Climate Change, International Trade & Finance, Urbanization Five Steps for Financing Urban Adaptation to Climate Change

In early 2022, urbanists working on global warming anticipated the release of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 6th  assessment report with much trepidation. When Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability—the section addressing capacities and limits of adaptation—appeared, its findings confirmed their concerns. One headline, “Investment in urban adaptation has not kept pace with innovations in policy and practice,” accompanied the observation that gaps particularly afflict cities of low- and moderate-income countries where the impacts are greatest and emissions lowest.

“Global urban adaptation finance is a debacle,” declared Jeffrey Sachs, University Professor, and Director, Center for Sustainable Development, Columbia University, in his keynote address for Financing Urban Adaptation to Address Climate Change, a workshop addressing these gaps in investment in urban adaptation. Jointly convened by Penn IUR, Perry World House, and the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy on March 23 and 24, the workshop brought together three dozen urban policy and finance leaders to find ways to spur investment in urban adaptation to climate change.

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