The residents of Naivasha’s Kihoto village awoke to a shocking sight: the waters of Lake Naivasha had swallowed their village pathways. For many, the lake didn’t stop at the road; it seeped past their homes and businesses.
What they hoped was a one-time event has become a permanent reality. Now, they navigate streets shared with water hyacinth, a daily reminder of a lake that has broken its boundaries and is relentlessly hugging the community.
On social media, the surreal image of a motorbike struggling through water hyacinth on a submerged tarmac road sparked a mix of outrage and conspiracy theories, with many blaming the government.
This powerful visual forces us to ask urgent questions: How do these residents navigate their daily lives? What about the waterborne diseases lurking in this stagnant water? And crucially, what is being done to protect them?
We must recognize that these local disasters are not isolated incidents rather they are the direct outcome of a global failure to safeguard the interconnected Sustainable Development Goals.
For the global South, where the impacts are most acute, achieving these goals is impossible without scaled-up adaptation finance, a promise that, so far, remains largely in the form of empty pledges.
As the climate conversation shifts to COP30 in Belem, the critical question for the global majority is this: how will these high-level discussions meet the needs of a villager in Naivasha who is being forced from their home?
This displacement costs more than land; it shatters livelihoods, disrupts children’s education, and can sow the seeds of conflict over scarce resources in new locations.
The Stark Reality of the Finance Gap
The evidence of this failure is unequivocal. The United Nations Environment Programme’s Adaptation Gap Report 2025: Running on Empty highlights a stark reality: adaptation finance needs in developing countries are 10-18 times greater than international public finance flows, a gap that has widened significantly.
This underinvestment has been framed as a cause of dire, real-world consequences. As Dr. Mahmood, a Professor and Executive Director of the Sunway Centre for Planetary Health, explains, the Adaptation Gap Report makes it painfully clear: we are dangerously underinvesting in climate resilience.
“The finance gap is not just a number, it’s a reflection of the growing risks to people’s health, safety, and dignity… We need urgent, scaled-up adaptation finance that prioritises grants and concessional support, not more debt,” said Dr. Mahmood.
A Multi-Front Crisis: Health and Food Systems at Risk
The impacts are cascading, straining the very systems meant to protect people, as evidenced by the pressure on the health sector.
According to Dr Harshal Salve, Additional Professor at AIIMS Delhi, developing countries like India are experiencing increasing heat stress and water scarcity, and are further facing exacerbated health challenges.
“These threats are not only increasing coping pressure on… hospitals and the health infrastructure, but also require adequate finance for the scale of the problem. Real adaptation finance for health systems remains abysmally inadequate… a serious public health emergency in the making,” said Dr. Salve.
Meanwhile, the foundation of our food security is also at risk. Esther Penunia, Secretary-General of the Asian Farmers’ Association, emphasizes that the stark disparity as indicated in the new research shows that small-scale family farmers need an annual average investment of US$952 for a one-hectare farm… to adapt to climate change.
Esther added that since they produce half the world’s food calories, surely this is a no-brainer investment. “Yet the latest UN adaptation finance gap figures confirm what us farmers already know; funding is massively falling short,” she added.
The Road to Belem: A Test of Credibility
The path forward is clear, yet the political will is absent. Following the money reveals a damning trend: international public adaptation finance flows to developing countries actually fell to US$21 billion in 2021. At this rate, the Glasgow Climate Pact goal of doubling adaptation finance by 2025 will be missed.
First, if inflation persists, the real value of this target will be drastically eroded. Second, and more fundamentally, this US$300 billion is for both mitigation (reducing emissions) and adaptation (coping with impacts).
This is the core of the failure. As the quotes from frontline experts reveal, adaptation is consistently deprioritized because it is not seen as “profitable” like renewable energy projects.
The result is that the communities in Naivasha, the hospitals in India, and the farmers across Asia, those who contributed least to the crisis, are left to fend for themselves without the lifeline they were promised.
The road to Belem will be a test of whether global solidarity can finally overcome this fatal accounting error. For the villager in Naivasha, it is a test of survival.
