consensus is that we are not doing enough. The result is paid for in human lives: floods and cyclonic storms in Thailand, Sri Lanka and Indonesia caused hundreds of deaths at the end of November.

The president of Cop30 in Brazil, André Corrêa do Lago, called for the UN climate change conference to be an “Adaptation Cop”. But governments in the most vulnerable countries returned from Belém angry at an outcome that saw the projected size of the annual adaptation budget triple to $120 billion, but with the deadline pushed back to 2035 and without a clear mechanism to make rich countries pay.

Even this total falls far short of the $300 billion in climate finance agreed at Cop29 in 2024. The risk is that without international support, heavily indebted countries like Jamaica will find themselves trapped, with resources that should be devoted to green energy and sustainability being instead spent on dealing with disasters.

But the need for preparedness is not limited to low-lying countries and those most affected by extreme heat and severe storms. This imbalance in climate programs is visible all over the world. Last month, a group of British scientists held what they called a “national emergency briefing” in London in a bid to alert people to the scale of the threat of climate crisis – and the alarming lack of preparedness.

Daily injustice

In the global context, adaptation policies are clear. Poorer countries, including small island states whose existence is threatened by rising sea levels, have consistently argued that rich nations whose historic and current emissions are responsible for global warming must help them adapt to the crisis, as well as move away from fossil fuels. Western right-wing nationalist governments are extremely hostile to the idea – and to aid spending more broadly – ​​although their most vehement objections are limited to phasing out fossil fuels and net zero.

But in rich countries, adaptation may seem more of a technocratic challenge than a political one. Policies regarding flood risks or increasing resilience to high temperatures are generally not a top priority for voters – unless there is a disaster such as the floods in eastern Spain that led to the resignation of Carlos Mazón, Valencia’s president, in November. While mismanagement of the water industry is a hot-button political issue in England and Wales, big issues around natural resources and infrastructure resilience remain outside the daily agenda, with responsibility delegated to independent agencies and rarely addressed by party leaders.

A recent report from the Glacier Trust and the UK’s Climate Majority Project argued that charities and politicians should seek to change this situation and promote an “action-oriented public understanding of climate risk”. All must recognize that adaptation cannot simply be left to market forces, as the economics of climate risk pushes back private financing just as the danger increases.

The long-term, low-profit investments needed to defend communities against floods, fires and heat are unattractive to private lenders. It is the State which must build dikes or insure subsistence farmers when the risk becomes too great. Leah Aronowsky, a historian of science at Columbia University, says climate risk is a compounded everyday injustice – and she is right to argue that how to adapt is a political battle.

What adaptation should look like

One reason adaptation receives so little attention is the urgency to reduce emissions. Amid warnings that the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C target could become out of reach, mitigation – reducing or eliminating emissions – is the top priority.

Discussing preparations for global warming can seem like a distraction, or even an admission of defeat. But while it makes sense for climate activists to maintain the strongest possible pressure to reduce emissions, it should also be possible to prepare for a hotter, more unstable climate. Under the UK’s Climate Change Act, the government is legally required to do this and regularly review its preparations.

The UK’s Climate Change Committee will soon define what a truly “well-adapted” country should look like: flood defenses capable of withstanding future storms, transport links built for a harsher climate, food and supply chains resilient to global shocks, and coastal communities protected rather than abandoned. Experts also want to ensure that the 1.5 million homes the government has committed to building in England alone will be fit for purpose in the future. In an era of polarized attacks on carbon neutrality, such projects could help rebuild a shared belief in responsible land management.

For the rich world, adaptation is prudent. For the poor world, it is a question of survival. The latest UN report is unequivocal: developing countries will need more than $310 billion a year by 2035, while they will receive only $26 billion in 2023. Catastrophic floods in Asia and worsening droughts in Africa this year underline the growing need to accelerate climate adaptation.

Under the Paris Agreement, nationally determined contributions (NDCs) – national plans to combat global warming – are supposed to cover both reducing emissions and adapting to climate impacts.

But NDCs end up focusing primarily on reducing greenhouse gases and establishing decarbonization pathways. This must change. The national adaptation plans resulting from Cop16 must be highlighted. These put adaptation center stage – and demand real plans, real funding, real justice. They ask the question that really matters today: How can vulnerable nations survive a warming world that emissions cuts alone cannot stop?

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