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Climate Adaptation Failure Is the Next Debt Crisis for the Global South
This is the new face of global inequality: Countries that contributed least to the crisis are being made to pay twice—first through climate impacts, and then through debt.
Nov 11, 2025
As deadly storms ripped through the Caribbean, a new United Nations report delivered a sobering warning: The world is failing to prepare for the climate it has already created.
The UN Environment Programme’s Adaptation Gap Report 2025, aptly titled Running on Empty, finds that developing nations will need between US$310 and $365 billion annually by 2035 to cope with intensifying climate impacts. Yet, international public finance for adaptation fell to just US$26 billion in 2023, down from US$28 billion the previous year. The result: Only one-twelfth of what’s needed is being delivered.
This gap is not an abstract number. It’s visible in the wreckage of homes, farms, and economies across our region. Last month, Hurricane Melissa, the strongest-ever storm to hit Jamaica, tore through the Caribbean, leaving destruction equivalent to nearly 30% of the island’s GDP. With at least 75 lives lost and damages exceeding US$50 billion, Melissa is not just another storm; it is a case study in the cost of global inaction.
A rapid attribution study found that climate change made Melissa four times more likely and increased its wind speeds by 7%, raising damages by around 12%. For Haiti, Jamaica, and other small island developing states (SIDS), such storms bring unbearable losses eroding livelihoods, tourism revenues, and vital infrastructure. These countries contribute the least to global emissions yet bear the highest costs.
Adaptation finance should not create more debt.
The pattern repeats globally. This year’s monsoon floods in Pakistan displaced 7 million people and destroyed thousands of homes. Whether in South Asia or the Caribbean, the message is clear: The failure to invest in adaptation is costing lives.
Adaptation is not a distant goal; it is an urgent necessity. It means building stronger flood defenses, adopting climate-smart agriculture, and developing social protection systems that safeguard the most vulnerable. Research by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) shows that every US$1 invested early in resilience saves more than US$5 in avoided losses. Yet, the world continues to spend far more on disaster relief than on prevention.
Every dollar delayed multiplies the human and economic toll. In Haiti, where communities are already grappling with political instability, weak infrastructure, and high poverty, each storm magnifies vulnerabilities. The Caribbean, with its densely populated coastal areas and economies heavily dependent on tourism and agriculture, cannot afford to treat adaptation as optional.
At COP29 in Baku, governments pledged through the Baku to Belém Roadmap to mobilize US$1.3 trillion by 2035, including at least US$300 billion annually for developing nations. On paper, this looks ambitious. In reality, it falls far short of what is needed. Adjusted for inflation, adaptation costs could reach US$440-520 billion per year by 2035, and the US$300 billion target covers both mitigation and adaptation, with no separate adaptation goal yet defined.
Adaptation finance was meant to help nations prepare for rising seas, harsher droughts, and lethal floods. Yet, when those funds don’t arrive, countries are forced to borrow. In 2023, 59 least developed countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) paid US$37 billion to service their debts and received only US$32 billion in climate finance. These aren’t productive investments but emergency debts taken just to rebuild what has already been lost.
This is the new face of global inequality: Countries that contributed least to the crisis are being made to pay twice—first through climate impacts, and then through debt. And while the rhetoric of “resilience” fills summit halls, the financial architecture remains rigged against the Global South. Only 15% of adaptation finance in recent years has been delivered as grants; the rest comes as loans. For every dollar of “climate support,” developing nations are paying back many more in interest.
The IIED notes that less than 10% of global climate finance reaches the local level, while international credit rating systems penalize small and vulnerable economies for their exposure to climate risks making it harder for them to attract investment in resilience. These structural barriers are blocking climate justice.
So what should change?
Adaptation finance should not create more debt. Countries hit by climate disasters need grants, not loans, because these crises are caused by global emissions, not their own failures. Second, global lending rules must change. The IMF and World Bank should consider pausing repayments after major disasters. Forcing countries to rebuild while paying high interest is unfair and makes recovery harder. Third, regional cooperation must grow stronger. Shared projects prove that joint action works. Regional funds, supported by concessional finance and local expertise, can deliver faster results than slow global systems.
Adaptation is not charity. It is justice and economic common sense. Without equitable support and reparations, the Global South would sink further and keep on building the same roads and homes after every flood, hurricane, and storm. This is not only senseless but also highly unjust. It is time for the Global North to take responsibility, after all its only fair that the poor and vulnerable shouldn’t have to fix a crisis they didn’t create while drowning in debt.
