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Africa’s climate crisis is ‘failed adaptation’, Power Shift Africa report says – EnviroNews
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Africa’s floods, droughts and heatwaves should no longer be regarded simply as unavoidable “loss and damage”, but as the consequences of adaptation that was promised, delayed and inadequately financed, a new report by Power Shift Africa has said.
The report, titled A Just Transition for Adaptation: A Framework and Vision for Africa, was launched on October 1, 2026, in Mombasa, Kenya. It calls for a fundamental shift in how adaptation is planned, governed, financed and implemented across Africa and the wider Global South.
According to the report, Africa’s vulnerability to climate impacts has been shaped by centuries of colonial extraction, unequal trade, debt dependency and the exclusion of African communities and governments from decisions concerning climate finance and adaptation.
It defines a “Just Transition for Adaptation” as a systemic, justice-centred transformation that addresses the underlying drivers of vulnerability rather than merely treating the symptoms.
The report highlights what it describes as a major imbalance in the global climate response, noting that finance for protection and resilience remains slow, inadequate and increasingly debt-based, while funding for infrastructure and extraction continues to flow rapidly, including into areas already highly exposed to climate risks.
With the world off track to limit global warming to 1.5°C under the Paris Agreement, Power Shift Africa said adaptation had become a central question of whether people would continue to live safely in their communities.
Africa Bears the Burden
The report noted that adaptation has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to save lives, protect livelihoods and reduce economic losses, yet it remains severely underfunded.
It also criticised the continued reliance on loans for adaptation, arguing that international support should be treated as an obligation under the Paris Agreement rather than charity.
The report said vulnerability was produced by political and economic systems and, therefore, addressing it requires more than constructing defences against floods or droughts.
“Changing the systems that make people vulnerable in the first place” must form part of the global adaptation response, it argued.
Among its key findings, the report said Africa contributes only a negligible share of global emissions but accounted for 35 per cent of climate-related deaths globally between 1970 and 2021.
It estimated that Africa’s annual adaptation needs are approaching $70 billion, while international adaptation finance flows stood at about $14 billion in 2021–2022.
African governments, it said, are now spending more of their own resources on adaptation than they receive internationally, effectively subsidising what the report described as a global failure to adequately finance climate action.
The report also highlighted Africa’s debt burden, estimated at about $746 billion, with average interest rates of around 9.8 per cent compared with 2.5 per cent in the United States.
It said nearly 60 per cent of Africans live in countries that spend more on debt servicing than on health and education.
International public adaptation finance to developing countries also fell from $28 billion in 2022 to $26 billion in 2023, even as adaptation needs are projected to reach between $310 billion and $365 billion annually by 2035.
The report further warned that Indigenous and local knowledge remains systematically excluded from adaptation science and policymaking despite its importance in understanding local climate risks and responses.
Four Dimensions of Climate Justice
Power Shift Africa organised its proposed vision around four dimensions of justice — recognitional, procedural, distributive and restorative.
It called for adaptation finance to be predictable, additional, accessible and grant-based, alongside a quantified global adaptation goal and a clear baseline for measuring progress on the adaptation finance tripling pledge.
The report also recommended debt cancellation and debt relief as adaptation measures, arguing that excessive debt constrains governments’ ability to protect their populations.
It urged governments and other actors to put free, prior and informed consent and locally led governance at the centre of adaptation decisions, giving affected communities meaningful influence over projects that shape their futures.
It further called for Indigenous and local knowledge to be recognised on equal terms with scientific knowledge and for technology to be co-developed and transferred on the basis of co-ownership rather than rent.
COP31, COP32 and Africa’s Adaptation Agenda
The report comes ahead of COP31 in Antalya, Türkiye, where governments are expected to continue negotiations on the Global Goal on Adaptation and the Just Transition Work Programme.
They will also face pressure to clarify the implementation of the adaptation finance tripling pledge agreed at COP30 in Belém, Brazil, including the baseline against which progress will be measured.
The report also looks ahead to COP32 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 2027, describing the African COP as a major opportunity to put adaptation, climate justice and the financing needs of African countries at the centre of global climate negotiations.
However, Power Shift Africa warned that the opportunity comes at a time when official development assistance is declining and adaptation finance is increasingly being channelled through private capital and loans.
It said its report provides African governments, negotiators and civil society with a common framework for pursuing an alternative approach in which adaptation is locally led, fairly financed and designed to address the structural causes of vulnerability.
Speaking on the report, Power Shift Africa Founder and Director, Mohamed Adow, said communities were experiencing not simply loss and damage but “failed adaptation”.
He said the failure to meet the 1.5°C goal had been compounded by the failure to deliver promised protection, leaving the habitability of communities increasingly at stake.
Adow argued that Africa’s vulnerability had been produced by human decisions and could therefore be addressed through different decisions.
The Chair of the African Group of Climate Negotiators, Dr Nana Antwi-Boasiako, said the group was working ahead of COP32 to achieve and protect parity between adaptation and mitigation.
He said the African Group of Negotiators wanted the Global Goal on Adaptation to translate into funded action, while keeping food security, water and livelihoods central to climate negotiations.
According to him, meaningful participation by civil society, women and Indigenous groups would be essential to achieving a just transition.
Germanwatch Policy Advisor on Climate Finance, Lina Adil, said Africa’s vulnerability was linked to an economic and financial system that perpetuates dependency, debt and repayment.
She argued that offering loans for adaptation rather than adequate climate finance risked deepening the financial pressures facing African countries.
Meanwhile, Southern Africa Coordinator of the Pan African Coalition on Adaptation and Resilience, Ndivile Gugushe, stressed the importance of locally led and rights-based adaptation.
She said communities had been adapting for generations using knowledge that was still not adequately recognised by existing systems, calling for adaptation finance to reach communities directly.
Power Shift Africa Adaptation Lead, Amos Wemanya, said funds to protect communities were moving too slowly while investments in mines and pipelines continued to move rapidly into areas exposed to climate shocks.
He called for grant-based finance to arrive before disasters occur, a clear baseline for measuring increased adaptation finance and decisions that involve communities living with climate risks.
According to Wemanya, COP31 and the road to COP32 in Addis Ababa will provide important opportunities to test whether governments and international institutions are prepared to translate these commitments into action.
