Ban Ki-moon is the eighth secretary-general of the U.N. and the co-chair of the Ban Ki-moon Centre for Global Citizens. Ana Toni is the CEO of COP30. As world leaders gather in Belém, Brazil for this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30), we are standing at a global tipping point. 2024 broke temperature records, as the world temporarily surpassed the 1.5 degrees Celsius target for the first time. And now, we’re on track to cross it permanently within just five years. This means adaptation action has never been more vital for our survival. From the year 2000 to 2019, climate change already cost the world’s most vulnerable countries an estimated $525 billion. This burden only continues to rise, putting lives at risk and undoing hard-won development gains, with global annual damages likely to land somewhere between $19 trillion and $59 trillion in 2050. Even more sobering, the world economy is already locked into a 19 percent loss of income by 2050 due to climate change, no matter how successful today’s mitigation efforts are. This makes one thing clear: The consequence of inaction is far greater than the consequence of action. The world must stop seeing adaptation as a cost to bear but as an investment that strengthens economies and builds healthier, more secure communities. Every dollar invested in adaptation can generate more than 10 times that in benefits through avoided losses, as well as induced economic, social and environmental benefits. Every dollar invested in agricultural research and development generates similar returns for smallholder farmers, vulnerable communities and ecosystems too. This remains true even if climate-related disasters don’t occur. Effective adaptation does more than save lives — it makes the economic case for resilience. And if we really want to tackle the crises of today’s world, we need to put people — especially those most vulnerable — at the center of all our conversations and efforts. Those least responsible for climate change are the ones our financing must reach. Here, locally led adaptation provides a path forward, focusing on giving communities agency over their futures, addressing structural inequalities and enhancing local capacities. Today, more than 2 billion people depend on smallholder farms for their livelihoods, but as little as 1.7 percent of climate finance reaches Indigenous communities and locally operated farms. Small-scale agri-food systems, which are essential to many in developing countries, receive a mere 0.8 percent of international climate finance. This is deeply unjust. These are the people and systems most threatened by climate impacts — and they’re often the best-placed ones to deliver locally effective and regionally adaptive solutions. To that end, appropriate investments in global networks like the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) could accelerate and scale technologies that can be adopted by these local systems. These tools could then be used to improve resilience and increase productivity in low- and middle-income countries, while also reducing inequalities and advancing gender equity and social inclusion. The world economy is already locked into a 19 percent loss of income by 2050 due to climate change. | Albert Llop/Getty Images Scaling such efforts will be crucial in moving toward systemic climate solutions. Our ambition is to move from negotiation to implementation to protect lives, safeguard assets and advance equity. But it’s important to remember that adaptation is distinct — it is inherently local; shaped by geography, communities and governance systems. Meeting this challenge will require more than just pledges. It will necessitate high-quality public and private adaptation finance that is accessible to vulnerable countries and communities. That’s why governments around the world — especially those in high-income countries — must design institutional arrangements and policies that raise additional public funds, incentivize markets and embed resilience into every investment decision. The decade since the Paris Agreement laid the foundations for a world at peace with the planet. And with COP30 now taking place in the heart of the Amazon, we must make adaptation a global priority and see resilience as the investment agenda of the 21st century. At its core, climate finance should be driving development pathways that put people first. In Belém, leaders must now close the adaptation finance gap and ensure funding reaches those on the front lines. They need to back investable national resilience strategies, replicate successful initiatives and put resilience at the center of financial decision-making. COP30 needs to be transformative and lead to markets that reward resilience, communities that are better protected and economies built on firmer, more climate-resilient foundations. Let this be the moment we finally move from awareness to alignment, and from ambition to action. Our collective survival depends on it. Question is, will our leaders have the political will to seize it?

