ADB pushes Pacific resilience financing at Pre-COP31

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Highlights

At Pre-COP31, ADB President Masato Kanda highlighted that recent adaptation finance flows meet only 26% of Pacific annual needs, urging faster funding access.
ADB delivered a record $13.5 billion in climate finance last year and seeks $250 million from the Green Climate Fund to leverage $1 billion for Pacific adaptation.
ADB signed a $210 million financing package with Fiji during Pre-COP31 to address Middle East-linked economic pressures and support digital, private sector, and resilience reforms.

Pacific financing agenda before COP31

As reported by the Asian Development Bank, President Masato Kanda is attending Pre-COP31 in Fiji and Tuvalu, where he is calling for quicker financing to help vulnerable island states respond to rising seas and other worsening climate impacts. During the meetings, he holds talks with Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka, Tuvalu Prime Minister Feleti Teo, and other regional leaders on resilience, access to funding, and priorities before COP31 in Antalya in November.

At the leaders' plenary, Kanda says recent adaptation finance flows would meet only 26% of projected annual needs in the Pacific, while governments still face complex requirements to access available funds. He says ADB delivered a record $13.5 billion in climate finance last year and is building stronger resilience into every project it finances.

He also highlights a regional resilience program that ADB is developing with its 14 Pacific members. The proposal is due to go before the Green Climate Fund Board later this month for $250 million in financing, with the aim of leveraging ADB projects to deliver $1 billion for adaptation.

Fiji support and regional resilience projects

As part of the Pre-COP31 program, Kanda travels with other leaders to Tuvalu to view firsthand the threat from rising seas and the efforts under way to protect vulnerable shorelines. ADB is preparing the Funafuti Climate Adaptation and Disaster Resilience Infrastructure Project, which builds on earlier work to expand essential coastal protection in the country.

On the sidelines of the event, Kanda and Rabuka witness the signing of a $210 million ADB financing package for Fiji. The funding is intended to help the country manage economic pressures linked to the conflict in the Middle East, including higher fuel, freight, and other costs, while supporting reforms in digital payments, national identification systems, private sector development, and disaster resilience.

The discussions underline how climate adaptation and economic resilience are increasingly linked across the Pacific. For island economies exposed to both environmental shocks and imported inflation, faster and simpler financing access remains central to project delivery and long-term protection.

In our earlier report on the pre-COP31 talks in Fiji, we covered how Pacific nations urged the world to keep the 1.5°C limit central to COP31 negotiations, warning that overshooting it will accelerate sea-level rise and worsen extreme weather. The article also noted the bloc’s push for easier access to climate finance and highlighted the Taku Pakasoa declaration calling for deep, rapid, sustained emissions cuts alongside stronger ocean protection.

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