Climate adaptation must move from paper pledges to on-the-ground action at COP31
In 2026, the Earth has issued a relentless stream of warnings about global climate change through extreme weather events. There have been record-shattering heatwaves in Europe. In North America, a persistent "heat dome" pushed temperatures in Salt Lake City and surrounding regions to roughly 43 C. In Asia, accelerating glacial melt in the Himalayas and the heightened risk of glacial lake outburst floods in Nepal threaten the survival of people downstream. From deadly heat in South Asia to droughts in Brazil, climate risks have long extended beyond isolated natural disasters. Cascading, cross-system shocks are now testing the capacity of governments everywhere to respond.
As the 31st session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, known as COP31, is being convened in Antalya, Turkiye, from Nov 9 to 20, the summit can be designated as a COP of implementation and acceleration.
The core task is no longer setting new targets but testing whether nations can translate political commitments into trackable, accessible and concrete actions on the ground. Yet global progress on the adaptation agenda remains deeply concerning.
The "Belem adaptation indicators" and the pledge to triple adaptation finance by 2035, both agreed at COP30, hit major roadblocks at the Bonn climate talks in June. For small island states and least developed countries, financial accessibility is just as critical as overall funding volume; cumbersome application procedures continue to exhaust the limited administrative capacity of vulnerable states. The central crisis facing climate adaptation is not a lack of consensus, but the absence of a delivery mechanism that converts political consensus into disbursed funding and viable projects.
Against a global backdrop in which adaptation remains long on pledges but short on delivery, China's ongoing adaptation efforts offer a reference that should not be overlooked. In September 2025, China announced its new Nationally Determined Contributions, setting "basically establishing a climate-adaptive society by 2035" as a medium- and long-term national strategic goal. The Ecological and Environmental Code of China, which took effect in August, features a dedicated section on climate adaptation, elevating adaptation from policy guidance into a statutory obligation. Furthermore, all 31 provincial-level administrative regions have published tailored climate adaptation action plans. Climate adaptation in China is no longer a solitary task for environmental agencies; it is a systemic undertaking embedded across the entire chain of national governance. From national targets to legal safeguards and local plans, China is turning the blueprint for climate adaptation into concrete actions step by step.
Currently, 39 Chinese cities are running pilot programs to advance climate-adaptive urban development. These pilots have generated scalable strategies, including integrating adaptation requirements into urban spatial planning, conducting joint qualitative and quantitative climate risk assessments, and deploying artificial intelligence to upgrade early warning systems. Pilot cities such as Shenzhen, Haikou and Chengdu have made tangible progress in building climate-resilient communities. In practical terms, coastal cities can focus on targeted measures to prevent and control sea-level rise and compound disasters; western cities can strengthen water conservation and stormwater management in response to warmer and wetter trends; and high-density cities can incorporate flood risk control into territorial spatial planning and advance flood-proofing retrofits of underground spaces. Climate adaptation in China is shifting from emergency response after disasters strike to anticipatory institutional arrangements embedded in planning, standards and day-to-day governance.
At the global level, while participating in multilateral finance negotiations, China is also drawing on its domestic experience and capacity to provide complementary public goods. As of October, China had signed 60 memoranda of understanding on South-South cooperation on climate change with 46 developing countries, trained more than 10,000 officials and technicians for over 120 developing countries, implemented flagship projects such as "Early Warnings for All" and the "Africa Solar Belt" program, and assisted Ethiopia in launching its first climate and meteorological satellite. From concepts to projects, from technology to talent, China is helping other developing countries enhance their climate resilience through concrete action. These efforts suggest that global climate governance cannot rest on shared visions alone; it must make finance accessible, technology usable and capacity sustainable.
In the COP31 discussions on adaptation, the scale of finance, the baseline year and the form of contributions will remain the focus of negotiation. Developing nations are broadly calling for a clear implementation road map to deliver the overall climate finance goal and the target of tripling adaptation finance, while urging a higher proportion of grants and simplified access procedures. Climate adaptation finance should not operate like commercial lending with restrictive conditions; the world needs a fairer and more accessible pool of resilience finance.
As extreme weather records keep falling, climate adaptation pledges cannot remain on paper. COP31 must serve not merely as a negotiation platform, but as a launchpad for action. China's solid progress toward building a climate-adaptive society and its commitment to sharing solutions through South-South cooperation demonstrate a practical reality: climate adaptation is not a bargaining chip in international negotiations, but vital survival infrastructure that must be built in advance. Moving from paper pledges to on-the-ground action is the only realistic choice for humanity in responding to the climate crisis.
Liu Kan is the director of the Secretariat of the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED). Mu Quan is a senior engineer at the Secretariat of the CCICED. Li Xiaojiang is a special advisor at the CCICED, a national engineering survey and design master, and former president of the China Academy of Urban Planning and Design.
The authors contributed this article to China Watch, a think tank powered by China Daily. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
Contact the editor at editor@chinawatch.cn.
