Published

1 year ago

December 25, 2024

Alice Rush

At COP28 in Dubai last November, countries agreed specific global targets on adaptation for the first time.

This marked a significant step forward for the “global goal on adaptation” (GGA) work programme, which was established in 2015, but has seen little progress over the subsequent years.

The GGA framework agreed last year sets out targets that will act as a guide for nations in their efforts to protect their people and ecosystems from the impacts of climate change.

The agreement also saw the launch of the two-year UAE-Belém work programme, which will produce a set of indicators to track progress towards these targets by COP30 next year.

Recently, more than 5,000 potential indicators were submitted to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) secretariat by parties and non-party stakeholders, including UN bodies, specialised agencies and other relevant organisations.

This created a daunting challenge: how to select adaptation indicators that are meaningful, feasible and that do not cause undue reporting burden?

In this article, we look at a series of key considerations for developing effective indicators that track progress on adaptation.

What is the ‘global goal on adaptation’?

The GGA in the Paris Agreement aims to enhance adaptive capacity, strengthen resilience and reduce vulnerability to climate change, in the context of the goal to limit global average temperature increase to “well-below 2C”.

Until recently, progress towards the GGA becoming operational has been slow. But COP28 saw a significant step forwards, with countries agreeing a global framework known as the “United Arab Emirates framework for global climate resilience”.

The GGA framework includes 11 global targets to be achieved by 2030. Seven are targets for adaptation action in specific themes: water; health; biodiversity; food; infrastructure; poverty; and heritage. And the other four targets are for the adaptation cycle: climate risk and vulnerability assessments; planning; implementation and monitoring; and evaluation and learning.

Tracking progress towards these targets needs a set of indicators to measure against. Many are already available and used in other contexts, but this work involves identifying a set that can be applied globally under the GGA.

In June 2024 at the UN’s Bonn climate negotiations, countries agreed to begin this process by mapping existing indicators and identifying gaps. The graphic below shows the timeline for developing the indicators, which will culminate at COP30 in Belém, Brazil next year.

Timeline to develop indicators for the GGA framework, across the next two UN climate conferences – COP29 and COP30 – and the 60th (SB60) and 62nd (SB62) sessions of the subsidiary bodies to the UNFCCC under the Bonn Climate Change Conference. Source: Updated from Leiter (2024a), timeline by Carbon Brief.

Developing indicators is challenging because adaptation is context-specific, influenced by framing and value judgements, and is closely interlinked with sustainable development.

There is, therefore, no universal metric for adaptation akin to reductions of greenhouse gas emissions.

Developing adaptation indicators that apply to a broad range of actions across diverse contexts is particularly difficult. The compilation of indicators by the UNFCCC secretariat shows that there is a lack of indicators that can be aggregated to the global level.

Developing suitable indicators to track progress of the GGA targets requires time, expertise and resources – and a targeted process that combines technically sound inputs with political consultations.

Robust GGA indicators

Before forming the indicators themselves, it is critical to establish how the GGA targets can be tracked. We have identified nine key considerations that the UAE-Belem work programme will need to address.

First, each GGA target consists of multiple elements, so the first step towards developing suitable indicators must be to unpack each target, to identify the key elements and then guide development of the indicators based on these elements.

For example, the table below lists the key elements of the GGA’s water target and impact, vulnerability and risk assessment target.

The presence of multiple elements within each target means that each target requires multiple indicators if its scope is to be fully covered. Hence, at a minimum, several dozen indicators will be needed to measure progress towards the 11 targets.

(A breakdown of the key elements of each of the seven thematic targets and for the four targets around the iterative adaptation cycle are provided in recent UNFCCC submissions by LSE and the AGN.)

The second key consideration is how to secure ambitious interpretations of the targets.

Many elements of the targets require further clarification, as seen in the table above. This is especially important for the development of appropriate indicators that are to be used at the global level, as opposed to national or local level.

The way target elements are interpreted will influence the ambition level of the targets and how they are tracked through the indicators.

For example, the 2023 adaptation gap report found that 85% of countries already have a national adaptation plan or an equivalent planning document. Accordingly, further specifications – such as having the plan be informed by risk assessments or be regularly updated – will increase ambition.

It is important for the indicator work programme to consider the influence of the indicators and the associated calculation methods on the ambition of the targets.

Countries could also agree to additional specifications that are not mentioned in the targets that would further increase ambition. For example, in addition to policies and plans, countries could be tracked for the establishment of legal instruments that foster adaptation.

Adaptation-relevant indicators

The third key consideration is ensuring that indicators are relevant to adaptation.

Given the thousands of existing indicators developed for different purposes, defining what counts as adaptation-relevant is key for mapping and for the development of suitable GGA indicators.

However, many existing indicators were not developed to directly track climate adaptation actions as described in the GGA targets. If they are to be adopted under the GGA, it needs to be demonstrated how these indicators measure adaptation specifically – distinguishing them from other general development indicators – and how they will track GGA targets.

