Since the 28th UN Climate Change Conference (COP 28), under the UAE-Bélem work programme, nominated experts have been working to develop a set of indicators to help track progress in climate change adaptation. Experts from the International Institute for Sustainable Development, Women’s Environment and Development Organization, and Practical Action review the recently released “long shortlist” of indicators, analyze how well gender responsiveness has been integrated, and share recommendations ahead of critical climate talks in Bonn.
Co-authored by Angie Dazé, IISD; Emilie Beauchamp, IISD; Alexandria Gordon, Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO); and Demet Intepe, Practical Action
The COP 30 Presidency is placing adaptation at the top of the agenda for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) talks in Bonn, and a key focus will be the Global Goal on Adaptation—the Paris Agreement’s political commitment to drive and enhance global progress on climate change adaptation.
Tracking the progress, effectiveness, and equity of adaptation actions is complex because, unlike mitigation, adaptation cannot be measured by a single global metric. However, at COP 28, parties adopted the United Arab Emirates Framework for Global Climate Resilience (UAE FGCR), outlining the framework to assess collective progress on the Global Goal on Adaptation.
With a clear set of targets and cross-cutting considerations, the UAE FGRC provides the global community with a direction of travel for advancing adaptation efforts.
What it doesn’t do is clarify how progress toward these targets will be assessed. For this, countries also established at COP 28 the 2-year UAE-Bélem work programme, under which nominated expert groups have been working to identify and develop a set of indicators that can be used to track progress toward the targets.
In this article, we review the recently released “long shortlist” of indicators, analyze how well gender responsiveness has been integrated, and share our recommendations.
Why Adaptation Must Address Gender Inequality
It’s well established that the impacts of climate change affect people differently based on their gender, as well as a range of other factors such as age, race, Indigeneity, migrant status, and disability.
Recent analysis from UN Women estimated that, under the worst-case scenario, climate change could push up to 158 million more women and girls into extreme poverty. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded in 2022 that inequities linked to gender exacerbate vulnerability and that these inequities could be worsened if adaptation actions do not address harmful power dynamics. They point to the need for adaptation efforts to be grounded in equity and justice for better outcomes.
This is recognized in the UAE FGCR, which encourages countries to adopt gender-responsive and participatory approaches, taking into consideration vulnerable groups and communities. It also emphasizes the need for adaptation to apply locally led and intersectional approaches, along with the best available science and Indigenous and Traditional Knowledge.
Put simply, if adaptation efforts are to be effective, they must address gender inequality, and the indicators established to track progress must enable assessment of how gender responsive adaptation processes and outcomes are.
The recently released shortlist of indicators does show attempts at integrating gender considerations, with extensive work from the expert working groups and engagement with civil society and parties.
Unfortunately, it falls short of addressing gender considerations systematically and in a way that countries can easily implement through their national monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) systems for adaptation.
Integration of gender equality and social inclusion has already been identified as a weakness in current MEL systems for adaptation globally. A lack of integration of gender in the UAE-Bélem work programme risks creating a set of indicators that do not capture equity in measuring the impacts of adaptation efforts on different groups, including many women and girls who experience higher vulnerability due to structural barriers driven by gender inequality. We do recognize that gender is not the only social factor that exacerbates vulnerability to climate change. However, it is a factor with a strong foundation within the UNFCCC process, with the Lima Work Programme on Gender first adopted in 2014, and the Gender Action Plan since 2017. Gender also provides an important starting point for consideration of equity in outcomes from adaptation action. While here we focus on gender responsiveness as a key entry point for integrating social factors, we strongly encourage efforts to address other factors such as age, race, Indigeneity, migrant status, and disability.
Gender in the Existing “Long Shortlist” of Indicators: What’s there?
The UAE FGCR identifies 11 targets for adaptation, including seven thematic targets focusing on key priorities and four targets that focus on the stages of the iterative adaptation cycle (IAC).
These are:
- impact, vulnerability, and risk assessment
- planning
- implementation
- MEL
The expert groups have identified a “long shortlist” of 490 indicators linked to these 11 targets. These are meant to guide countries’ efforts to track and report on adaptation efforts, using their national MEL systems to report and communicate via UNFCCC instruments, such as biennial transparency reports, adaptation communications, and national communications.
