A dozen countries ravaged by conflict and humanitarian crises have joined forces to urge the international community to deliver the funding they need to absorb and respond to worsening climate shocks, calling for a growing gap to be tackled at critical talks this year.
In a statement agreed on Monday and seen by Climate Home News, the newly created network – which includes countries such as Chad, Iraq, Somalia and Yemen – said fragile states, which are “so often forgotten by climate action”, bear the brunt of climate change despite being among the least responsible for its causes.
As “hundreds of millions of the world’s most climate vulnerable remain left behind by climate finance”, the group said it is “determined to bring this issue to the forefront and centre in climate discussions”.
A united voice
The call to action follows the network’s first meeting in Abu Dhabi last month, when fragile states discussed how to make the intersection of climate, conflict and humanitarian needs a priority in climate negotiations.
Representatives from 13 fragile nations attended the meeting, including ministers from Burundi, Chad, Somalia and Yemen and high-level officials representing Mauritania, Sierra Leone, Iraq and South Sudan.
The network, created at the COP29 climate talks in Azerbaijan last December, aims to be a diplomatic force advocating for more and better climate financing tailored to conflict and humanitarian settings.
It will allow fragile states to speak with a united voice in climate negotiations, where their experiences are “overlooked”, Liban Obsiye, executive director of Somalia’s National Climate Fund, told Climate Home.
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Failure to build long-term resilience
More than half of the world’s 25 most climate-vulnerable countries are affected by armed conflict, violence or high levels of humanitarian need, according to think-tank ODI Global, which is supporting the network.
Poor governance and conflict leave people more vulnerable to climate change, with every flood, drought and storm making it more difficult to develop the ability to cope and adapt to future impacts.
Yet funding for these countries falls seriously short, amid real and perceived risks associated with working in unstable settings, including weak institutions, lack of data and limited capacity to formulate proposals and manage projects. Available funding often focuses on short-term humanitarian needs rather than longer-term climate resilience.
Between 2014 and 2021, a group of 13 states identified as “extremely fragile” by the OECD received only $2 per person in multilateral climate finance compared to $162 per person for non-fragile states, a UN study found.
“This conflict blind spot represents a damning failure at the heart of the international climate system,” said the network.
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“Our message to all countries is clear: we can no longer afford to ignore this,” Yemen’s minister of water and environment Tawfiq al-Sharjabi told Climate Home in a statement.
“We urge governments, climate funds and international organisations to take immediate action to close this funding gap by increasing finance dedicated to climate change adaptation, simplifying bureaucratic procedures, and building capacity in developing countries,” he said.
A key issue for COP30
To make their case, the network has written to COP30 president André Aranha Corrêa do Lago urging him to keep the issue “high on the agenda” of the UN climate summit Brazil will host in November.
In a letter dated Tuesday and seen by Climate Home, countries representing the alliance called on Brazil to ensure fragile states are “kept front and centre of efforts to scale up climate finance” and to hold a thematic day on climate, relief, recovery and peace, which took place at COP28 and COP29.
“COP30 is an irreplaceable moment to bring the agenda forward, to align the needs of climate-vulnerable and conflict-affected countries with global development objectives,” the letter says.
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Setting out his vision for COP30 last week, Brazilian diplomat Corrêa do Lago, who is the country’s chief climate negotiator, emphasised the need to remove barriers for developing countries to access climate finance and to scale funding for them from all sources to at least $1.3 trillion per year by 2035 – a goal agreed at COP29 last year.
Large and growing gap
Collectively, fragile countries need an estimated $41.5 billion annually by 2030 to mitigate and adapt to climate change, nearly four times the $11 billion they received in 2022, according to forthcoming ODI analysis shared with Climate Home.
The projection is based on the needs of 37 countries on the World Bank’s 2025 fragility list (excluding Palestine and Ukraine, whose conflicts would raise it substantially) as identified in their carbon-cutting and adaptation plans submitted to the UN.
The US contributed nearly 9% of the climate finance committed by wealthy nations to fragile states in the decade to 2022 – financial flows which President Donald Trump, a climate change-sceptic, has now halted.
The US retreat and cuts to European aid budgets could further increase the existing funding gap and create more competition for already-scarce funds, said Habib Ur Rehman Mayar, deputy general secretary of the g7+ Secretariat, a grouping of conflict-affected countries.
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Closing that gap will be a first step. But fragile nations’ needs will continue to grow as climate impacts intensify, said Mauricio Vazquez of ODI. “That makes it more urgent to invest in adaptation today before it becomes loss and damage. What these countries need is resilience finance to anticipate, adapt to and absorb shocks,” he told Climate Home.
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The lack of funding could have catastrophic implications for countries like Somalia, which has been gripped by political instability, ethnic tensions and an Islamist insurgency. In recent years, the East African country suffered a deadly drought made more severe by rising temperatures and devastating flooding, compounding an existing humanitarian crisis.
Today, there is “an enormous gap” to finance flood defences and roll out measures to address soil erosion and curb impacts on food security and farmers’ livelihoods, said Obsiye, who heads the country’s climate fund.
Last year, the UN’s Green Climate Fund (GCF) announced plans to invest $100 million in Somalia under the first national programme of its kind. Stephanie Speck, the GCF’s head of special initiatives, told Climate Home the fund has been “laser focused“ on getting finance to under-served countries and is currently discussing how to support climate action in South Sudan.
Once disbursed, the money will partly help strengthen Somalia’s capacity to access more finance from other donors and institutions, said Obsiye. It’s a “historic” but small start to meet the country’s huge needs, which run into the billions, he added.
