Climate change, natural disasters, and resource-based conflicts continue to rise across the world, with the South Asian region carrying a significant brunt of these challenges.
As the 30th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP30), which has been termed the "Adaptation COP", is set to take place from November 10, a new report has exposed a wide disconnect between global climate funding and the urgent need to protect human health.
The report by Adelphi, a think tank focusing on climate and environment, reveals that despite widespread acknowledgement that climate finance is health finance, only a minuscule fraction - 0.5% of multilateral climate funding, or $173 million since 2004 - has been channelled toward adapting health systems to a changing climate. This underinvestment comes as climate change is projected to cause up to 15.6 million deaths by 2050 due to factors like extreme heat, the spread of infectious diseases, and infrastructure failure.
India will need over $2.4 trillion by 2050 to tackle the risk of climate change
The report, The Nexus of Adaptation and Health Finance, maps multilateral climate fund investments against national needs outlined in adaptation plans, finding a massive shortfall. Countries are grappling with worsening health threats yet are critically under-resourced.
While 87% of National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) include health priorities, multilateral climate funds have only covered less than 0.1% of the $2.54 billion aggregated need for health adaptation identified in these plans.
Additionally, even the geographic allocation of the meagre health funds is highly uneven. Approximately two-thirds have gone to East Asia & Pacific, one-quarter to Sub-Saharan Africa, and none to country-specific health adaptation projects in South Asia, a region projected to face a staggering 18% of total future climate-related health impacts. This disparity is a death sentence for fragile communities already on the front lines, with only 4% of funds reaching fragile or conflict-affected areas.
The funding crisis casts a long shadow over vulnerable nations, including those in South Asia like India. As a country grappling with extreme heatwaves, erratic monsoons, and the resulting strain on public health services - from vector-borne diseases to heatstroke - India's existing efforts, such as the National Adaptation Fund and state-level action plans, are insufficient to meet the escalating challenge.
New Delhi's success in driving large-scale welfare programmes with climate co-benefits (like clean cooking fuel) shows a blueprint for action. However, without a significant global realignment of finance towards non-debt-creating, grant-based adaptation, India will continue to bear a disproportionate financial burden on its own budget.
The pressure at COP30 will be on India, as a leading voice of the Global South, to push for concrete financial mechanisms—like a Global Resilience Fund—to secure the billions of rupees needed annually to protect its vast population, making adaptation a matter of national security and survival, not just an environmental cost.
With COP30 focusing on adaptation and the expected launch of the Belem Health Action Plan, the timing for this report is urgent. The global community must seize this opportunity to bridge the gap between rhetoric and reality.
The report provides a clear call to action: improve access to international, grant-based finance to avoid deepening debt burdens, channel funding directly to country-defined priorities, and intensify cross-sectoral collaboration between the climate and health communities.
The stark financial figures confirm what medical experts have warned: the climate crisis is a direct public health emergency. Without immediate, transformational investment in resilient health systems, the massive human cost of up to 15.6 million deaths by 2050 is a catastrophic outcome the world is currently choosing to finance through inaction
© Copyright NDTV Convergence Limited 2025. All rights reserved.