For example, indicators should at least be able to measure one of the key elements that define climate adaptation: changes in vulnerability; exposure; adaptive capacity; resilience; risks; and impacts from climate change. Additionally, outcome-based targets should be tracked with outcome-based indicators.

The fourth key consideration is understanding which elements in the GGA targets can be tracked with existing adaptation-relevant indicators – with or without modification – and where new indicators are required.

We completed a rapid assessment of the indicators available from existing global frameworks and UN climate funding mechanisms. As the table below shows, many existing indicators are insufficient for tracking GGA targets.

For example, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction has a series of indicators, including those covering the number of countries that have multi-hazard early warning systems and the number of countries that have multi-hazard monitoring and forecasting systems (see G1-4 here).

While these could be adopted for the early warning systems element under the impacts, vulnerability and risk target, the majority of the Sendai indicators cannot be adopted without significant modification.

Table 2: Mapping and gap analysis showing sufficiency of existing indicators in multilateral frameworks for GGA targets: Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Sendai Framework (SF), and Convention on Biological Diversity Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (CBD); the UN climate funding mechanism: Green Climate Fund (GCF) and Adaptation Fund (AF); and Adaptation Gap Report (AGR). Sufficiency was assessed based on adaptation relevance of the indicators to effectively track the key element of the target.

Best-available science and data

The fifth key consideration is that the indicators will need to cover the support of adaptation, not just the actions themselves. This means tracking the means of implementation – that is, adaptation finance, technology transfer and capacity building – to enhance adaptation action and support.

Sixth is ensuring that indicators are robust and based on best-available science. This requires them to be accompanied by clear calculation methods and definitions.

For example, tracking progress towards the GGA infrastructure target requires determining how to measure “climate-related impacts on infrastructure”. Without clear guidance for countries, the indicator values would not be comparable and could not be used for global aggregation.

The seventh key consideration is exploring innovative data sources and methods. Ideally, this would involve indicators using multiple data sources, with technology offering the potential to fill data gaps and support high-quality data.

For example, remote sensing, artificial intelligence and digital tools – such as mobile phones – can offer cost-effective alternatives to traditional data gathering at the national level.

The eighth key consideration is including technical experts. Due to the technical complexity of the indicator work programme, it is crucial that technical experts receive clear guidelines and detailed procedures. This includes work organisation, timelines, inputs and outputs, with balanced regional representation to ensure contextual relevance.

Finally, the last consideration is agreeing on the remaining UAE-Belem work programme details in 2024.

The COP29 summit in Baku, Azerbaijan is pivotal for achieving consensus on the GGA indicator work programme regarding any outstanding issues. Parties are expected to conclude at the talks with consensus on the programme's implementation, including clarifying processes, scope of work, roles and deliverables for 2025.

Given the limited time to complete the work before COP30 in Belém, such consensus could be crucial.

The post Guest post: How to track progress towards the ‘global goal on adaptation’? appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Guest post: How to track progress towards the ‘global goal on adaptation’?

Climate Change

Corpus Christi Cuts Timeline to Disaster as Abbott Issues Emergency Orders

Published

15 hours ago

March 19, 2026

Alice Rush

The governor’s office said the city’s two main reservoirs could dry up by May, much sooner than previous timelines. But authorities still offer no plan for curtailment of water use.

By Dylan Baddour

City officials in Corpus Christi on Tuesday released modeling that showed emergency cuts to water demand could be required as soon as May as reservoir levels continue to decline.

Corpus Christi Cuts Timeline to Disaster as Abbott Issues Emergency Orders

Climate Change

Middle East war is another wake-up call for fossil fuel-reliant food systems

Published

17 hours ago

March 19, 2026

Alice Rush

Lena Luig is the head of the International Agricultural Policy Division at the Heinrich Böll Foundation, a member of the Global Alliance for the Future of Food. Anna Lappé is the Executive Director of the Global Alliance for the Future of Food.

As toxic clouds loom over Tehran and Beirut from the US and Israel’s bombardment of oil depots and civilian infrastructure in the region’s ongoing war, the world is once again witnessing the not-so-subtle connections between conflict, hunger, food insecurity and the vulnerability of global food systems dependent on fossil fuels, dominated by a few powerful countries and corporations.

The conflict in Iran is having a huge impact on the world’s fertilizer supply. The Strait of Hormuz is a critical trade route in the region for nearly half of the global supply of urea, the main synthetic fertilizer derived from natural gas through the conversion of ammonia.

With the Strait impacted by Iran’s blockades, prices of urea have shot up by 35% since the war started, just as planting season starts in many parts of the world, putting millions of farmers and consumers at risk of increasing production costs and food price spikes, resulting in food insecurity, particularly for low-income households. The World Food Programme has projected that an extra 45 million people would be pushed into acute hunger because of rises in food, oil and shipping costs, if the war continues until June.

