Document 3:4 (2025–2026) / Published Development assistance for climate change adaptation in developing countries
At the 2021 Glasgow Climate Change Conference (COP26), Norway committed to tripling its development assistance for climate change adaptation from NOK 1.06 billion in 2020 to NOK 3.18 billion by 2026. Although such development assistance has increased significantly, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs lacks a comprehensive overview of the results it produces.
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(PDF, 2.3 MB)
The report is in Norwegian
Brief background
- Norway is significantly increasing its climate finance to developing countries towards 2026.
- Development assistance for climate change adaptation is set to triple from NOK 1.06 billion in 2020 to NOK 3.18 billion annually.
Overall assessment
It is unsatisfactory that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs lacks an accurate and comprehensive overview of the scale of Norwegian development assistance for climate change adaptation and the results it produces.
Limited understanding of the results of such development assistance hampers effective planning to achieve optimal results.
Nor does the development assistance administration give adequate attention to whether such assistance genuinely contributes to improving climate change adaptation. This undermines the potential to accomplish the overarching objective of enhancing developing countries’ capacity to adapt to climate change, in accordance with the commitments in the Paris Agreement.
Conclusions
- The Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ governance fails to ensure strategic alignment across the entire climate change adaptation portfolio, or to provide sufficient information on results.
- The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) have not ensured accurate information regarding the scale of development assistance for climate change adaptation.
- The Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ reporting to the Storting does not provide a comprehensive understanding of the results achieved.
- Attaining durable results and large-scale achievement of climate change adaptation goals is difficult in Malawi and Mozambique.
Recommendations
We recommend that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
- ensure accurate information on the amount of earmarked development assistance for climate change adaptation by improving the process to ensure accurate categorisation of agreements as climate change adaptation
- ensure stronger goal and result orientation by having the embassies and Norad prioritise climate change adaptation when planning, following up, and evaluating agreements that are categorised as development assistance for climate change adaptation
- strengthen efforts to compile and systematise information on the results of bilateral and multilateral development assistance for climate change adaptation, to be able to assess whether such development assistance contributes to the overarching goal of enhancing developing countries’ ability to adapt to climate change
- ensure improved sharing of knowledge and experience on development assistance for climate change adaptation between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Norad, and the embassies
- provide balanced reporting to the Storting on the results of Norwegian development assistance for climate change adaptation, including information on both positive and negative results