Global military spending following the outbreak of conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza is at its highest since the Cold War, which African leaders warn is leaving less international aid available to help their countries adapt to the climate crisis.
At the second African Climate Summit in Ethiopia early this month, African heads of state, researchers and activists made a plea to international donors to help the continent withstand floods, droughts and heat waves.
“We’re now living in a new world order where security measures are prevalent to finance,” said Patrick Verkooijen, president of the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA), which is based in the Netherlands and Kenya, and leads the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program (AAAP).
“So the fiscal space to invest in climate and to invest within that in adaptation finance, by default, is smaller, and hence we need to be smarter on how we do business,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Since 2021, the AAAP has put billions of US dollars into adaptation projects — from mangrove restoration along West Africa’s coastline to organic waste recycling in Nairobi.
Africa is the continent most impacted by climate change, despite contributing less than 10 percent to global carbon emissions, World Meteorological Organization data showed.
The summit announced a second phase of its adaptation program and called on international partners to help reach the US$50 billion goal to expand efforts to cope with climate change.
However, funding competition is rife following a global reduction in humanitarian aid and a spike in defense spending from the US to Europe.
“I think that since the war in Ukraine, the focus has been on defense spending ... at the detriment of the climate project,” said Macky Sall, who was president of Senegal from 2012 to last year and is now chair of the GCA.
“Certainly defense issues are important, but climate [policies] must be maintained because the climate agenda is the one we have in common,” he said in an interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Africa needs about US$70 billion per year to hit adaptation targets, research organization Climate Policy Initiative (CPI) said.
However, in 2023, this figure was about US$14.8 billion and is at risk of falling as donors cut aid, CPI found.
In comparison, world military expenditure has increased in all regions — reaching US$2.7 trillion last year and rising by 9.4 percent from 2023, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
This is the steepest increase since the Cold War and the 10th consecutive year of growth.
“We have to acknowledge the reality that defense spending is probably not going down anytime soon,” said Florian Krampe, acting director of the SIPRI’s climate change and risk program
He added that recent breaches of Polish and Romanian airspace during Russian attacks on Ukraine have further underlined the priority.
However, climate change could further intensify competition for resources and increase the probability of conflict in fragile regions, he said, which means defense spending should take the warming planet into account.
Krampe said defense departments should budget for environmental innovations to provide long-term resilience for militaries and civilians alike.
One example is water harvesting by militaries, whereby water vapor is extracted from the air to provide drinking water for troops in arid locations, an innovation that could also bring benefits to civilians.
The GCA called on the private sector to step up and fill the shortage in climate-adaptation funding.
Investing in tree planting, building flood barriers or desalination plants are all examples of adaptation methods that also create jobs and investment in development, the GCA said.
The World Resources Institute, a research nonprofit, found that for every US$1 invested in adaptation, more than US$10 could be generated in benefits over 10 years.
Verkooijen referenced a report by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund that said that investing in adaptation initiatives is a US$4 trillion economic opportunity globally, something he said African countries should capitalize on.
“In Asia, the share of adaptation finance from the private sector is in the order of 35 percent. In Africa, it is 6 percent,” Verkooijen said.
The type of investment to support Africa’s readiness for climate shocks was also a key priority for the summit attendees.
African countries have a combined debt burden of more than US$1.8 trillion, UN figures showed.
This means they spend nearly three times more on servicing external debt than they receive in climate finance, the Institute for Economic Justice think tank said.
“At the COP30, African states must press for fairer [funding] models,” Nafi Quarshie, Africa director of the Natural Resource Governance Institute think tank, said in a statement.
“At the same time, richer countries and international partners must step up with finance at the scale required,” Quarshie said.
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