Development Banks' Climate Finance Record, UN Adaptation Indicators Shortlist, Cloud-Seeding Start-up Challenged by Airline Pilots, and More

*Announcement*

Climate Week NYC is almost here! A reminder that Climate Proof is co-hosting the following events. If you’re in town — come and say hi!

Monday, September 22: Adaptation in Action!

Tuesday, September 23: From Risk to Return: Climate Adaptation and the Future of Financial Resilience — Panel & Happy Hour

Friday, September 26: Climate Proof X Keep Cool Adaptation Happy Hour

Multilateral development banks (MDBs) steered a record US$137bn to climate goals in 2024, up 10% from the previous year, a report by the lenders showed last Tuesday. Adaptation finance for low- and middle-income countries (LMCs) rose 6.5% year-on-year, to US$26.3bn, and for high income countries 65% to US$5bn.

However, as a share of total climate finance adaptation flows made up just 23%, virtually unchanged year-on-year. The biggest chunk of adaptation finance — some US$9.8bn —went towards energy, transport, and other built environment and infrastructure. A US$5.9bn slice went to water and wastewater systems, while US$2.2bn was plowed into crop and food production.

Private finance mobilized by MDBs for climate action reached US$134bn in 2024, up 33% on the previous year. The ramp-up in volume suggests MDBs are on track to fulfil their collective goal of directing US$170bn to climate goals by 2030 — of which US$49bn is earmarked for adaptation.

Ambroise Fayolle, Vice-President at the European Investment Bank — one of the 10 MDBs involved in the report — said the findings showed the lender “is staying the course on climate action.”

US climate non-profits filed a rehearing petition last Wednesday to appeal a ruling that allows the Trump administration to claw back around US$16bn of green grants awarded to them by former President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. Climate United and other recipients of federal dollars disbursed by the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund are urging the full DC Circuit Court to review the decision made by a three-judge panel on September 2, which would stop the non-profits from accessing funds for climate mitigation and resilience projects. (Climate United)

Federal financial regulators voted to scrap two key committees focused on climate-related financial risk last Wednesday, rolling back a Biden-era initiative to increase scrutiny of climate shocks to banks, insurers, and other Wall Street institutions. The move by the Financial Stability Oversight Council was framed by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent as a pivot back to “core” financial stability issues. (US Department of the Treasury)

Singapore’s Green Investments Partnership (GIP) has secured US$510mn of committed capital to fund green infrastructure across Southeast and South Asia. The blended finance vehicle includes financing from a mix of public, private, and philanthropic investors — including the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the International Finance Corporation, and the Australian government. Deployed funds will go towards climate mitigation and adaptation projects, including for sustainable transport and water and waste management. (Monetary Authority of Singapore)

Africa’s infrastructure incurs annual losses of US$12.7bn from disaster-related damage, with floods making up nearly 70% of this total, according to the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure. As climate change intensifies, losses could increase by 27%, adding $2.4bn each year to the continent’s woes. Eastern Africa is the hardest hit, suffering $5.5bn in losses annually. The Coalition has launched an Africa Programme to embed resilience across new and existing infrastructure systems. (Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure)

African leaders pledged to raise US$50bn a year to back climate innovations at a summit in Addis Ababa last week. The promised capital will be deployed by the newly established Africa Climate Innovation Compact and the African Climate Facility, with the aim of delivering 1,000 African-made solutions to climate challenges across energy, agriculture, water, transport, and resilience by 2030. The leaders also made clear that adaptation finance “is the legal obligation from the developed world”, and must be provided “in the form of grants, not loans that worsen already fragile debt burdens.” (Africa Climate Summit)

Spanish insurance giant MAPFRE has joined Blue Marble, a consortium that offers parametric insurance solutions for climate hazards in emerging markets. The company’s addition to the investor roster is intended to expand the group’s global footprint and deepen its technical expertise. Other member-owners of the consortium are: Aspen, Grupo ASSA, Marsh McLennan, TransRe, and Zurich Insurance Group. (Blue Marble)

A UN-convened expert group has agreed on a final batch of 100 potential indicators for measuring global progress on climate adaptation, two months ahead of crunch talks at the COP30 summit.

The settled list is organized across seven thematic and four cross-cutting dimension targets linked to the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA), a Paris Agreement objective that commits nations to strengthening their resilience and reducing their vulnerability to climate shocks. Most targets have 10 indicators — though there are 11 indicators for the critical category of ‘Implementation’, which covers the amount of finance allocated to adaptation by public, private, and international sources.

The final 100 were whittled down from 490 candidate indicators published ahead of the Bonn Climate Conference this June, which were in turn refined from an initial mass of more than 9,000 submitted by countries and other stakeholders. At last year’s COP29 summit, diplomats charged the 78-strong expert group with producing a “manageable set” of 100 indicators that are “globally applicable” and able to capture “various contexts of adaptation action.” 

The list is slated for discussion at the COP meeting in Brazil this November. If approved, countries could start using the indicators to track their climate-proofing efforts — an important step towards creating a global scorecard of adaptation progress.

