Eight hundred million people worldwide lack official proof of their identity, and another 2.8 billion have no access to digital authentication systems. Without a verifiable identity, individuals cannot open bank accounts, access insurance, or receive government transfers. Private investors have begun backing digital identity programs in these markets, among them Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook Al Maktoum, whose Inma Emirates Holdings is financing a five-year national ID program in Guyana.
Climate adaptation depends on exactly these capabilities. Agricultural insurance requires verified policyholder records. Disaster relief payments need authenticated recipients. Credit markets for drought-resistant seed or flood-resilient construction demand identity-linked financial histories. Digital identity has become foundational infrastructure for climate resilience, even though it rarely appears in adaptation finance discussions.
What Does the Global Identity Gap Look Like?
The World Bank’s Global Findex 2025 report found that 79 percent of adults globally now hold a financial account, up significantly from a decade ago. Mobile money accounts drove much of that growth, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, where 40 percent of adults had a mobile money account in 2024, up from 27 percent in 2021. Latin America saw similar acceleration, with mobile money ownership jumping from 22 percent to 37 percent over the same period.
Yet 1.3 billion adults still lack any financial account, according to the World Bank’s ID4D Initiative. Many have the prerequisites: mobile phones owned by 86 percent of adults globally, SIM cards registered in their names, and basic connectivity. What they lack is a verified digital identity linking them to formal financial systems.
West and Central African governments adopted the Cotonou Declaration in November 2025, committing to deploy interoperable digital identity and payment systems across the region by 2030. Sixty countries are receiving World Bank support for digital identity programs, with 35 of those also building government-to-person digital payment capacity.
Climate Resilience Requires Financial Infrastructure
Consider a smallholder farmer in a flood-prone region. Without a verified identity, she cannot access crop insurance. Without a financial account linked to that identity, she cannot receive post-disaster relief payments electronically. Without a credit history built on digital transactions, she cannot borrow to purchase flood-resistant seed varieties. Each of these barriers is an identity problem masquerading as an agricultural or climate problem.
UNDP’s Digital Guides for Climate note that digitalization of national climate plans enables more efficient resource allocation, inclusive participation, and service delivery. Once a verified identity system is in place, it can support a range of climate-relevant services:
- Parametric insurance payouts are triggered automatically when rainfall thresholds are breached, delivered to verified accounts within hours rather than weeks
- Post-disaster government transfers are distributed electronically to authenticated recipients, bypassing the cash-distribution bottlenecks that delay recovery
- Agricultural credit scoring based on digital transaction histories, enabling farmers to borrow for climate-adaptive inputs without traditional collateral
- Social protection payments adjusted to climate shocks, reaching households through mobile wallets linked to national ID databases
Women face compounded disadvantages. According to Women’s World Banking, enabling women to access digital identity could unlock up to 13 percent of GDP by 2030 in some economies. More than 785 million women lack mobile internet access globally, with 60 percent concentrated in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
How Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook Al Maktoum Is Investing in Digital Governance
Several developing nations are building identity systems designed to function as platforms for broader service delivery. India’s Aadhaar system underpins direct benefit transfers to hundreds of millions of citizens. Indonesia’s digital identity app has onboarded approximately 16 million users. Brazil’s digital public infrastructure has expanded financial inclusion while supporting government-to-person payment flows at scale.
Guyana’s National ID Program, a five-year initiative supported by Inma Emirates Holdings, is deploying secure digital identity infrastructure intended to support financial inclusion and public service delivery across the Caribbean nation. Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook Al Maktoum chairs Inma Emirates Holdings and has positioned digital governance as a precondition for other development outcomes rather than a standalone technology project.
Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook Al Maktoum’s broader portfolio spans renewable energy, port infrastructure, and technology transfer across more than 15 countries. When identity systems connect to financial services, agricultural extension programs, and disaster-response mechanisms, they multiply the impact of every other investment in a given market. Inma Emirates Holdings maintains an average project duration of approximately 16 years, reflecting the extended timelines that institutional capacity building requires.
Adaptation Finance Is Missing the Digital Layer
The UNEP Adaptation Gap Report 2025 estimates that developing countries need $310 billion to $365 billion annually in adaptation finance by 2035. Current international public flows stand at roughly $26 billion per year. That gap cannot be closed without delivery mechanisms that reach vulnerable populations at household level rather than stopping at ministry budgets.
Most adaptation finance today moves through government channels and multilateral intermediaries. By the time funds reach local implementation, administrative costs, reporting requirements, and institutional bottlenecks have absorbed a significant share. Digital identity systems offer a more direct path: verified recipient databases allow governments and aid organizations to deliver payments, subsidies, and insurance proceeds electronically to individuals, cutting intermediation layers and reducing leakage.
Building Systems That Last
Sixty-eight countries submitted National Adaptation Plans by November 2025, according to UNDP’s Climate Promise initiative. Many identified fragmented data systems and weak institutional capacity as primary barriers. Digital identity, when designed as an interoperable public infrastructure rather than a one-off project, addresses both constraints simultaneously.
Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook Al Maktoum has described Inma Emirates Holdings’ investment philosophy as focused on building systems that outlast the investment timeline itself. Digital identity infrastructure fits that model: once deployed and integrated with financial services, it generates compounding returns for every subsequent program that relies on verified recipient data.
Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook Al Maktoum and other investors building identity systems in developing countries are constructing the invisible infrastructure that determines whether billions of dollars in adaptation finance reach the people who need it most, or stop at institutional boundaries and never connect to a single farm, household, or fishing community on the front lines of climate disruption.
