They arrive at COP halls carrying stories that a ledger cannot hold: mothers who walk farther for clean water, fisherfolk who return with empty nets, nurses who sleep less because heat makes clinics overflow with dehydration cases. For communities across the Global South, climate change is not an abstraction — it is a daily collapse of safety nets. The Global North debates targets; the Global South counts losses, buries relatives, and budgets for survival.
Scientific assessments are blunt: the world is already locked into more extreme conditions, and the people who have done the least to cause warming suffer the most. The IPCC’s synthesis underlines escalating risks to food, health, and livelihoods across vulnerable regions — risks concentrated where poverty, weak infrastructure, and social inequality intersect.
Health is an early indicator of that inequity. Heat-related deaths and climate-linked disease burdens have surged — WHO notes dramatic rises in heat exposure and estimates hundreds of thousands of additional deaths this decade without stronger adaptation. Yet most heat-mortality and adaptation investment capacity remains in wealthier countries.
Women and gender minorities feel these impacts first and deeper. UN Women and gender-focused research show climate shocks disproportionately increase women’s unpaid care work, heighten food insecurity for female-headed households, and raise the risk of gender-based violence after disasters. By 2050, climate change could push tens of millions more women into poverty if gender gaps persist.
The money flows — but not where it is needed most. Multilateral development banks (MDBs) reported record climate finance flows in 2024 (about USD 137 billion), yet nearly 70% of that went to mitigation (energy systems) rather than frontline adaptation; only a third targeted adaptation, and much is structured as loans that deepen debt burdens for low-income countries. For community-level resilience and women-led adaptation, predictability and grants matter — and those are scarce.
Recent Climate Finance Ignores the Global South
| Source / Year | Total climate finance (USD) | Share to adaptation | Notes |
| MDBs joint report / 2024 | $137 bn (total) | ~31% (~$26.3 bn) | The majority of mitigation; the poorest countries get less concessional grant finance. |
| Green Climate Fund / 10-yr summary | $19+ bn mobilized (plus co-financing) | Gender assessments are mandatory, but local women-led grants are limited | GCF reports growth, but feminist advocates call for direct, core funding. |
The contrast between the money and the misery could not be starker. While global climate finance grows in volume, its architecture still sidelines the very people standing in the floodwater, waiting in heatstroke clinics, or rebuilding homes with bare hands. The numbers in Table 1 show a system that rewards large intermediaries and mitigation-heavy portfolios, but starves frontline communities—especially women—of predictable, grant-based support. And the consequences of that neglect unfold brutally in Table 2: deaths rising in heatwaves, families pushed back into poverty by crop failure and food inflation, and women absorbing the heaviest economic shocks through unpaid care, lost income, and heightened vulnerability. These two realities—flowing upward, suffering cascading downward—reveal a moral and structural failure at the heart of global climate governance. Only by fixing this imbalance can climate finance become a tool of protection rather than a mirror reflecting inequality.
Table 2: Human impacts of Climate Inaction (Gender lens)
| Indicator | Finding / Trend |
| Heat-related mortality | Heat deaths among older people rose sharply; WHO links a substantial share to human-induced warming; annual climate-related deaths are projected to rise. |
| Poverty & food insecurity | Climate shocks threaten poverty reduction: millions likely trapped or pushed back into extreme poverty; food price shocks hit poor households hardest. |
| Gendered economic loss | Failure to invest in gender equality costs trillions; climate shocks disproportionately worsen women’s economic status. |
Why do the headlines not match the lines at home?
Despite growing human tragedies and gender impact, the conversation at the diplomatic tables is often framed around emissions targets, carbon markets, and technological transition — essential topics. But adaptation, loss & damage, and gender-responsive support are where survival is negotiated, and they are being conveniently considered as a periphery topic by the Global North.
After COP27’s political breakthrough to create a Loss & Damage Fund, the world has seen no tangible progress because global North leadership lacks the intent to implement any of those hollow promises and pledges. The implementation has lagged; the operational mechanics remain contested while communities wait for payouts that could rebuild homes, crop systems, and local clinics.
Women’s groups repeatedly report that available funds funnel through national bureaucracies or MDB projects that prioritize infrastructure over care systems, informal-sector support, and women-led organizations. Feminist advocates demand multi-year core grants, simplified access, and community voice in project design — not just token gender checkboxes.
A human plea and a pragmatic checklist
When the Global South says it wants fairness, not charity, that is not rhetoric — it is arithmetic and survivourship. Today’s public international adaptation finance flows, measured in tens of billions, cannot hide the fact that the world needs hundreds of billions every year to protect people from the climate shocks already arriving at their door. The science and the budgets line up: adaptation needs are vast, women bear disproportionate burdens, and current delivery mechanisms systematically exclude the smallest, poorest, and most gender-marginalised groups. These are the facts that should make policymakers in the North uncomfortable — and compel action.
