How much would it cost to ensure that the Millennium Development Goals are achieved in Africa despite climate change? This paper estimates that climate-resilient development in Africa could require international financial assistance of $100 billion a year over the period 2010-2020. This total is about forty percent higher than the original MDG estimate of $72 billion. Adaptation is, in fact, climate-resilient development, and integrated adaptation and development frameworks must be applied in the form of concrete development plans at the country level.
The paper examines literature on the resource requirements for meeting the MDGs, and the literature which estimates adaptation costs. These two approaches are combined to derive a joint estimate of the effort required to meet the MDGs in a climate-resilient way.
In much of the policy discourse, particularly in discussions of adaptation costs and funding, adaptation is still treated as a stand-alone issue with little or no links to other development challenges. Analyses of adaptation needs treat adaptation as an incremental activity that is bolted onto a ‘business as usual’ development path. However, socio-economic development and adaptation to climate change are closely linked. Treating adaptation as a separate issue encourages project-based adaptation measures. The high transaction costs resulting from the small-scale implementation of project-based adaptation measures will yield inferior results and constrain scalability.
Extra costs for ‘climate proofing’ arise from having to provide: more development support (for example, extra bed nets against malaria); the same support at a higher cost (for example, more expensive infrastructure); and altogether new measures (for example, adaptive capacity building).
- The highest MDG expenditure items are for improved health care facilities, the fight against HIV/Aids and new energy infrastructure, which will each require annual investment in excess of $10 billion.
- The increased incidence of extreme weather events means that disaster management and social protection measures like access to emergency cash move up the priority list for development spending.
- During the years 2010-2020 a further $3 billion of humanitarian assistance financing will be required for climate change.
- Water investments are among the most costly adaptation measures.
- Malaria protection will have to be extended into previously unaffected areas.
- The extra burden on nutrition programmes should be modest, despite the fact that climate change is expected to increase the incidence of malnutrition substantially in the absence of policies.
- Protecting education from climate change should also only require modest incremental resources, although there will be some expenditures to climate-proof school buildings.
It is important to apply integrated adaptation and development frameworks to actual development strategies at the country level. Treating adaptation and development in an integrated way helps to better understand financing requirements and to implement the requisite measures more effectively.
- Adaptation measures must be implemented by the same ministries that are also responsible for the achievement of development outcomes – the departments of health, education, agriculture and so on.
- The importance of adaptation must be recognised by the finance and economy ministries that set funding priorities.
- The corresponding measures must be incorporated into a single macroeconomic framework. Only by integrating adaptation measures firmly into a country’s development framework can sound macroeconomic management strategies be developed that are necessary for ministries of finance and the IMF to support large-scale increased in external finance.
