India Urges COP30 to Prioritise Adaptation — While Its Own Adaptation Fund Goes Unfunded

On the night of September 2, relentless rains triggered a landslide in Sarh village in Reasi district, Indian-administered Kashmir, swallowing the home of 36-year-old Shabir Ahmad and nearly 20 neighbouring houses into the Chenab River. Ahmad, who had been building his house since 2016, watched his home, his brother’s house and nearby farmland vanish.

This tragedy is one of many climate-driven disasters across India that are destroying lives, eroding livelihoods and forcing people to flee their homes. According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), more than 32 million people were displaced internally in India by climate-related disasters between 2015 and 2024, including 5.4 million in 2024 alone — the highest annual total in 12 years. In the first half of 2025, unusually heavy rains triggered floods and landslides that displaced over 160,000 people.

Promoting Adaptation Abroad, Cutting It at Home

In the run-up to COP30, India’s environment minister called for global climate talks to become the "COP of adaptation," urging a major increase in public finance for adaptation measures. But domestically, the government’s flagship National Adaptation Fund on Climate Change (NAFCC), launched in 2015 to support community-level resilience projects, has seen its allocations shrink dramatically.

NAFCC, managed by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), initially financed more than two dozen projects across agriculture, water management, forestry, coastal protection and climate-resilient infrastructure. Official records show the fund received an average of roughly $13.3 million per year in its early years, but spending fell to about $2.47 million in 2022–23. In November 2022 the Environment Ministry reclassified NAFCC from a government "scheme" to a "non-scheme," removing a clear budget line; since 2023–24 no budgeted allocations have been earmarked for the fund.

On-the-Ground Consequences

The shortfall has stalled projects designed to reduce flood, cyclone and landslide risk and left many vulnerable communities without planned protections. In Bihar’s Darbhanga district, 38-year-old Sunita Devi has been displaced five times in seven years after repeated floods from the Kosi River destroyed her mud-and-bamboo home. "We live in fear every monsoon. My children have stopped going to school because we shift from camp to camp," she said.

Along India’s coasts and estuaries, rising seas and erosion are swallowing villages. In Odisha’s Kendrapara district, fisherman Ramesh Behera watched his home collapse into the Bay of Bengal in 2024 and was forced to abandon fishing and farming. In West Bengal’s Sundarbans and Tamil Nadu’s Nagapattinam district, coastal erosion and saltwater intrusion are destroying farmland and livelihoods. In the Himalayas, extreme events such as cloudbursts and landslides have flattened homes and small businesses, leaving survivors unsure whether they can return.

"If land and shelter are not provided, we will not merely be homeless; we will become refugees in our own land," Ahmad warned at a temporary shelter in Sarh.

Government Response and Criticism

Requests for comment to the Ministries of Finance and Environment went unanswered. An Environment Ministry official speaking on condition of anonymity said the government has redirected adaptation financing through broader climate and sustainability programmes rather than through standalone schemes like NAFCC.

Activists say that reclassifying and effectively defunding NAFCC while advocating for global adaptation finance is inconsistent and risks leaving frontline communities exposed. "Announcing lofty adaptation goals abroad while starving the fund that safeguards our own citizens is misleading and a moral failure," said environmental activist Raja Muzaffar Bhat. He warned that deprioritising adaptation now could accelerate climate-driven displacement and deepen inequities.

Climate Action Network South Asia estimates roughly 45 million people in India could be forced to migrate by 2050 because of climate impacts if adaptation and resilience measures are not significantly scaled up. Experts also point to unchecked development in hazard-prone areas, deforestation and unplanned construction as human factors that amplify disaster risk.

As extreme weather intensifies, the gap between international advocacy for adaptation and domestic funding decisions raises urgent questions about who will protect vulnerable communities and how India will manage the potential wave of internal displacement in the decades ahead.