In 2021, Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) launched the Glasgow-Sharm-el Sheikh (GlaSS) work program on the global goal on adaptation (GGA). Over the past 2 years, the GlaSS work program has provided space for Parties and non-party stakeholders to exchange views and increase their understanding of the GGA. As the final rounds of negotiations on the GGA kick off at the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 28), a looming question remains: Will it be comprehensive enough for countries to implement in the years ahead?

As important discussions about the type and number of targets continue, countries have started seeing convergence on other elements of the GGA framework. Keeping in mind the bigger picture of adaptation, the GGA framework must be clear and comprehensive to provide countries and other stakeholders with the direction to meaningfully capture and generate lessons about adaptation progress through their national monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) systems. In particular, Parties and observers must consider four key elements required in the final decision text for the GGA framework to truly drive adaptation action and support. Otherwise, the GGA will fail to drive the much-needed increase in evidence on adaptation progress, potentially leading us to maladaptation and increased losses and damages.

Taking a Step Back: How did the GGA begin?

In 2015, the Paris Agreement established the GGA with the aim of “enhancing adaptive capacity, strengthening resilience and reducing vulnerability to climate change” (Article 7.1). Many expected the adaptation mandates under the Paris Agreement to pave the way with clear next steps that detail the content and operationalization of a framework to assess the GGA. However, progress was slow until Parties launched the GlaSS work program in 2021. This program focuses primarily on discussing approaches and methodologies for evaluating progress toward adopting the GGA at COP 28.

An ongoing challenge is that, unlike mitigation, no global metrics can meaningfully capture what “successful adaptation” entails across all contexts and ecosystems. As such, defining a framework for assessing the GGA has taken longer than expected.

Over the past 2 years, the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) and the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA), with the support of the UNFCCC Secretariat, have organized a series of eight workshops to bring Parties and other stakeholders together to discuss the scope and content of the GGA. Despite a bumpy road in the first year of experimenting with different modalities for improving inclusion, the GlaSS work program remarkably achieved several, if not most, of its eight original objectives. The progress made on the visibility and understanding of the GGA is clear.

State of Play: GGA discussions ahead of COP 28

Ahead of COP 28, Parties are converging on several elements. Over the past year, the definition of a framework for the GGA advanced notably with COP 27’s Decision 3/CMA.4. Later in 2023, despite difficult discussions at the Bonn talks in June, the draft conclusions from the 58th meeting of the Subsidiary Bodies (SB58) built on COP 27’s decision to propose possible structural elements for the outline of a draft decision to be adopted at COP 28.

Figure 1 shows the proposed elements that could be part of the COP 28 decision, based on SB58’s draft decision and ongoing party submissions over 2023, along with a traffic-light assessment of the level of convergence for each target.

Figure 1. Possible structural elements of a COP 28 decision text and traffic-light assessment of convergence

Structural elements	Level of convergence
Purpose
Principles
Inclusion of overarching layer (target or political message)
Target under the overarching layer
Inclusion of dimensions of the iteration adaptation cycle
Targets under the dimensions
Indicators under the dimensions
Inclusion of themes
Consolidation of themes
Targets and indicators under themes
Inclusion of general and cross-cutting considerations (CCCs)
Consolidation of CCCs
Targets and indicators under the CCCs
Inclusion of enabling conditions
Inclusion of means of implementation (MoI)
Targets and indicators related to MoI
Follow-up work
Development of indicators under dimensions
Development of further targets (themes, CCC)
Additional mandates to the Secretariat, Constituted Bodies, etc.
New agenda item under SBSTA and SBI on the GGA
Finance and budgetary provisions
Reporting and sources of information
Links to the global stocktake
International cooperation and the role of stakeholders

Source: Adapted from Bueno et al., 2023. 

Note: A green tick icon indicates convergence; a yellow exclamation mark icon indicates different approaches, yet convergence is possible; a red cross icon indicates prominent divergence remaining. For further information and explanations of the traffic light assessment, please refer to the recent reports from ARG1.5o prior to and after the 8th GlaSS workshop.

Four Elements for a Successful GGA Framework at COP 28: Impact, effectiveness, equity, and legitimacy

While the global stocktake (GST) and the GGA are concerned with assessing global, collective progress on adaptation, the realities of this progress are highly contextual and localized within countries. Here, national and subnational MEL systems play a crucial role in generating the much-needed empirical, secondary, and synthesized evidence to populate the GGA framework and inform the GST assessment. National MEL systems are a critical part of national adaptation planning, providing a source of multiple communication and reporting instruments for the UNFCCC and capturing data, experiences, and lessons about progress on adaptation across their constituencies. In short, the GGA decision must contain elements about types of information and the processes for generating this information; this will guide countries in operationalizing and integrating this framework into their existing MEL systems.

