Rich Countries Overstating Climate Finance, Trump Admin Targets Flood Resilience Rule, Adaptive Insurance's $5 Million Fundraise, and More

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Correction: Due to a data ingestion issue, the total number of companies cited as referencing climate risk impacts and adaptation actions in their earnings calls was incorrect in last Thursday’s article. The actual number of companies was 219, not 125. This number, and the accompanying charts, have been changed in the web version of the article. I regret the error.

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Oxfam estimates rich countries’ real climate finance effort in 2024 totaled just US$32.7bn-44.7bn — roughly a third of the US$136.7bn reported to the OECD. 

The non-profit derives the “true value” of climate finance — what it calls ‘Climate-Specific Net Assistance’ — by estimating the grant equivalent of climate loans rather than counting them at face value. Oxfam says standard measures of climate loans do not reflect the actual “financial effort” of donor countries; meaning the actual cost of the finance to the contributor. For example, some climate loans actually generate profits for the issuer, meaning they take more from the borrower than they receive.

“Instead of helping poorer countries withstand a crisis they did little to cause, rich countries are pushing them deeper into debt through loans, many offered on profitable commercial terms,” said Oxfam Climate Policy Lead Mariana Paoli. “It is a cruel irony: those most responsible pay less — and even make a profit — while those least responsible pay more.”

Adaptation finance fares somewhat better than the topline figure: Oxfam’s US$14.4bn-18bn estimate for 2024 covers 42-52% of the US$34.7bn reported figure, versus just 16-19% for mitigation. The data also shows bilateral finance outperforms flows from multilateral development banks, with the former delivering 43-64% of reported value compared with 20-22% for the latter. Oxfam says this demonstrates how donor governments offer more generous lending terms to poor countries than the banks.

The findings arrive as countries struggle to operationalize the US$300bn-a-year climate finance target for 2035 adopted at COP29. Oxfam warns that face-value reporting incentivizes loans over grants, deepening debt burdens in recipient countries.

The report’s grant-equivalent methodology uses OECD Differentiated Discount Rates plus country-risk premiums, rather than the OECD’s own reporting convention, which Oxfam says dramatically inflates donor effort.

Germany will fall roughly €1bn (US$1.1bn) short of its pledged €6bn (US$6.8bn) international climate finance target for 2027, according to an Oxfam analysis of the Merz government’s draft budget, which puts allocations for poor, climate-vulnerable countries at €4.7–5.2bn (US$5.4-5.9bn). The shortfall marks a third consecutive year of underperformance, following cuts in the 2025 and 2026 federal budgets. (Table Briefings)

A new CMCC-Deloitte-EUI study puts a number on climate change’s threat to Italy’s public finances for the first time, projecting warming could shave up to 6 percentage points off GDP by 2050 and double the refinancing risk linked to its sovereign debt. Under a severe warming scenario, weaker economic growth erodes the tax base and pressures the debt-to-GDP ratio, driving what researchers call a “climate spread” in borrowing costs. Across the European Union, extreme weather has cost €822bn (US$936bn) since 1980. Looking forward, drought losses alone could rise to €65bn (US$74bn) annually in a 4°C scenario, up from €9bn (US$10.3bn) today. (CMCC - Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change)

Singapore’s state-owned investment fund Temasek has shifted its baseline climate scenario to 2.4°C to reflect the “delay and divergence in global climate policies.” It explained that the higher warming trajectory will intensify chronic and acute physical risks, strengthening the case for asset-level resilience planning. Chief Sustainability Officer Kyung-Ah Park said that as a result, the institution is “stepping up efforts in adaptation and resilience” by investing in nature-based solutions and water resilience, and by working to strengthen adaptation practices across its portfolio. (Temasek)

Finance Watch is urging European regulators to impose a capital add-on for banks exposed to climate transition and physical risks. The Brussels-based advocacy group’s proposed methodology would require an initial 20.5% capital buffer on fossil fuel exposures — split between a 14% transition-risk component and 6.5% physical-risk component — calibrated to cushion potential credit losses in a 2.8°C world. That would force lenders to hold roughly €18bn (US$20.5bn) in extra capital, an overall increase of 1% over current levels. Finance Watch wants the European Systemic Risk Board to set methodology, with national supervisors implementing via the Systemic Risk Buffer framework. (Finance Watch)

Climate change could nearly double Santa Cruz, California water bills by mid-century, making them unaffordable for an additional 7-16% of households, according to a Nature Sustainability study modeling the city’s water system through 2050. Researchers found declining reservoir storage under drier scenarios would force utilities to make desalination investments which would be paid for via rate increases. These would lift median bills from US$64 to US$120 a month. The pain would fall disproportionately on low-income households, with water bills climbing from 3.9% to 7.3% of income for this segment — nearly triple the EPA’s 2.5% affordability threshold. (Nature Sustainability)

The Trump administration moved to gut a Biden- and Obama-era flood risk standard for federally backed buildings, affordable housing, and infrastructure across the country on Friday, placing tenants and homeowners at increased risk of repeated inundations as climate change worsens.

