How far has climate adaptation actually penetrated the world's statute books? A review from LSE's Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, authored by Tiffanie Chan, Sara Mehryar, Martina Podesta and Anna Beswick and launched at an LSE event in early March, catalogues 902 adaptation-relevant laws and policies across 35 countries, offering the most systematic picture yet of the legal architecture of adaptation.
The headline finding is recency: about three-quarters of the documents were adopted after the 2015 Paris Agreement, and 46 per cent since 2020. Eighteen of the 35 countries have enacted climate framework laws that guide adaptation, and around two-thirds are legally required to produce a National Adaptation Plan and to carry out risk and vulnerability assessments. Yet the authors find compliance, regular updating and progress reporting remain weak, and disaster risk management laws rarely integrate adaptation meaningfully, especially for emerging threats such as extreme heat.
The review lands at a consequential moment, after governments at COP30 in Belem agreed indicators for the Global Goal on Adaptation and called for adaptation finance to triple by 2035. The authors recommend a whole-of-government approach, embedding adaptation in public financial management, and far stronger coherence between disaster risk management and development policy, so that laws on paper translate into resilience on the ground.