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A new study urges global development banks to prioritize funding for lower-income nations to help them adapt to climate change, above and beyond reducing emissions.

Right now, poor countries with tiny carbon footprints receive slightly more financing from these organizations to reduce their emissions compared with building resilience against the impacts of climate change, according to a recent Breakthrough Institute analysis of such spending.

Low-income countries together emit just 0.5% of the world’s carbon emissions, while lower-middle income countries are responsible for about 4% of global emissions, Vijaya Ramachandran, the report’s lead researcher and the institute’s energy and development director, told Cipher. For comparison, the United States, historically the world’s largest emitter, is currently responsible for about 13.5% of global carbon emissions from energy.

“It doesn’t make sense to spend billions of dollars to mitigate or reduce emissions in low-income countries that are barely emitting anything,” Ramachandran said.

What’s more, the intensifying impacts of climate change disproportionately affect the world’s poorest. To adapt, these countries need paved roads, reliable power, resilient buildings and more infrastructure — all of which requires money many of these countries don’t have. The United Nations Environment Programme estimates there’s an annual adaptation financing gap of about $187 to $359 billion.

The Breakthrough Institute’s analysis of the World Bank’s climate portfolio between 2000 and 2024 reveals low and lower-middle-income countries have received just $58 billion total over the two-decade period to reduce emissions and $56 billion total to build climate resilience.

Scaling up funding for lower-income countries to transition to clean energy and adapt to climate change is at the heart of this year’s United Nations’ climate summit, known as COP29, underway in Azerbaijan.

Multilateral development banks have a key role to play in boosting climate resiliency in low- and middle-income countries because they can issue loans and grants directly and have the ability to de-risk and mobilize private capital.

During the first week of the COP29 summit, development banks pledged to increase their collective climate financing for low- and middle-income countries to $120 billion annually, including $42 billion a year for adaptation, by 2030. But they acknowledge that funding for adaptation is insufficient and in need of more private investment.

Editor’s note: Breakthrough Institute’s funders include Breakthrough Energy, which also supports Cipher.