Global race begins to finance survival on a hotter planet

With the UK now facing its third major heatwave of the year just weeks into summer, the sweltering temperatures of people's homes and buckling public transport, have laid bare just how badly adapted the country is to the climate crisis.

- Nick Ferris, The Independent

“Believe me, when I was a child, it wasn’t 35 degrees in London in June,” Energy Secretary Ed Miliband told attendees at an appropriately scorching recent edition of London Climate Action Week (LCAW).

But even in the UK, there are shops, cafés and offices with air conditioning, while many people can afford a fan or at least find somewhere to cool down. However, billions of people around the world have no such options, and extreme heat is no longer arriving in occasional “waves”, but increasingly becoming a daily lived reality. This year’s “super” El Niño weather event is only expected to push millions more into crisis, bringing more droughts, floods and storms to climate-vulnerable parts of the world.

Developing countries require some $310 billion to $365bn (£232 billion to £273bn) a year to adapt to climate change, according to the UN, but currently receive only a fraction of that amount. Foreign aid cuts by wealthy governments including the US, UK and France now threaten what little funding is available. The $20bn (£15bn) UN-backed Green Climate Fund — the world’s largest source of climate finance for developing countries — has seen pledges from the US and UK cut by $4bn and £800m respectively since last year.