The 30th Conference of the Parties (COP30) in Belem, Brazil, marks a decade of the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) since its establishment in 2015 at the 21st Conference of Parities (COP21) under article 7.1 of the Paris Agreement. Proposed by the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) in 2013, the GGA was established in 2015 to ‘enhance the adaptive capacity, strengthen resilience, and reduce vulnerability to climate change.’ Initially, the GGA was developed to serve as a unified framework for adaptation, driving political action, securing and enhancing adaptation finance, and supporting adaptation intervention effectively at the national and local levels.
However, the collective commitment of GGA moved steadily for the first few years until 2021, before the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow, UK. In these early years (2016-2020), the GGA remained more of an aspiration than operational, as the Paris text from 2015 lacked a specific matrix or any detailed framework to measure the progress on adaptation. The discussion on adaptation was limited within the National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) of the Parties, while there was a growing political and grassroots momentum in support of adaptation.
In COP26, a two-year (2022-2023) work program on GGA, also known as the Glasgow-Sharm el-Sheikh (GlaSS) work program, was launched, one of the first structured operational efforts in defining GGA, the framework, and ideation of indicators. The work program included defining the ‘progress’ of adaptation efforts by the parties, focusing on national and locally led action, enhancing implementation support, and doubling the collective provision of adaptation finance by 2025 (from the 2019 level).
During the Sharm el-Sheikh COP (COP27) in 2022, the discussion on developing a comprehensive and operationalized framework for GGA was initiated. The framework was intended to exclude superficial statements while providing a more structured effort to highlight the global adaptation effort. A discussion was held on the existing GlaSS work program on defining GGA’s objective and measuring progress. Nevertheless, a lack of consensus within the parties on quantifying targets and particular aims for the goal was observed, due to the inherent difficulty of measuring adaptation. Thus, the parties stress a country-driven and inclusive approach to measuring adaptation progress that could mirror the specific needs and priorities of the vulnerable nations. In addition, the parties also agreed to avoid imposing an additional burden of reporting and implementation on the developing and vulnerable nations throughout the process. One of the key discussions under the GGA framework from COP27 was the identification of specific (e.g., water, food system, poverty eradication and livelihood) and cross-cutting (e.g., gender responsive, inclusive, and science driven indicators) themes that paved the way for further development of the targets, eventually being adopted as the UAE framework.
The COP28 was hosted by the UAE in Dubai, and the convening made a breakthrough in the GGA effort. The parties adopted the GGA framework, which was officially known as the UAE Framework for Global Climate Resilience. The framework included altogether eleven targets, of which seven thematic (water, food, health, ecosystem and biodiversity, infrastructure, poverty eradication and livelihoods, and cultural heritage) and four-dimensional (climate risk and vulnerability assessment, adaptation planning, implementation, and monitoring, evaluation, and learning) targets to guide the adaptation effort till 2030. By the adoption of the framework, for the first time, a blueprint to execute and measure GGA and adaptation effort was formalized. However, the framework still lacked clarity on measuring the proposed adaptation targets and measures to mobilize finance, technology, and capacity building, collectively known as the ‘means of implementation.’ As a result, another two-year-long work program, known as the UAE-Belem work program (2024-2025), was introduced. The key purpose of launching the work program was to develop specific indicators to track progress under each target of the GGA framework, measure progress, identify gaps, and guide policy and investment for scaling adaptation action with a deadline till COP30.
At COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, the Baku Adaptation Road Map was initiated to foster implementation of the Global Climate Resilience framework. Technical experts and instructions were provided by the parties to develop the indicators under different targets, while GGA was established as a permanent agenda item in the UNFCCC negotiation process. On adaptation finance, there was a consensus on tripling adaptation finance by 2030 (from the 2023 level), while the parties agreed to triple the overall climate finance to USD 300 billion annually by 2035, with a broader aim of USD 1.3 trillion under the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG).
In 2024-2025, before COP30, technical experts worked on refining the indicators under the GGA targets, scrutinizing 100 indicators from the initial number of approximately 9,500, which were submitted by various parties and expert groups. In the end, at COP30 in Belem, Brazil, the negotiators further screened and adopted a set of 59 indicators (also known as the Belem Adaptation Indicators) under the eleven thematic and dimensional targets. These indicators were agreed upon to be country-driven, voluntary, and non-prescriptive, which could be used by the parties to inform their National Adaptation Plan (NAPs). Such a decision by the negotiators on altering the indicators, developed by more than 78 experts over the course of two years, came as a surprise to many. This also created controversy, while many parties objected to the GGA outcome. Hence, in the final plenary, the COP30 Presidency promised to carry the discussion to the Bonn Climate Talks (better known as the SBs: a mid-year meeting of the UNFCCC’s subsidiary bodies), which is to be held later in June 2026.
Furthermore, another two-year-long policy alignment process, named the ‘Belem-Addis Vision’, was established to guide and improve methodologies to use the new indicators. However, this decision also lacked clarity on whether parties were to use the adopted indicators from COP30, as they may change in the next two years during the process.
In addition, a new implementation alliance for National Adaptation Plans was introduced by the COP30 Presidency, UNDP, and the governments of Germany and Italy in response to address the growing gap between adaptation planning and implementation. The major objective of allying is to support the nations in implementing their NAPs as on-ground solutions, aligning stakeholders, and channeling investments to support resilient projects.
On the occasion of celebrating a decade of GGA establishment at COP30, the expectation remained high. Despite a much clearer framework, detailed targets, and a set of indicators, the discussion on GGA failed to align with the ambition of finance mobilization and the means of implementation. The commitments on tripling the adaptation finance by 2035 lacked clarity on the scale, source, and timeline, with a weaker obligatory language compared to the Glasgow COP commitment. As finance remains the key aspect of supporting adaptation, without stronger institutional linkages to finance, nationally grounded implementation pathways, and mechanisms to translate global objectives into country-level action, the GGA risks functioning more as a consensus-building forum than as a catalyst for transformative adaptation. Nevertheless, GGA is the ‘Beacon of Hope’ for the vulnerable countries such as the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and the Small Island Developing States (SIDS), as it upholds the ‘adaptation’ as the global priority besides ‘mitigation’.