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While Trump Posts Marble Bathrooms, Americans Go Hungry
Trump plasters his social media with a floor-to-ceiling marble bathroom remodel while families across America wonder how they can keep their children from starving.
Nov 08, 2025
I know what it means to be starved by those in power. As a little girl, if not for my grandparents' ancient walnut tree that fed us, and not for my grandma’s beloved chickens who laid eggs and now and then were a very special Sunday soup, if not for my sister—just a few years older than me—standing in line at dawn to fight adults for bread, I would have been significantly malnourished. I would watch my sister come home exhausted from those pre-dawn battles with full-grown adults, clutching a loaf of bread that meant we might be a little less hungry than we were the day before.
I never thought I'd see that kind of chosen starvation—the kind that Romania’s Nicolae Ceaușescu was notorious for—in America. I was wrong.
Trump is Choosing to Starve Americans
On November 3, day 33 of a government shutdown, President Donald Trump's administration said it would provide only partial Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) food stamp benefits for November. This has a devastating impact on millions of Americans. And, this is after two federal judges ordered the administration to tap into emergency funds to cover food assistance. What’s worse is this partial aid Trump is willing to concede to give might not reach these families for months.
And what was Trump doing as families wondered how they'd feed their children? Posting 24 photos on social media of his newly renovated Lincoln Bedroom bathroom—covered floor to ceiling in black and white marble with (surprise, surprise) gold fixtures—as he headed to Mar-a-Lago for the weekend. He has already golfed multiple times during this shutdown and traveled internationally, something other presidents would have refused in order to focus on ending the shutdown that is devastating the country. Millions are unsure about what they’ll eat tonight, and Trump posts about the luxury renovations and packs his golf clubs while the government remains shut down.
Trump wants us to watch him build monuments to himself. Fine. We're watching. And we're remembering.
Ceauşescu was similarly fond of gold and glitz while the people starved. Like this Romanian dictator, Trump is demolishing the historic East Wing of the White House to build an over $300 million ballroom, removing commemorative magnolia trees planted in the 1940s for Presidents Warren G. Harding and Franklin D. Roosevelt. According to White House aides, Trump spends hours obsessing over marble choices and column styles, even fidgeting with 3D-printed models of the ballroom during tense moments. Watch me, he seems to say. Watch me build monuments to myself while you starve.
Ceauşescu built his lavish palaces that included a golden bathroom with gold plated fixtures while my sister, a child, stood in line to fight for a half a loaf of bread to feed her family. Trump plasters his social media with a floor-to-ceiling marble bathroom remodel while families across America wonder how they can keep their children from starving.
The Policy Behind the Cruelty
Yes, by now we know full well, the cruelty is the point, it's policy. The "big beautiful bill" Republicans passed earlier this year delivers massive tax breaks to the ultra wealthy: Starting in 2029, those making $30,000 or less would see a tax increase, while the top 0.1% would receive an average $309,000 tax cut annually, more than three times what a typical American household earns in an entire year. Sixty percent of the tax cuts go to the top 20% of earners, while the bill is coupled with cuts to Medicaid and SNAP that leave low-income Americans worse off on net.
The bill kicks more than 15 million people off health insurance, makes the largest cuts to nutrition assistance in history, and makes higher education less affordable. Congressional Budget Office analysis shows this bill adds over $4 trillion to the national debt while worsening inequality.
Masked Agents, Militarized Enforcement
Meanwhile, billions of dollars are being poured into Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids, with masked federal agents in unmarked vehicles conducting workplace sweeps and detaining our neighbors outside courthouses, with more than 75% of those booked into ICE custody in fiscal year 2025 having no criminal conviction other than immigration or traffic-related offenses. Trump is choosing to continue to fund, and even increase the funding, for the modern-day Gestapo, ensuring masked ICE agents can continue to brutalize our communities. But we do not have to look at other places to understand what is happening before our eyes. In the 1850s in the United States, the federal government enforced a policy to hunt down and “return” what the government dubbed to be “fugitive slaves,” people who were formerly and brutally enslaved and who had escaped captivity to flee north. No, we do not have to look at Nazi Germany to understand what ICE is doing, we have to look at our own history.
