It’s time to build bridges on climate adaptation

In recent months, Europe has been badly burned. A series of heatwaves turned parts of the Mediterranean region into a tinderbox, while drought disrupted transport and energy production. The Rhine became too shallow for cargo ships to operate normally. French nuclear power plants had to reduce generation as river water became too hot.

A new analysis by Triodos, a Dutch bank, estimates that the extreme weather could reduce EU economic output by around 1% in 2026, roughly EUR 180 billion, enough to wipe out the bloc’s forecast growth for the year.

Some of Europe’s experiences over the last few months will ring familiar in African ears. Many parts of the continent have been experiencing punishing droughts, heatwaves and wildfires for decades. African communities and governments have also learned many lessons – lessons that could be relevant to Europe and beyond.

Historical responsibility

A hotter and more unstable climate is producing risks that are increasingly difficult for individual countries to manage alone, whether they are in the Global North or South.

For years, the climate conversation between Africa and the “developed” world has been framed largely around historical responsibility. Who caused the problem? Who has suffered most? And who owes what to whom?

The answers to these important questions are built into the international climate negotiations established under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change; most notably in its distinction between developed and developing countries and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities.

But as the costs of a hotter planet land with ever greater, unavoidable and increasingly indiscriminate force across the world, we should ask another question: how do we turn the case for climate justice into the kind of action that can actually protect people?

The scale of Africa’s financing gap illustrates the problem.

Africa has contributed less than 4% to cumulative greenhouse gas emissions, yet faces some of the world’s most severe climate risks. Its need for financing to adapt to climate impacts are enormous, at least USD 70 billion a year, according to a joint analysis by the Climate Policy Initiative and the Global Center on Adaptation. It received about USD 14.8 billion in 2023, more than double its 2017 level but still a long way short. The African Development Bank has similarly estimated that USD 11-13 billion in adaptation finance currently flows to the continent annually, against needs of roughly USD 70 billion.

This is why the growing African debate over climate reparations is so understandable.

Hundreds of climate advocates, legal scholars and policymakers will gather in Mombasa, Kenya at the end of this month for the inaugural African Symposium on Climate Reparations. Their moral argument, being echoed in Nepal in the aftermath of the devastating floods there, is simple and powerful. Industrialised countries accumulated much of their wealth through centuries of fossil-fuel use and extraction. Now, poorer countries, which contributed comparatively little to the crisis, are bearing a disproportionate share of its consequences.

Alongside stating the moral case, a political question is worth asking: what approach is most likely to catalyse the cooperation and investment the crisis now demands?

This is important because the political environment in the west is in flux. Climate policy faces stronger opposition from right-wing parties. Development cooperation and climate-finance budgets are under pressure. Governments are increasingly concerned with energy security, economic competitiveness and a less settled geopolitical environment. Climate action is also competing with a growing list of domestic and international priorities.

That case for climate justice is no weaker but the politics of delivering it is harder.

There is, however, another way of imagining the relationship between climate impacts and a more resilient future. One of shared challenges.

Building bridges of adaptation

The extreme weather sweeping across the world, North and South, presents a moment where countries could, and should, come together to face the shared and urgent challenge of adaptation.

A largely parched field of sunflowers in Austria this August (Image: APA-Images / Alamy)

Africa’s decades of experience coping with climatic extremes, often with limited resources, are a valuable resource to share. Farmers have developed drought-resistant cropping practices. Communities have built systems for managing scarce water. Governments and civil-society organisations have developed early-warning and anticipatory-action systems. In fact, multi-hazard early-warning coverage in Africa has grown from 14 countries in 2015 to 41 in 2026, according to the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR).

This knowledge is often treated as evidence of Africa’s vulnerability, but it should also be recognised as a reservoir of expertise. After years of experimenting with ways to manage threats like bush fires, some African countries like South Africa are teaching their European counterparts what they have learned.

Europe, meanwhile, has capabilities that much of Africa needs: finance, technology, research, infrastructure and institutions capable of mobilising investment at scale. In the last few months, more than ever, it also has a realisation of the urgency of climate adaptation.

China, too, cannot be absent from this conversation. At home it is climate vulnerable and responding to that. Internationally, it is emerging as an important new climate finance partner – though with an overwhelming emphasis on mitigation rather than adaptation.

Enlightened self-interest

Of course, politics complicates cooperation. And calls for climate reparations will likely only increase in the coming years and decades.

But the choice should not be between climate justice and international cooperation. We can acknowledge historical responsibility while recognising that the world has an immediate shared interest in building resilience. Adaptation should not be treated as charity.

In 2026, when the world is experiencing climate disasters like never before, it is time to build bridges on adaptation.