Elisabeth Braw is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, the author of the award-winning “Goodbye Globalization” and a regular columnist for POLITICO. Over the past two years, state-linked Russian hackers have repeatedly attacked Liverpool City Council — and it’s not because the Kremlin harbors a particular dislike toward the port city in northern England. Rather, these attacks are part of a strategy to hit cities, governments and businesses with large financial losses, and they strike far beyond cyberspace. In the Gulf of Finland, for example, the damage caused to undersea cables by the Eagle S shadow vessel in December incurred costs adding up to tens of millions of euros — and that’s just one incident. Russia has attacked shopping malls, airports, logistics companies and airlines, and these disruptions have all had one thing in common: They have a great cost to the targeted companies and their insurers. One can’t help but feel sorry for Liverpool City Council. In addition to looking after the city’s half-million or so residents, it also has to keep fighting Russia’s cyber gangs who, according to a recent report, have been attacking ceaselessly: “We have experienced many attacks from this group and their allies using their Distributed Botnet over the last two years,” the report noted, referring to the hacktivist group NoName057(16), which has been linked to the Russian state. “[Denial of Service attacks] for monetary or political reasons is a widespread risk for any company with a web presence or that relies on internet-based systems.” Indeed. Over the past decades, state-linked Russian hackers have targeted all manner of European municipalities, government agencies and businesses. This includes the 2017 NotPetya attack, which brought down “four hospitals in Kiev alone, six power companies, two airports, more than 22 Ukrainian banks, ATMs and card payment systems in retailers and transport, and practically every federal agency,” as well as a string of multinationals, causing staggering losses of around $10 billion. More recently, Russia has taken to targeting organizations and businesses in other ways as well. There have been arson attacks, including one involving Poland’s largest shopping mall that Prime Minister Donald Tusk subsequently said was definitively “ordered by Russian special services.” There have been parcel bombs delivered to DHL; fast-growing drone activity reported around European defense manufacturing facilities; and a string of suspicious incidents damaging or severing undersea cables and even a pipeline. The costly list goes on: Due to drone incursions into restricted airspace, Danish and German airports have been forced to temporarily close, diverting or cancelling dozens of flights. Russia’s GPS jamming and spoofing are affecting a large percentage of commercial flights all around the Baltic Sea. In the Red Sea, Houthi attacks are causing most ships owned by or flagged in Western countries to redirect along the much longer Cape of Good Hope route, which adds costs. The Houthis are not Russia, but Russia (and China) could easily aid Western efforts to stop these attacks — yet they don’t. They simply enjoy the enormous privilege of having their vessels sail through unassailed. The organizations and companies hit by Russia have so far managed to avert calamitous harm. But these attacks are so dangerous and reckless that people will, sooner or later, lose their lives. There have been arson attacks, including one involving Poland’s largest shopping mall that Prime Minister Donald Tusk subsequently said was definitively “ordered by Russian special services.” | Aleksander Kalka/Getty Images What’s more, their targets will continue losing a lot of money. The repairs of a subsea data cable alone typically costs up to a couple million euros. The owners of EstLink 2 — the undersea power cable hit by the Eagle S— incurred losses of nearly €60 million. Closing an airport for several hours is also incredibly expensive, as is cancelling or diverting flights. To be sure, most companies have insurance to cover them against cyber attacks or similar harm, but insurance is only viable if the harm is occasional. If it becomes systematic, underwriters can no longer afford to take on the risk — or they have to significantly increase their premiums. And there’s the kicker: An interested actor can make disruption systematic. That is, in fact, what Russia is doing. It is draining our resources, making it increasingly costly to be a business based in a Western country, or even a city council or government authority, for that matter. This is terrifying — and not just for the companies that may be hit. But while Russia appears far beyond the reach of any possible efforts to convince it to listen to its better angels, we can still put up a steely front. The armed forces put up the literal steel, of course, but businesses and civilian organizations can practice and prepare for any attacks that Russia, or other hostile countries, could decide to launch against them. Such preparation would limit the possible harm such attacks can lead to. It begs the question, if an attack causes minimal disruption, then what’s the point of instigating it in the first place? That’s why government-led gray-zone exercises that involve the private sector are so important. I’ve been proposing them for several years now, and for every month that passes, they become even more essential. Like the military, we shouldn’t just conduct these exercises — we should tell the whole world we’re doing so too. Demonstrating we’re ready could help dissuade sinister actors who believe they can empty our coffers. And it has a side benefit too: It helps companies show their customers and investors that they can, indeed, weather whatever Russia may dream up.