In a new proposed rule, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) would rescind most of the 2024 Federal Flood Risk Management Standard (FFRMS), scrapping a “climate-informed science approach” to floodplain mapping and reverting to pre-2024 flood risk determinations made by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Planned construction and substantial improvements to one- to four-unit homes not situated in the 1%-annual-chance floodplain would no longer have to abide by an eight-step flood risk minimization process — even if climate science indicates they are imperiled.

The FFRMS itself was overturned by President Trump in a 2025 executive order, and FEMA staff told to stop implementation of the standard in March last year. HUD issued a temporary waiver relaxing the higher flood elevation requirements instituted by the standard last February.

“This rollback returns us to antiquated minimum standards developed decades ago and uninformed by the latest climate science,” said Shana Udvardy, Senior Climate Resilience Policy Analyst with the Climate and Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). “This head-in-the-sand approach to flood risk will unnecessarily put new buildings, facilities, and people’s homes at risk of flooding, disproportionately harming low-income residents, people of color, the elderly and those with disabilities while costing taxpayer more.”

HUD projects the recession will save US$4.5mn to US$85mn in construction costs each year. It further claims that 9.31% of its public housing portfolio and 7.1% of multifamily-assisted properties sit in what would be FFRMS-desginated floodplains, many with units difficult to elevate.

The proposal also strips environmental justice references from HUD's decision-making regulations. Comments are due September 8.

A bipartisan US housing bill became law on Friday that permanently authorizes HUD’s Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery program, ending decades of ad hoc funding that delayed rebuilding efforts by half a decade or more. The measure creates a dedicated disaster recovery fund and unit within HUD, allowing the agency to bypass repeated congressional approval and lengthy rulemaking after each disaster. The authorization includes a three-year sunset clause, though lawmakers signal it may continue indefinitely. (Grist)

The White House has installed Matthew Wielicki — a former University of Alabama geochemist and downplayer of human-induced climate change impacts — to oversee the National Climate Assessment, the congressionally mandated report on US climate impacts. Wielicki has consistently argued against the scientific consensus on climate change and has made frequent appearances on conservative media minimizing the risks of climate change. (Politico)

House Democrats Sean Casten, George Whitesides, and Mike Levin introduced the Global Climate Resilience Act on July 2, proposing a US debt-for-resilience program that would allow Washington to negotiate sovereign debt reductions with Global South governments in exchange for climate adaptation investments. The bill also directs the US to push international financial institutions for debt relief for climate-vulnerable nations and to support an international climate-insurance mechanism. Its passage is doubtful in the current Republican-run Congress. (Representative George Whitesides)

Rebuild by Design’s expanded NJ Underwater analysis finds 35 New Jersey municipalities will have 100% of public assets in flood zones by 2050, with 155 more crossing the 50% threshold. The non-profit says that statewide, flood-exposed public assets could rise from 486 municipalities today to 525 by mid-century, threatening US$435.9bn in property value. In the state’s five largest cities, flood-zone asset exposure nearly doubles, to 42% from 23%. The report urges New Jersey to launch a state resilient infrastructure fund modeled on New York’s US$2.25bn Clean Water bond act. (Rebuild by Design)

France’s government survived a no-confidence vote Monday tied to its response to a June heatwave that has caused at least 2,025 excess deaths, with health officials warning the toll will climb further. The Green Party motion, requiring 289 votes, drew only 132 in the National Assembly. Lawmakers cited gaps in eldercare protection, hospital cooling capacity, and water infrastructure modernization as failures exposed by the extreme heat. (Reuters)

France’s High Council for Climate (HCC) warned Thursday that the country isn’t prepared for accelerating warming, urging faster emission cuts and adaptation investments. In its latest assessment report, the climate watchdog said mainland France has warmed 2.2°C since the early 1900s, with summer temperatures up 2.9°C. It also explained that current adaptation measures favor incremental, technology-based fixes that risk shifting climate burdens elsewhere. The HCC issued six recommendations, including extending heatwave plans through September and retrofitting hospitals and schools with cooling infrastructure. (RFI)

