What recent climate crises show about how we finance emergencies.

In recent years, Brazilians have had to get used to an increasingly frequent sequence of news reports about extreme weather events. Intense rains, floods, landslides, and prolonged droughts have become part of the daily routine and news broadcasts. The problem is that, while disasters intensify, the funding available to respond to them often still follows an improvised logic.

We witnessed this dramatically in the floods that hit Rio Grande do Sul in 2024. Millions of people were affected, entire infrastructures were destroyed, cities were isolated, and economic losses reached billions of reais. Resource mobilization did occur, but mainly after the tragedy, through emergency packages, donation campaigns, and reconstruction programs.

Shortly after, while we were still dealing with the impacts of that disaster, another episode reinforced the same pattern: earlier this year, intense rains hit the Zona da Mata region of Minas Gerais, causing floods and landslides. Once again, thousands of people were affected, families lost their homes, and the financial mobilization came mainly after the impact.

This new reality shows that the financing system has not yet been structured to deal with such a high frequency of disasters.

And this challenge is not just Brazilian. According to the United Nations Environment Programme, developing countries need between US$$ 310 and US$$ 365 billion per year until 2035 to finance climate adaptation measures. But the resources available today are far below this amount: the UN estimates that financing needs for adaptation are 12 to 14 times greater than current flows.

This difference between needs and available resources, in practice, means cities are less prepared to face extreme events, communities are more exposed to risks, and governments have to react in an emergency and unprepared manner whenever a new crisis occurs.

This is because we continue to operate in an essentially reactive model. In other words, we wait for disaster to occur before mobilizing resources. This pattern not only increases reconstruction costs but also widens inequalities, since the most vulnerable populations are always the most exposed to the impacts.

Therefore, the need for different financing mechanisms for climate emergencies is becoming increasingly evident. Funds structured for this purpose allow for faster responses, immediate support for affected communities, and greater organization in reconstruction processes.

In addition to speeding up disaster response, these instruments help coordinate different sources of resources around a common goal. When well-structured, financial mechanisms can align public, private, and philanthropic resources and quickly direct them to where they are most needed.

Working at Sitawi Finanças do Bem, I closely observe how philanthropic resources can contribute to responding to socio-environmental crises. At the same time, it is clear that one-off donations, mobilized in an emergency after a disaster, are very welcome, but cannot be the primary way to deal with the scale and frequency of extreme weather events that the country has been facing. 

If the effects of climate change continue to accelerate, the ways to finance the response also need to evolve with the same agility. This is a necessary step to strengthen the country's capacity to react to and deal with an increasingly challenging climate scenario.