Consideration of gender is especially important in the indicators for the dimensions of the IAC, as much of what makes adaptation plans, policies, and actions gender responsive relies on the processes through which they are developed, implemented, and assessed. In establishing targets for the IAC, the UAE FGCR helpfully recognizes that adaptation is an ongoing, iterative process. However, when it comes to the indicators that have been identified for the IAC, it’s a mixed picture in terms of how they incorporate gender dimensions.
While we welcome the inclusion of specific gender-related indicators or sub-indicators for planning, implementation, and MEL, their quality could be improved in terms of clarity, consistency, and feasibility. The suggested indicator for gender-responsive adaptation plans includes multiple elements, some of which overlap with indicator content that should be tracked in the implementation and MEL phases.
For the implementation dimension, the proposed indicator refers to implementation “with a gender focus,” which is not the same thing as gender responsive, while under MEL it simply refers to “MEL systems that are gender-responsive.” Without clearer definitions and guidance, these indicators risk being impossible to for countries to consistently operationalize, and therefore difficult to analyze globally.
When it comes to the thematic targets, some efforts have been made to incorporate disaggregated data in relation to particular indicators. However, disaggregation is currently neither consistent nor systematized. For example, some indicators focus on disaggregation by gender, some on sex, and some on women, and in some cases, pregnant women specifically.
What’s Needed?
The gender-related indicators in the “long shortlist” provide a starting point, but a more systematic approach is needed to effectively support the integration of gender considerations into the tracking and reporting of progress on adaptation.
As the set of indicators is discussed at the 2025 Subsidiary Body meeting in Bonn, it will be important that parties maintain and improve on what is already there, recognizing that this is essential for an effective UAE FGCR.
We highlight four key considerations for ensuring a set of indicators that works:
- qualitative indicators to assess gender responsiveness: Recognizing that there are many ways to integrate a gender-responsive approach, flexible but structured qualitative methods will enable countries to assess the gender responsiveness of their adaptation efforts. We recommend a three-point scale often used in scorecards (for example, in the Tracking Adaptation and Measuring Development approach). Here, we suggest the following: no evidence of integration of gender considerations; some evidence of integration of gender considerations; evidence of systematic integration of gender considerations. This can be applied across the four IAC targets.
- evidence-based approach: To support the application of qualitative indicators to assess gender responsiveness, countries will need to consider a range of different types of evidence. We highlight four key types of evidence that countries can incorporate into their MEL systems to assess gender responsiveness in their adaptation processes:
- evidence of a commitment to a gender-responsive process
- evidence of inclusion of gender experts, institutions, and/or organizations
- evidence of integration of gender-disaggregated data and gender analyses
- evidence of uptake of gender considerations in the outputs in adaptation processes and actions.
- complementary guidance on reporting for feasibility: The suggested gender-related indicators for the IAC require simple methodologies that can be consistently applied, while maintaining flexibility to capture the diversity of country contexts and their unique adaptation journeys. For this reason, we suggest that guidance be provided that encourages countries to include an accompanying narrative that describes the evidence they used to conduct their assessment of gender responsiveness. In addition to strengthening the robustness of their reporting, this will aid in identifying good practices and learning across countries. This guidance should be integrated into the guidelines for biennial transparency reports, adaptation communications, and national communications for coherence when reviewed.
- consistent gender disaggregation in the thematic targets: Efforts have been made to incorporate gender-disaggregated data; however, this is not systematic, and there is a lack of consistency in the way gender issues are captured. A clear, consistent approach to disaggregation by gender—and other, often intersectional, social factors—is recommended across all relevant indicators.
By addressing gender considerations throughout the UAE-Bélem set of indicators, we increase the likelihood that gender-related issues will be prioritized in decision making and that gender-differentiated needs and priorities will be addressed. In short, when defining a final set of 100 indicators, parties and experts should remember that gender-responsive adaptation is a must-do, not a should-do, and this needs to be reflected. Ultimately, this is crucial for outcomes of adaptation actions to be equitably distributed across people of different genders and social groups.
For more information about WEDO’s Advocacy around Adaptation and Resilience at SB62, please contact Alexandria Gordon at alex@wedo.org.