Discussions on the GGA have greatly advanced since 2021. However, some difficult conversations have been left to the last minute or haven’t happened at all. To reduce the risk of the GGA framework falling short of informing policies and enhancing finance flows, the following four elements must be included in the decision text:

1. Impact: A comprehensive overarching statement that complements focused dimension targets. Targets can play a pivotal role in capturing the attention of decision-makers and signalling where countries should invest in contextualizing an adopted GGA framework through their national MEL systems. There is no need for a wide array of achievable targets, which risk diluting attention and information across too many dimensions. A handful of focused targets can go a long way to hook global and national politicians and justify loosening their purse strings.

Here, let’s remember that ambition does not equate quantification. For example, defining quantitative outcome-level targets, such as the percentage of increasing resilience globally, would require detailed global methodologies that would not capture all contexts, along with burdensome baselines. Rather, the GGA could look at the example of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction’s monitoring and evaluation to set qualitative high-level goals that can be assessed from national and other sources rather than by rigid or aggregated methods. As such, the overarching statement should spell out a qualitative, comprehensive, and time-bound vision that can frame the GST assessment of progress towards the GGA.

2. Effectiveness: Inclusion of MoI across the decision text. The inclusion of MoI in the GGA decision text is a contentious issue. This is not uncommon in adaptation and loss and damage discussions; mentions of tracking and committing to support are rarely popular among developed countries. However, as the Adaptation Gap Report 2023 points out, adaptation is underfunded, and countries remain unprepared. With 133 of the 155 developing countries currently engaged in their national adaptation planning processes, the need to move from planning to implementation with appropriate funding strategies has never been more urgent. The reality is that without appropriate funding, accelerating adaptation actions and achieving the GGA will not be possible.

Circumventing or ignoring the importance of MoI in achieving the GGA would dilute the GGA framework’s purpose and limit its effectiveness. As one of the three pillars of the Paris Agreement, MoI has been recognized as separate from other enabling factors, such as leadership or institutional arrangements. Despite pushback by some countries, MoI’s importance should be reflected, ideally with clear mentions in more than one element of the GGA decision text.

3. Equity: Attention to gender and human rights considerations throughout the text. Achieving the GGA and building resilience to climate risks requires addressing the systemic issues that exacerbate vulnerability, including gender inequality and the denial of rights. It is crucial that the GGA framework provides clear mentions of gender and human rights to signal to countries the importance of operationalizing the GGA and its framework with these factors in mind.

Integrating gender considerations in the GGA framework will help ensure that countries monitor, assess, report, and ultimately generate lessons about the gendered impacts of the climate crisis and equity in adaptation efforts. More specifically, this means having clear mentions in the framework and the decision text that ensure that both data collection (to generate gendered evidence) and analyses (to understand gendered impacts) at national and global scales account for gender and different social groups. Gendered data and lessons, in turn, lead to improved design in adaptation actions and support, including gender budgeting.

4. Legitimacy: Clarified roles and responsibilities for further work. While it is critical to embed the three elements above in the GGA decision text, there is a high probability that further work will be needed. For example, this includes on the development of a handful of indicators under each adaptation dimension and potential additional mandates to the secretariat and/or constituted bodies. How further work is undertaken will also play an important role in the legitimacy and sustainability of the GGA framework and whether it will be fully endorsed and implemented by Parties.

Over the course of the history of the GGA discussions, it has been impossible to disentangle technical issues from political ones. These go hand in hand, as the choice of methodological approaches has implications on the level of burden on countries’ capacities and, of course, the funding needed to implement them. As such, the process for further work—for example, through a temporary ad hoc working group—must be both technical and political to be productive. This means having strong representation from the scientific and technical communities, as well as from countries and underrepresented groups.

It has been a long road since the start of the GlaSS work program in 2021. The advances are significant, but too often, UNFCCC decisions remain in the realm of global agreements without uptake from countries and local actors. The GGA framework must clearly signpost these four key elements for countries to follow up in order to operationalize it. This will help to break the GlaSS ceiling by removing barriers to achieving the GGA.