All of us Americans, who love our neighbors, who care for our families, who love our cities and our country, should see Trump for who he is. He is making a choice. This is a choice about who gets to have resources and who gets to suffer. This is about billionaires running the government and watching the people who actually make this country run—the workers, the families, the communities—go hungry while they build their ballrooms.
When the wealthy choose to watch their neighbors starve, when they fund masked agents to terrorize communities while slashing food assistance, this isn't leadership. This is corruption masquerading as governance. Ceauşescu did it. Now Trump is doing it. Sending social media messages from his golden toilet while we the people go hungry.
The Walnut Tree Didn't Ask Permission
They want us to be too hungry, too tired, too scared to fight back. They want us watching marble-bathroom reveals while we worry about our own children's empty stomachs.
We won't give them that satisfaction.
Every community that's ever survived oppression has known this truth: We have to take care of our beloved communities. You share what you have. You build networks of care that the powerful can't dismantle because they're not built on their permission.
Start a community fridge in your neighborhood, like many of us did during the pandemic. Organize a weekly soup kitchen. Form a food co-op. Create a network of families who share meals and resources. This is how we survive, this is how we resist.
And then, fed and strong, we organize politically. We vote out every representative who voted to starve their constituents to feed the rich. We primary the ones who won't fight. We run our own people, people who remember what it's like to be hungry, to watch your sister fight for bread, to rely on a grandparent's walnut tree.
Trump wants us to watch him build monuments to himself. Fine. We're watching. And we're remembering. Every marble tile laid while children went hungry. Every gold fixture installed while families lost food assistance. Every historic symbol of American’s greatness lying in rubble while more Americans lost access to healthcare.
But we're not just watching. We need to be building too. Building the mutual aid networks, the political power, the community resilience that will outlast any administration's cruelty.
The walnut tree that saved my life didn't ask permission to grow. Neither will we.
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$70 Trillion in Inherited Wealth Shows Global 'Inequality Emergency' Spiraling Out of Control
"Inequality is a crisis in need of concerted action," said Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.
Nov 04, 2025
A panel of experts convened by South Africa's president warned Tuesday that the world is facing an "inequality emergency" as the richest people on the planet capture a disproportionate share of new wealth and prepare to pass it down to their heirs—perpetuating the chasm between economic elites and everyone else.
The panel, led by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, notes in a new report that over $70 trillion in wealth will be passed down to heirs over the next decade. In the next 30 years, the panel estimates, 1,000 billionaires will transfer more than $5.2 trillion to their heirs mostly untaxed.
"Inequality is one of the most urgent concerns in the world today, generating many other problems in economies, societies, polities and the environment," states the report, published ahead of the G20 meetings in Johannesburg at the end of the month.
Joining Stiglitz on the panel, formally called the Extraordinary Committee of Independent Experts on Global Inequality, were Adriana Abdenur of Brazil, Winnie Byanyima of Uganda, Jayati Ghosh of India, and Imraan Valodia and Wanga Zembe-Mkabile of South Africa.
"Inequality is not a given; combating it is necessary and possible," the experts wrote. "Inequality results from policy choices that reflect ethical attitudes and morals, as well as economic trade-offs. It is not just a matter of concern for individual countries, but a global concern that should be on the international agenda—and therefore the G20's."
Since 2000, the global 1% has captured more than 40% of all new wealth while the bottom half of humanity saw its wealth grow by just 1%, according to the new report. More than 80% of countries—accounting for roughly 90% of the global population—have high levels of income inequality, which undermines social cohesion, economic functioning, and democratic institutions nationally and worldwide.
The panel recommends a broad scope of policy changes to tackle runaway income and wealth inequality, from ensuring the fair taxation of multinational corporations and ultra-rich individuals, to antitrust policies that reduce corporate concentration, to major investments in public services.
The experts also called for the creation of an International Panel on Inequality—inspired by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—"to support governments and multilateral agencies with authoritative assessments and analyses of inequality" that would "empower policymaking."
"The committee's work showed us that inequality is a crisis in need of concerted action," Stiglitz said Tuesday. "The necessary step to taking this action is for policymakers, political leaders, the private sector, journalists and academia to have accurate and timely information and analysis of the inequality crisis. This is why our recommendation above all is for a new International Panel on Inequality."
"It would learn from the remarkable job the IPCC has done for climate change, bringing together technical expertise worldwide to track inequality and assess what is driving it," he added.
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