The UK government has published an analysis of the economic opportunities of climate adaptation in a new Government Office for Science report. This sizes the global adaptation market at up to £3.5trn (US$4.7trn) by 2032, of which the UK could capture some 4-10%. Its analysis further counts 648 adaptation solutions offered by UK firms across infrastructure, engineering, data, insurance, and professional services. (UK Government)

Climate resilience insurtech Adaptive Insurance closed a US$5mn financing round to expand its parametric and specialty coverage products. New investors IAG Firemark Ventures, Sunna Ventures, Room & Pillar, and Connecticut Innovations joined existing backers Congruent Ventures and Seraphim Space. Total fundraising to date is US$10mn.

Adaptive will use the capital to grow distribution and its climate intelligence platform. The company’s GridProtect product, launched in 2025, pays out for short-duration power outages using real-time outage data. It has since added wind/hail deductible buy-back coverage and a flood product offering broader limits than the National Flood Insurance Program.

Speaking to Climate Proof last year, Adaptive Insurance CEO Mike Gulla said: “Insurance is behind everything that every person on the planet does in their daily lives … and everything in our lives relies on power… For us, it’s how do you combine those two things together so we’re able to provide some level of protection to be able to react to those [disruption] events.”

Adaptive Insurance — launched in 2024 — is a graduate of Montauk Climate, an incubator focused on climate tech. The company sits alongside other a flurry of start-ups including Floodbase and Arbol in offering parametric insurance solutions and data for extreme weather impacts.

Microsoft released Aurora 1.5, an open-source update to its Earth-system forecasting model, adding 22 weather variables linked to energy, agriculture, transport, and climate risk, as well as hourly resolution and probabilistic ensemble forecasting. The model beat the benchmark ECMWF’s dynamical ensemble on 88.9% of evaluated forecast targets and cut tropical cyclone track errors by roughly a third versus its predecessor. (Microsoft)

Three new FireSat satellites reached orbit on July 7, the first wave of a constellation masterminded by the non-profit Earth Fire Alliance to detect early-stage wildfires as small as 5x5 meters across. Built by Muon Space with Google Research technical support, the network is set to grow beyond 50 satellites by 2030 to cover the planet on a 20-minute cadence. The near-real-time, high-resolution feed bears directly on wildfire catastrophe modeling, early-warning systems, and the pricing of property and utility exposure in fire-prone regions. The satellites now enter a three-month calibration phase before agencies can operationalize the data. (Google)

A University of Illinois team has built a physics-informed AI model, U-HAT, that maps block-by-block air temperature. The model finds that satellite land-surface data routinely overstates urban heat extremes and neighborhood disparities. By interpolating missing observations, the framework gives cities cost-effective, decision-grade heat maps without dense physical sensor networks — making it cheaper and easier to direct cooling investments where they are most needed. (Illinois News Bureau)

The record UK heatwave knocked Cambridge University’s Dawn supercomputer offline for over a week starting June 27, halting cancer-vaccine and climate-modeling research, with full access restored only last Monday. The outage was blamed on a cooling-system failure and has reignited debate over infrastructure resilience. (The Times)

Paris-based EthiFinance will merge with Frankfurt’s ESG Book, creating Europe’s largest independent credit and sustainability rating agency, the companies said Thursday. The combined firm, operating under the EthiFinance brand, will field more than 300 analysts covering over 10,000 companies globally. (EthiFinance)

The UN Climate Technology Centre and Network (UN CTCN) opened a call for proposals under its Adaptation Fund Climate Innovation Accelerator, targeting climate adaptation solutions across Asia Pacific through October 7. UN CTCN will select up to 10 projects, each eligible for as much as US$150,000 in technical assistance support aimed at building institutional capacity and linking recipients to specialized expertise. (UN Environment Programme)

Urban planning for climate resilience: Evaluating multi-level network of resilience plans in Miami-Dade County (Sustainable Cities and Society)

Targeted marine cloud brightening weakens subsequent El Niño (Science Advances)

FastNet: Improving the physical consistency of machine learning weather prediction models through loss function design (Artificial Intelligence for Earth Systems)

How 65 major US cities are responding to urban heat (Climate Central)

Trapped at home: Climate stress is more likely to immobilise the poor than to move them (CEPR)

Thanks for reading!

Louie Woodall
Editor