ABSTRACT
Climate finance is a bedrock of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and central to achieving our climate change ambitions. Despite the increasing attention to the study of climate finance, we understand little of the finance flows for urban climate change adaptation. To understand the landscape of climate finance directed to urban adaptation, this chapter seeks to comprehensively map the literature through an interdisciplinary systematic literature review (2010–2021) and a bibliometric analysis with a focus on cities in the Global North. Emergent research themes and gaps in our knowledge are presented along with suggested research methods to address these gaps. The author found urban adaptation finance flows and needs are largely unquantified and unknown at this stage; there is a pressing need to address this knowledge gap and undertake more targeted and detailed urban adaptation financing studies. Climate finance scholars need to extend their work to cover urban adaptation finance to start to disentangle the complex financing issues at play.
