The Brazilian incoming presidency of the UN’s COP30 climate summit has framed climate adaptation not as a choice, but as “the first half of our survival,” calling on global leaders to embrace it as “the next step in human evolution.”
André Aranha Correa do Lago, the COP30 president-designate, issued his eighth letter from the Presidency dedicated to the “vital theme of climate adaptation.” He argues that humanity’s survival has always depended on cooperation and the courage to adapt, a lesson that must now guide the global response to the escalating climate crisis.
Echoing President Lula’s declaration that “COP30 will be the COP of truth,” Correa do Lago restated that the summit will test the world’s capacity to set aside differences and confront the crisis. He warned against the emergence of a “dangerous precedent” where the wealthy insulate themselves behind climate-resilient walls. At the same time, the poor are left exposed—a trend he denounced as “unethical, immoral, and ultimately self-destructive.”
New data underscore this grave risk: the 2025 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index reveals that 887 million people living in acute poverty are already exposed to at least one major climate hazard, with 309 million facing three or more simultaneously.
Correa do Lago did not mince words, calling failure to act on adaptation a “political choice about who lives and who dies,” and invoking the concept of “necropolitics”—the use of power to decide whose lives are expendable. He insisted that adaptation is critical to safeguarding economies, just as it is to protecting lives, citing losses of between 2 and 5% of GDP annually in Africa due to climate-related disasters.
A central theme of the letter is the chronic underfunding and undervaluation of adaptation efforts globally. Despite robust commitments, adaptation finance accounts for less than one-third of total climate finance, creating a widening gap that forces developing nations to divert scarce resources away from development and toward emergency responses.
“Adaptation is not an alternative to development – it is the essence of sustainable development,” the president-designate stated. He noted that every investment in resilient infrastructure or early-warning systems pays back multiple times, with the World Bank estimating a yield of up to four times the initial cost in economic benefits.
The call from communities around the world, he noted, is clear: a demand for urgency and tangible outcomes on adaptation at COP30. This includes scaling up finance beyond doubling, potentially tripling, to meet urgent needs, and ensuring that grants and concessional loans reach the most vulnerable.
Correa do Lago also urged finance ministers and development banks to treat adaptation as a core policy instrument, rather than a form of charity. He called for the rise of an “adaptation economy” by exploring innovative financial approaches, such as sovereign resilience bonds, blended finance, and debt-for-resilience swaps, while also ensuring stronger multi-level governance that empowers local and state governments on the front lines of climate impacts.