Pesticides and synthetic fertilizer leave system fragile

On the face of it, this looks like a supply chain issue, but at the core of this crisis lies a truth about many of our food systems around the world: the instability and injustice in the very design of systems so reliant on these fossil fuel inputs for our food.

At the Global Alliance, a strategic alliance of philanthropic foundations working to transform food systems, we have been documenting the fossil fuel-food nexus, raising alarm about the fragility of a system propped up by fossil fuels, with 15% of annual fossil fuel use going into food systems, in part because of high-cost, fossil fuel-based inputs like pesticides and synthetic fertilizer. The Heinrich Böll Foundation has also been flagging this threat consistently, most recently in the Pesticide Atlas and Soil Atlas compendia.

We’ve seen this before: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 sparked global disruptions in fertilizer supply and food price volatility. As the conflict worsened, fertilizer prices spiked – as much from input companies capitalizing on the crisis for speculation as from real cost increases from production and transport – triggering a food price crisis around the world.

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Since then, fertilizer industry profit margins have continued to soar. In 2022, the largest nine fertilizer producers increased their profit margins by more than 35% compared to the year before—when fertilizer prices were already high. As Lena Bassermann and Dr. Gideon Tups underscore in the Heinrich Böll Foundation’s Soil Atlas, the global dependencies of nitrogen fertilizer impacted economies around the world, especially state budgets in already indebted and import-dependent economies, as well as farmers across Africa.

Learning lessons from the war in Ukraine, many countries invested heavily in renewable energy and/or increased domestic oil production as a way to decrease dependency on foreign fossil fuels. But few took the same approach to reimagining domestic food systems and their food sovereignty.

Agroecology as an alternative

There is another way. Governments can adopt policy frameworks to encourage reductions in synthetic fertilizer and pesticide use, especially in regions that currently massively overuse nitrogen fertilizer. At the African Union fertilizer and Soil Health Summit in 2024, African leaders at least agreed that organic fertilizers should be subsidized as well, not only mineral fertilizers, but we can go farther in actively promoting agricultural pathways that reduce fossil fuel dependency.

In 2024, the Global Alliance organized dozens of philanthropies to call for a tenfold increase in investments to help farmers transition from fossil fuel dependency towards agroecological approaches that prioritize livelihoods, health, climate, and biodiversity.

In our research, we detail the huge opportunity to repurpose harmful subsidies currently supporting inputs like synthetic fertilizer and pesticides towards locally-sourced bio-inputs and biofertilizer production. We know this works: There are powerful stories of hope and change from those who have made this transition, despite only receiving a fraction of the financing that industrial agriculture receives, with evidence of benefits from stable incomes and livelihoods to better health and climate outcomes.

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Inspiring examples abound: G-BIACK in Kenya is training farmers how to produce their own high-quality compost; start-ups like the Evola Company in Cambodia are producing both nutrient-rich organic fertilizer and protein-rich animal feed with black soldier fly farming; Sabon Sake in Ghana is enriching sugarcane bagasse – usually organic waste – with microbial agents and earthworms to turn it into a rich vermicompost.

These efforts, grounded in ecosystems and tapping nature for soil fertility and to manage pest pressures, are just some of the countless examples around the world, tapping the skill and knowledge of millions of farmers. On a national and global policy level, the Agroecology Coalition, with 480+ members, including governments, civil society organizations, academic institutions, and philanthropic foundations, is supporting a transition toward agroecology, working with natural systems to produce abundant food, boost biodiversity, and foster community well-being.

Fertilizer industry spins “clean” products

We must also inoculate ourselves from the fertilizer industry’s public relations spin, which includes promoting the promise that their products can be produced without heavy reliance on fossil fuels. Despite experts debunking the viability of what the industry has dubbed “green hydrogen” or “green or clean ammonia”, the sector still promotes this narrative, arguing that these are produced with resource-intensive renewable energy or Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), a costly and unreliable technology for reducing emissions.

As we mourn this conflict’s senseless destruction and death, including hundreds of children, we also recognize that peace cannot mean a return to business-as-usual. We need to upend the systems that allow the richest and most powerful to have dominion over so much.

This includes fighting for a food system that is based on genuine sovereignty and justice, free from dependency on fossil fuels, one that honors natural systems and puts power into the hands of communities and food producers themselves.

The post Middle East war is another wake-up call for fossil fuel-reliant food systems appeared first on Climate Home News.

Middle East war is another wake-up call for fossil fuel-reliant food systems

Climate Change

Are There Climate Fingerprints in Tornado Activity?

Published

17 hours ago

March 19, 2026

Alice Rush

Parts of the Southern and Northeastern U.S. faced tornado threats this week. Scientists are trying to parse out the climate links in changing tornado activity.

By Kiley Price

It’s been a weird few weeks for weather across the United States.