Inequity and poverty also constrain 
adaptation, leading to soft limits and resulting in disproportionate 
exposure and impacts for most vulnerable groups (high conﬁdence). The 
largest adaptation gaps exist among lower income population groups 
(high conﬁdence). As adaptation options often have long implementation 
times, long-term planning and accelerated implementation, particularly 
in this decade, is important to close adaptation gaps, recognising that 
constraints remain for some regions (high conﬁdence). Prioritisation of 
options and transitions from incremental to transformational adaptation 
are limited due to vested interests, economic lock-ins, institutional 
path dependencies and prevalent practices, cultures, norms and belief 
systems (high conﬁdence). Many funding, knowledge and practice 
gaps remain for effective implementation, monitoring and evaluation 
of adaptation (high conﬁdence), including, lack of climate literacy at 
all levels and limited availability of data and information (medium 
conﬁdence); for example for Africa, severe climate data constraints and 
inequities in research funding and leadership reduce adaptive capacity 
(very high conﬁdence). {WGII SPM C.1.2, WGII SPM C.3.1, WGII TS.D.1.3, 
WGII TS.D.1.5, WGII TS.D.2.4}
2.3.3. Lack of Finance as a Barrier to Climate Action 
Insufﬁcient ﬁnancing, and a lack of political frameworks and 
incentives for ﬁnance, are key causes of the implementation 
gaps for both mitigation and adaptation (high conﬁdence). 
Financial ﬂows remained heavily focused on mitigation, are 
uneven, and have developed heterogeneously across regions 
and sectors (high conﬁdence). In 2018, public and publicly mobilised 
private climate ﬁnance ﬂows from developed to developing countries 
were below the collective goal under the UNFCCC and Paris Agreement 
to mobilise USD 100 billion per year by 2020 in the context of 
meaningful mitigation action and transparency on implementation 
(medium conﬁdence).