Below, I expand each checklist item with empirical evidence, a short human vignette to hold the data in a human face, and a clear policy ask that the Global North can — and must — meet now.
- Allocate predictable, grant-based adaptation finance targeted to local priorities and women-led groups.
Empirical reality: international adaptation finance remains far below needs. UNFCCC’s Adaptation Finance Gap Update and UNEP’s Adaptation Gap reporting show that public adaptation finance in recent years is measured in the low tens of billions (estimates aiming for ~USD 40 billion by 2025 if doubling commitments hold), while credible needs assessments point to hundreds of billions per year for adaptation in developing countries. Multilateral climate funds like the GCF and UNFCCC funds do deliver grants, but scale and predictability remain inadequate.
Human face: imagine Amina, a mother in a riverine village whose family’s crop failed three seasons in a row; she needs a raised seed bank, new flood-resistant crops, and childcare support so she can work, not a loan that compounds her household debt.
Policy-wise, richer governments must shift a defined minimum share of their climate ODA to multi-year grant windows earmarked for community-led adaptation and set a clear timetable to scale grant flows to match evidence-based needs. - Simplify access procedures so grassroots organisations can apply without costly intermediaries.
Empirical reality: analyses by UN Women and adaptation practitioners document that application complexity, minimum budget thresholds, and onerous fiduciary checks lock out small, women-led groups. The “last mile” of climate finance is often eaten by intermediaries and consultants; in practice, communities lack the capacity or cash to fulfil complex proposal templates. Guidance briefs and regional studies call for simplified modalities and devolved decision-making.
Human face: Fatima’s women’s savings group in a coastal town learned of a grant, but the six-page concept note, 30-line budget, and two bank guarantees meant they never applied — and the flood hit next season.
Fund managers and donors must adopt “small grants windows” (fast-track approvals under $50k–$200k), simplified templates in local languages, and devolved fiduciary arrangements that prioritize trusted local intermediaries and women’s collectives. This is low administrative cost, high human return. - Track gender outcomes, not just gender policy boxes — co-created metrics with local leaders.
Empirical reality is that recent UN Women toolkits and the Gender Equality & Climate Policy Scorecard provide frameworks for moving from checkbox compliance to measurable gender outcomes (women’s income, reduced unpaid care time, reduced GBV after disasters). Technical guides from UNFCCC and UN Women show how to build gender-sensitive monitoring into NDCs and program cycles; the evidence base now supports practical indicators.
Human face: when cyclone shelters are designed without women’s input they become unused or unsafe; when women lead design, shelter use increases, and sexual-violence incidents decline. That is an outcome: measurably better lives.
Donors and funds must require co-created gender outcome indicators (co-developed with women’s groups), publish sex-disaggregated results, and link disbursement to demonstrated improvements in women’s security, livelihoods, and care burdens. Tracking must be participatory and locally verified. - Treat loss & damage payouts as human-security investments, not loans.
Empirically, the Loss & Damage Fund was a political breakthrough, with pledges emerging after COP27/COP28 and institutional steps (interim hosting, board, director). But pledges conversion, replenishment timing, and the governance to ensure speed and equity remain fragile; donors have resisted liability framing and much funding is slow to arrive. UNFCCC reporting and independent commentary stress timely conversion of pledges and transparent, accessible disbursement channels are critical. The Fund’s governance calendar shows replenishment planning only beginning for 2027 — too late for many communities already paying the price.
Human face: in Pakistan’s 2022 floods, whole villages lost homes; many families still wait for funds to rebuild. For women heads of households, delays mean prolonged dependence, exploitation, and missed education for girls.
From a policy perspective, donors must convert pledges to contributions quickly, commit to initial replenishment sooner than 2027, ensure grant-based, non-debt instruments are used for payouts, and entrust disbursement mechanisms that prioritize speed, local ownership, and gender-sensitive eligibility (no loaning loss & damage money back to those who lost everything).
My parting plea for today to all those at COP 30 is that data without names is abstract; the numbers above represent mothers, market-sellers, midwives, and young women whose futures are being priced out by indecisive policy, indifferent leaders and. The empirical record is clear: predictable grants, simplified access, gender-outcome tracking, and loss & damage as grants would change lives now. If the Global North truly takes solidarity seriously, it will match its climate rhetoric with these concrete, evidence-based steps — not tomorrow, but today.
