When Thales Bevilacqua Mendonça left his farm in Brazil’s southern Paraná state to fly five hours north to attend the UN climate talks in Belém, it was unseasonably cold, just 7 degrees Celsius (44 degrees Fahrenheit).
But this kind of climate upheaval is not unusual in Paraná where summers now are hotter, winters can be colder and droughts more common.
A tornado on Nov. 7 devastated the town of Rio Bonito do Iguaçu in Paraná, killing six people.
Bevilacqua Mendonça, 35, wants COP30 negotiators to do more to help smallholder farmers adapt to weather extremes by providing funds to help them access knowledge, use marketing tools and develop early-warning systems for hazardous weather.
The question of how to make vulnerable communities more resilient in a hotter world is a key debate in the vast compound hosting the COP30 talks, where noisy air conditioners blast icy air into some corridors while other areas swelter.
Developing countries need US$310 billion to US$365 billion a year to adapt to climate change, of which only US$26 billion a year is currently provided, according to the United Nations’ latest Adaptation Gap report, which looks at the difference between what measures have been taken to cope with climate change and what is still needed.
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There’s a gap in adaptation finance, and adaptation continues to be costly. Agreeing a finance goal is important. By the time we rebuild and are standing again, another cyclone comes, another extreme drought comes, another heatwave.
Anne Rasmussen, acting chair, Alliance of Small Island States
The Global Goal on Adaptation, adopted as part of the 2015 Paris Agreement to combat climate change, is meant to provide a framework for measuring progress, but until now there has been no clear way to track what is happening.
In Belém, countries are trying to agree on 100 indicators that could be used by everyone, in theory, to see what is working and who is most vulnerable.
But Bevilacqua Mendonça, who is global relationship manager at INOFO, an international network that supports organic farmers, fears their voices will go unheard.
“We are facing the most severe consequences, and we are the ones bringing food to you. (Smallholder farmers) produce more than half the calories of the world, but we receive less than 1 per cent of the finance we need,” he said.
“We want to ensure those global goal discussions are really targeted to us.”
Finance gap
Around 3.6 billion people – nearly half of the world’s population – are considered highly vulnerable to climate change impacts, ranging from worsening droughts, floods and storms to heat stress and food insecurity.
From 1995 to 2024, more than 832,000 deaths and nearly US$4.5 trillion in direct economic losses were caused by extreme weather, according to the Climate Risk Index, compiled by independent environmental and rights organisation Germanwatch.
Adaptation finance is meant to provide funding for everything from flood-resistant infrastructure to drought-resilient agriculture, early warning systems and risk-transfer mechanisms like insurance.
At COP26 in Glasgow in 2021, rich countries pledged to double funds for climate adaptation, but that agreement expires this year.
In Belém, the Least Developed Country Group of 44 nations is calling for a tripling of grant-based adaptation finance by 2030 to at least US$120 billion.
“There’s a gap in adaptation finance, and adaptation continues to be costly. Agreeing a finance goal is important,” Anne Rasmussen, acting chair of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), said in an interview at the talks.
Events like Hurricane Melissa, which wreaked havoc across the Caribbean last month, set countries back decades, she said.
“By the time we rebuild and are standing again, another cyclone comes, another extreme drought comes, another heatwave.”
Research published by the World Resources Institute in May found that every US$1 invested in adaptation could yield over US$10.50 in economic, social and environmental benefits.
Get to grassroots
Sebastian Osborn, global policy manager at Mercy For Animals, which campaigns for sustainable food systems, said the global goal indicators should act as a northern star for adaptation and drive action.
But in the first week of COP30, divisions were already emerging, with some countries concerned the indicators would be used as a condition for receiving finance and others wanting financial support to report on the indicators, Osborn said.
Illari Aragon, anti-poverty group Christian Aid’s climate justice policy lead, said negotiators must not create a system that entrenches inequalities or leads to ineffective initiatives.
“We don’t want indicators pushed through here in Belém that might see finance end up on bad projects, like a sea wall in the Philippines that blocked drainage and trapped water on the wrong side, causing bigger problems,” she said.
Mohamed Adow, director of environmental group Power Shift Africa, said the indicators could give a “common language” to measure progress in areas such as water access and food systems, but should not detract from the need to provide adaptation finance.
“Pretending we’re making progress by agreeing a measurement system may ultimately be a distraction from actually securing adaptation finance,” he said.
“Coming from a pastoralist community, I know that however many times you weigh a cow, it doesn’t make it any fatter.”
The Adaptation Gap report says both public and private sectors must step up, without creating more debt for vulnerable nations.
For family farmers, “it’s more than urgent,” said Bevilacqua Mendonça, who grows mushrooms at his farm in Campo Largo.
He practices agroforestry, which integrates trees and shrubs with crops or livestock to improve soil health and productivity. The trees also reduce emissions by sequestering carbon.
“We have different ways of producing food, compared to industrial farmers. When they have losses, they lose profits … We lose our livelihoods, we lose our food security,” he said.
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