A US federal appeals court has frozen legal challenges to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) landmark climate disclosure rules, citing the agency’s refusal to clarify whether it plans to defend, revise, or scrap the rules altogether. The Eighth Circuit Court said it would hold the cases “in abeyance” to avoid unnecessary litigation while the SEC figures out its position. The rules — originally issued under the Biden administration —require public companies to report climate-related risks and emissions, but enforcement was stalled after the SEC stayed the rules and, under President Trump, stopped defending them in March. (Reuters) 

Californian Congressman Kevin Mullin introduced the REACT Act to bolster the early-warning capabilities of state and local governments amidst rising climate shocks. If passed, the bill would authorize US$30mn annually for alert testing, training, message development, and public education, and direct the Federal Emergency Management Authority (FEMA) to provide more resources for warning systems. (Representative Kevin Mullin)

Australia’s first National Climate Risk Assessment warns that the country faces “more compounding, cascading and concurrent [climate] hazards” in a warming world that could displace populations and cost billions in losses. Among its conclusions, the report —published ahead of the country’s 2035 emissions target announcement — says that 1.5 million citizens could be at risk from floods due to rising sea levels by mid-century. It adds that climate hazards could cost A$40bn (US$26.7bn) in disaster recovery annually and cut up to A$611bn (US$408bn) from property values by 2050 under a 3.0°C scenario. The government also published a national adaptation plan alongside the risk assessment, identifying priorities and existing adaptive actions across seven key systems, including the economy, infrastructure, and health and social support. (Australia Climate Service)

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the EU has to “radically step up” climate resilience and adaptation efforts to counter worsening climate shocks. As part of her 2025 State of the Union address, delivered before the European Parliament last Wednesday, von der Leyen referenced the continent’s harsh summer — which saw a million hectares of land scorched by wildfires — and proposed the creation of a new European firefighting hub based in Cyprus to support countries in and around the EU. (European Commission)

The UK government’s Floods Resilience Taskforce is intensifying efforts to bolster national flood protection ahead of an anticipated wetter-than-average autumn. In a meeting chaired by Floods Minister Emma Hardy last Monday, the Taskforce discussed the Environment Agency’s efforts to craft a new Flood Warnings Service and received an update on progress to improve the UK’s flood and coastal defenses. The government has pledged £2.65bn (US$3.6bn) to construct and repair over 1,000 flood defenses, alongside a larger £7.9bn (US$10.8bn) decade-long capital spending program that aims to protect 840,000 properties. (UK Government)

Rainmaker Technologies — a cloud-seeding tech start-up — is facing pushback from the air line pilots union over its plans to launch flare-carrying drones into the sky.

TechCrunch reports that the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) branded Rainmaker’s proposal an “extreme safety risk” in a submission to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and called on the regulator to consider blocking the company’s request to roll out the machines unless it complies with stricter safety guidelines.

In an email to TechCrunch, Rainmaker CEO Augustus Doricko responded that the union’s concerns related to the public notice of the start-up’s plans, rather than the full non-public information sent to the FAA — which he says includes more information on its safety protocols and risk mitigations.

At issue is the company’s request for an exemption to rules barring small drones from carrying hazardous materials — specifically, silver iodide-laced flares. Rainmaker intends to use a quadcopter called ‘Elijah’ to deploy these flares up to 15,000 feet, an altitude shared by commercial aircraft. Drones need a greenlight from Air Traffic Control to fly at this level.

Doricko insists that cloud-seeding missions will only be flown in airspace that is predetermined to be safe by aviation authorities. Sam Kim, the company’s aviation regulatory manager, added that the flare-totting drones are intended to be used “solely for research purposes” rather than for its overall commercial operations. 

Rainmaker’s cloud-seeding tech is able to induce precipitation in specific areas, which could alleviate water scarcity for farmers and water suppliers — and perhaps even help prevent runaway wildfires.

Venture fundraising by climate tech specialist funds has slumped nearly 50% from its 2021 peak, according to PitchBook’s latest report. Headwinds including US policy uncertainty and a broader slowdown in VC fundraising have put the dampeners on the sector. However, the report claims that climate tech remains a durable investment thesis, with US$37.8bn flowing into the sector in 2024, outpacing pre-2021 levels. Investors are now pivoting toward energy resilience, local supply chains, and adaptation themes like water tech and microgrids, reflecting growing demand for infrastructure that can withstand geopolitical shocks and extreme weather. (PitchBook)

The UK has ruled out testing solar radiation management in Antarctica, essentially vetoing its involvement with a raft of controversial geoengineering hacks that attempt to reflect sunlight and cool the planet. Parliament’s Environmental Audit Committee warned such techniques could harm marine ecosystems and breach international treaties. However, the government is investing £56.8mn (US$77.3mn) in geoengineering research, including solar radiation trials planned for 2026 across the UK, US, Canada, and Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. (Bloomberg)

Systematic attribution of heatwaves to the emissions of carbon majors (Nature)

Moving beyond projects to achieve transformative adaptation (Nature Climate Change)

Rising temperatures increase added sugar intake disproportionately in disadvantaged groups in the USA (Nature Climate Change)

Analyzing residents' preferences for urban heatwave-adaptation facilities and associated demographic characteristics using a discrete choice experiment (Urban Climate)

Resilience by design: Strategic actions for climate adaptation (Atlantic Council)

New routes: Assessing transportation infrastructure’s vulnerability to physical risks (S&P Global)

State of insurance for wildfires: Issue brief on behalf of Alliance for Wildfire Resilience (Milliman)

Unlocking climate resilience through connected digital twins (Catapult)

Thanks for reading!

Louie Woodall
Editor