While efforts to mitigate climate change are crucial, it is also essential to assist developing countries to adapt to the impacts of climate change already being experienced due to past and current greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This briefing examines what role climate finance can play in this effort. 

In particular, it argues that climate finance is necessary to fund activities that respond to impacts such as flooding, cyclones, coastal erosion, droughts and increased variability of precipitation. In addition, it also highlights the complexities that arise from differences between countries: climate change impacts are distributed unequally, and those that are worse affected are in many cases the poorest. These countries - such as the Small Island Developing States and the Least Developed Countries - have differing institutional capacities to respond to climate change, and additional efforts are needed to ensure that financing is utilised effectively and equitably, with attention paid to gender, vulnerable and marginalised groups.