Climate adaptation gap

The climate adaptation gap measures the distance between a territory's adaptation needs facing climate change impacts and the financial, technical and institutional resources actually mobilised to meet them. Distinct from mitigation, which aims to reduce emissions, adaptation aims to reduce vulnerability to already unavoidable impacts. This gap is particularly marked in developing countries, highly exposed and weakly resourced. For insurance, the adaptation gap translates into a widening protection gap: in areas where exposure grows faster than prevention and risk transfer capacity, territories gradually become uninsurable at market conditions. The insurer plays both a signalling role, revealing through its prices the increase in risk, and an adaptation-actor role, supporting prevention and nature-based solutions. Reducing the adaptation gap is a condition for the sustainability of long-term insurability.

A coastal region whose exposure to flooding grows faster than its dikes and prevention budget sees its adaptation gap widen and its insurability deteriorate.

climate adaptation gap, écart d'adaptation, déficit d'adaptation