UN Climate Change News, 15 August 2025 – The largest annual adaptation event concluded today in Lusaka, Zambia, with an urgent call for scaled up investment in adaptation finance and resilience, to save lives, lift living standards and boost economic growth.

NAP Expo 2025 focused on strengthening countries’ capacity to advance National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) ahead of COP30 in Brazil, meet the 2025 submission target, and closing the financing gaps that threaten effective adaptation.

Indigenous and traditional knowledge systems have long provided sophisticated, locally adapted solutions for monitoring and managing water. In the face of increasing climate extremes - droughts, floods, and erratic rainfall - these ancestral approaches offer powerful insights for building resilience today.

Through the SCALA program (2020–2025), UNDP and FAO supported integrated implementation of Ethiopia’s NDC and National Adaptation Program (2020-2025), prioritizing community-based watershed management, climate-smart agriculture, insurance schemes, rangeland restoration, and livestock diversification.

Collaboration between the Government, development partners and private players has successfully transformed the lives of Mwenezi people through the establishment of a fully functional irrigation scheme in the heart of one of Zimbabwe’s driest districts. A recent media tour to the area revealed that the 156-hectare Pikinini-Jawanda Irrigation Scheme — supported by the Government, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Green Climate Fund — is now a beacon of food security and economic resilience, directly benefitting over 300 households from Pikinini and Jawanda villages.

The Green Climate Fund (GCF) has approved a grant of USD 36.1 million to support Nepal in mitigating the rising threat of glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs)-one of the most severe and fast-growing climate risks facing the Himalayan region. The seven-year project, jointly implemented by Nepal's Department of Hydrology and Meteorology (DHM) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), aims to shift the country's response from post-disaster relief to pre-disaster prevention. It is expected to directly benefit over 2.2 million people residing in vulnerable mountain communities.

Albania stands at a critical juncture in tackling the global climate crisis. It ranks highest among European countries for exposure and vulnerability to natural hazards and extreme weather events. These events, growing in frequency and intensity, pose serious threats to communities and ecosystems.

A high-level delegation of the Adaptation Fund is visiting Montenegro as part of a regional mission that also includes Albania and North Macedonia, with the aim of reviewing the results of the regional project for flood risk management in the Drina River Basin.

This was announced by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Office in Montenegro.

The Regional Project for Flood Risk Management in the Drin River Basin is being implemented with the support of UNDP.

President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev held a meeting with Mafalda Duarte, Executive Director of the Green Climate Fund on Friday, Kazinform News Agency has learnt from the Akorda press service.

During the meeting, focused on cooperation prospects between Kazakhstan and the Green Climate Fund, Kazakh leader Tokayev stressed that Kazakhstan attaches particular attention to the environmental protection, especially by conserving and increasing forested areas as well as through rational use of natural resources.

Sixty metres from one side of the island to the other. Sixty metres from the ocean to the lagoon. Sixty metres from rising sea levels, more powerful and unpredictable storms, and increasingly powerful King Tides.

Welcome to Funafuti, the capital of the atoll nation of Tuvalu, where half of the country’s 11,300 inhabitants live.

This was my first mission as a representative of the Green Climate Fund (GCF). It was a proud moment; I was here to witness the handing over of new land – reclaimed as a result of GCF investment – to the national government.