On 21 June, 2022, REAP launched a much-needed study titled Finance for Early Action: Tracking Commitments, Trends, Challenges and Opportunities. This work was commissioned following the call to action in REAP's inaugural Early Action: The State of Play 2021, released in March 2022, which stated that more work was required to develop clear policy recommendations regarding the various funding sources and financial instruments that are available or able to support risk-informed early action, as well as to scale up amounts of funding.
The Finance for Early Action study aims to document commitments, trends, opportunities and challenges in relation to finance for early action. It provides detail of recent pledges of finance for early action, aims to improve understanding of where resources are coming from and how they are spent, and documents how the financing architecture is evolving.
The report concludes that the largest amounts of funding are going to unplanned crisis finance, significantly less to pre-arranged finance, and very small amounts to anticipatory/early action. There are indications that overall amounts are growing, but nowhere near the scale required to respond to the increasing frequency and severity of climate impacts. Funding for early action remains small and fragmented and this creates unnecessary complexity. The report makes several recommendations to overcome these barriers and deliver scaled-up and more effective finance for early action.
Following the completion of the report, REAP held a closed-door roundtable to discuss how to take the recommendations forward, and align efforts with other relevant initiatives such as the G7’s proposed Global Shield against Climate Risks. Further dialogues will follow in the summer.