The accelerating impacts of climate change, and the need to avoid much larger impacts in the future, bring urgency to scaling up action on adaptation and resilience. The World Bank Group (WBG) is making adaptation and resilience a key priority of its 2025 Climate Change Targets that will elevate adaptation to an equal footing with climate mitigation actions.
Climate change threatens the achievement of all key development objectives, including the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Sendai Framework for Action objectives and, especially, the sustainable eradication of poverty (World Bank 2015; IPCC 2014b). The world will not be able to achieve its development goals without stronger action on climate change adaptation.
The Action Plan will increase the World Bank’s level of ambition and commitments on climate change adaptation and resilience. It has three core objectives:
- Boost adaptation financing
- Drive a mainstreamed, whole-of-government programmatic approach
- Develop a new rating system to create incentives for, and improve the tracking of, global progress on adaptation and resilience