World Resources Institute

July 2, 2026 - Soweto, Johannesburg’s largest township, faces dual climate threats from flooding and extreme heat. These threats are compounded by the township’s soaring unemployment and an economy dominated by low-value and informal sectors. As a result, many residents have unpredictable livelihoods and limited capacity to recover from climate shocks. The Klip River system that runs through Soweto often floods during heavy rains.

Insights | Commentary Cities, counties and towns are finding innovative ways to advance clean energy projects that stabilize energy costs while delivering local benefits. Explore More: Austin, Texas, is among many U.S. cities implementing innovative clean energy solutions.

WASHINGTON, DC (June 30, 2026) — This week, the World Bank Board of Directors decided to drop its goal of having 45% of its investments support climate mitigation and adaptation. The Board extended the rest of the Climate Change Action Plan (CCAP), which was set to expire today, and agreed to conduct a review of the Plan.

From hydration breaks during the FIFA World Cup to recent heat waves leaving Europe sweltering in an early summer, extreme heat is reshaping daily life. Around the world, communities are adapting in real time to increasingly high temperatures. During Europe’s heat wave in June, schools closed across the UK, while Paris opened the Canal Saint-Martin for swimming to provide relief from the heat. Elsewhere, street vendors in Mathare, Kenya, have shifted their work to the cooler evenings.

In large and geographically diverse countries like Brazil, India and Indonesia, climate risks vary greatly across regions — from wildfire threats in forest communities to severe flooding in coastal villages to intensifying extreme heat in major cities — requiring locally tailored responses. Yet implementation in decentralized countries like these is often constrained by fragmented governance, uneven capacity at subnational levels and gaps in climate data and finance.

As the impacts of climate change intensify, large and decentralized countries face challenges in implementing effective adaptation measures. National adaptation policies often cannot be implemented in local areas most vulnerable to climate risks, while sub-national governments struggle with limited resources, weak coordination and inadequate access to climate-related data.

The EU’s new strategies for islands and coastal communities recognize that Europe’s ocean future will be shaped not only in Brussels or national capitals, but in the places where people live with the sea every day. Together, they mark an important shift in European ocean policy from treating coastal and island territories as endpoints of sectoral policies, toward recognizing them as central actors in Europe’s sustainable ocean transition.

The new collective quantified goal (NCQG) for climate finance sets a target of $1.3 trillion annually by 2035 to support climate action in developing countries. Reaching this number will require a significant increase in all sources of existing finance and new sources, too. One possibility: Countries that are traditionally not considered contributors under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), but from whom investment nonetheless flows.

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Climate finance is only as good as the accountability systems that govern it. Yet across the world, those systems routinely fail the communities most exposed to climate risk. Accountability mechanisms such as grievance and appeals processes, oversight bodies and budget tagging and tracking exist. But in practice, accountability depends on multiple factors — from political will and power dynamics to sustained pressure from below.