Getting ready for adapting to climate change is just like saying that ‘ We are unable to stop climate change. So let us adapt to it’. Did not we say recently that, ‘ We are unable to understand the CORONA virus, so let us learn to live with it? 

There is stark frustration in the case of the CORONA virus. Same for Climate change. 

World leaders since 1992, when the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was agreed, continued with policies that did not mitigate climate change. Climate Change continued with an increase in emissions and extreme weather events. Poor continued to suffer. Finally, it was decided that 50 per cent of the total share of climate finance provided by all donors to be allocated solely to the adaptation and resilience building of developing countries. As a consequence, mitigation efforts in developing countries would suffer. 

World Meteorological Organization, stated that there have been more than 11,000 disasters due to weather, climate and water-related hazards over the past 50 years at a cost of some 3.6 trillion dollars, killed more than 410,000 people in the past decade.  The vast majority in low and lower-middle-income countries have suffered most.

Like emission gap reports, United Nations Environment Programme has now started publishing Adaptation Gap Report. The world is on the path that leads to long term sufferings, mainly in poor countries. 

COVD19 and CLIMA30 would now go together. END