North star for climate change adaptation: Making progress on the Global Goal on Adaptation

10 years after the Paris Agreement, 2025 is set to be the year that renders the Global Goal on Adaptation operational

Ten years after the Paris Agreement, 2025 is set to render a key part of it operational: the Global Goal on Adaptation, or GGA for short. Agreed in Paris, the GGA aims to enhance adaptive capacity, strengthen resilience, and reduce vulnerability to climate change in the context of the temperature goal. So far, it has advanced through two work programs (from 2022-2023 and 2024-2025) and is now defined through the UAE Framework for Global Climate Resilience, which lists seven thematic and four dimensional targets. The current work program—the UAE–Belém work program—was launched in Dubai and is mandated to deliver a set of indicators for these targets at the end of this year, when countries from across the world will convene at COP30 in Belém, Brazil.

Why the GGA matters

The GGA was established by the Paris Agreement as a north star and compass for climate change adaptation, meant to assess collective progress and guide countries towards climate-resilient development and progress across key sectors, such as water, food, health, ecosystems, infrastructure and human settlements, livelihoods, and cultural heritage.

Through its targets and the upcoming indicators, the GGA will help to create a shared language for adaptation, allowing countries to track trends while respecting their respective national contexts and capacities. It also links technical work to political processes: the indicator package will feed into future Global Stocktakes and could contribute to adaptation reporting and alignment across processes. Furthermore, the GGA has the potential to strengthen the connection between action and support, as means of implementation—finance, technology, and capacity-building—have been recognised as essential enablers and are expected to be reflected in the final set of indicators.

The state of play

Developing indicators for adaptation is a complex technical and political undertaking. After the climate conference in Bonn in June 2024, a group of experts was convened to revise and refine a large pool of potential indicators into a smaller list of indicator options. In 2025, they had created a consolidated list of 490 indicator options, roughly 37% of which were newly proposed, the rest taken from the existing pool. At the Bonn climate conference in June 2025, countries then provided further guidance to the experts to reduce this list to no more than 100. They also instructed experts to ensure that the entries on this list are phrased as measurable indicators, remain specific to adaptation, and include indicators for means of implementation, which should address access, quality, and provision of adaptation finance in line with the Paris Agreement.

However, negotiations in Bonn also highlighted several open questions and areas of contention between countries, including on the structure of the final indicator set; the inclusion of vulnerable groups and cross-cutting considerations; and, in particular, the scope and formulation of indicators on means of implementation, with discussions on this item taking place deep into the final hours of the conference.

Countries have also repeatedly stressed that the GGA targets and their indicators should not create additional reporting burdens for countries, especially developing countries. While reporting on the GGA will be helpful to assess global progress—and ambition—on climate change adaptation, it is voluntary for all countries and can happen through a variety of channels, such as National Adaptation Plans, national communications, or biennial transparency reports.

Expectations for COP30

The GGA will be a centrepiece during the next major climate change conference, COP30 in Belém, Brazil, where tens of thousands of delegates from almost 200 countries will gather for negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Kyoto Protocol, and the Paris Agreement. 

Countries have agreed to decide on a manageable, globally applicable menu of no more than 100 indicators that capture progress towards all targets of the GGA. Through the work of the experts as well as political discussions, they will have to strike a balance between global compatibility and relevance to regional, national, and local circumstances; find a coherent methodology across different sectors and dimensions; and find a way to deliver on finance, technology, and capacity-building to enable ambitious implementation of adaptation action.

Another open question is the Baku Adaptation Roadmap, which will look at other aspects beyond the above-mentioned indicators. These could include, for example, the role of science and evidence, as well as a pathway for the adaptation agenda post-Belém, positioning the GGA within a multi-year arc that includes the next Global Stocktake scheduled for 2028. At COP30, countries are likely to clarify scope, modalities, timelines, and institutional arrangements under the roadmap, with the hope of building a bridge that will lead from targets and indicators to scaled-up action and enhanced access to means of implementation for developing countries.

A Belém package that adopts a robust menu of indicators with clear methods and flexibility for national application; embeds indicators on adaptation finance and other support; and launches an actionable roadmap with clear milestones and mandates for 2026 and beyond could turn the GGA into an operational north star for implementation and long-term global resilience.

(The writer works as Director: Research & Knowledge Management at SLYCAN Trust, a non-profit think tank. His work focuses on climate change, adaptation, resilience, ecosystem conservation, just transition, human mobility, and a range of related issues. He holds a Master’s degree in Education from the University of Cologne, Germany and is a regular contributor to several international and local media outlets.)