Last year was not only the hottest on record ever,
but dangerous and unprecedented climate events
were also seen on every continent.
From May to July, in Mauritania and Niger in West
Africa, and in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia in East
Africa, some 30 million people were hit by an
extraordinary extreme drought.
A town in China’s Xinjian province hit 52.2°C and the
capital of the world’s second most populous nation,
Beijing, introduced a temporary ban on outdoor
work during a heatwave that broke records across
Asia. Amid another so-named “Cerberus” Heatwave
that gripped Europe last summer, the European
Space Agency also predicted 50°C heat in Italy.

The Mediterranean likewise saw its deadliest tropical
cyclone in recorded history with Storm Daniel,
which led to the failure of two dams in Derna, Libya,
that caused over 5,000 deaths and destroyed one
quarter of that port city, highlighting the criticality
of adapting key infrastructure to new climate
extremes. Elsewhere, in Asia, Typhoon Mawar, also
known as Super Typhoon Betty, clocked near 300
kilometers per hour sustained winds as it battered
the Philippines and several other countries in the
region. In Latin America, sustained temperatures
above 40°C fueled wildfires in Chile that burned
4,000 square kilometers of land.

The direction of travel is extremely clear. As United
Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has highlighted, the world is set to hit 1.5ºC of warming
in five years’ time. As we do so, the extremes even
of today will become the norms of tomorrow.

Climate adaptation has never been more vital, and
the mission of the Global Center on Adaptation
(GCA) to adapt our world never more critical.
GCA has therefore been working tirelessly to
mobilize global cooperation and expertise on
climate adaptation especially in support of
communities most vulnerable due to exposure
and restricted resources to respond. Why? As the
World Meteorological Organization announced
last year, climate change undermines nearly all the
Sustainable Development Goals, only 15% of which
are currently on-track. In a planet on fire, we cannot
have sustainable development anymore unless we
are effectively climate adapted.

As such, GCA is pleased to report that great strides
have been made in the last year against our mission
and core objectives to broker leading knowledge
to help protect development from the escalating
climate crisis. In Africa, we have significantly
progressed the world’s largest adaptation program,
the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program (AAAP),
clearly demonstrating our ability to climate-proof
key development projects and initiatives at speed
and at scale. In a world struggling with complex,
large-scale, and intertwined crises from areas like
inflation to armed conflict, thanks to AAAP, we now
have a tool that can help to bring down the climate-
related risks for key development investments.