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’?
Drought and heatwaves occurring together – known as “compound” events – have “surged” across the world since the early 2000s, a new study shows.
Compound drought and heat events (CDHEs) can have devastating effects, creating the ideal conditions for intense wildfires, such as Australia’s “Black Summer” of 2019-20 where bushfires burned 24m hectares and killed 33 people.
The research, published in Science Advances, finds that the increase in CDHEs is predominantly being driven by events that start with a heatwave.
The global area affected by such “heatwave-led” compound events has more than doubled between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, the study says.
The rapid increase in these events over the last 23 years cannot be explained solely by global warming, the authors note.
Since the late 1990s, feedbacks between the land and the atmosphere have become stronger, making heatwaves more likely to trigger drought conditions, they explain.
One of the study authors tells Carbon Brief that societies must pay greater attention to compound events, which can “cause severe impacts on ecosystems, agriculture and society”.
Compound events
CDHEs are extreme weather events where drought and heatwave conditions occur simultaneously – or shortly after each other – in the same region.
These events are often triggered by large-scale weather patterns, such as “blocking” highs, which can produce “prolonged” hot and dry conditions, according to the study.
Prof Sang-Wook Yeh is one of the study authors and a professor at the Ewha Womans University in South Korea. He tells Carbon Brief:
“When heatwaves and droughts occur together, the two hazards reinforce each other through land-atmosphere interactions. This amplifies surface heating and soil moisture deficits, making compound events more intense and damaging than single hazards.”
CDHEs can begin with either a heatwave or a drought.
The sequence of these extremes is important, the study says, as they have different drivers and impacts.
For example, in a CDHE where the heatwave was the precursor, increased direct sunshine causes more moisture loss from soils and plants, leading to a drought.
Conversely, in an event where the drought was the precursor, the lack of soil moisture means that less of the sun’s energy goes into evaporation and more goes into warming the Earth’s surface. This produces favourable conditions for heatwaves.
The study shows that the majority of CDHEs globally start out as a drought.
In recent years, there has been increasing focus on these events due to the devastating impact they have on agriculture, ecosystems and public health.
In Russia in the summer of 2010, a compound drought-heatwave event – and the associated wildfires – caused the death of nearly 55,000 people, the study notes.
The record-breaking Pacific north-west “heat dome” in 2021 triggered extreme drought conditions that caused “significant declines” in wheat yields, as well as in barley, canola and fruit production in British Columbia and Alberta, Canada, says the study.
Increasing events
To assess how CDHEs are changing, the researchers use daily reanalysis data to identify droughts and heatwaves events. (Reanalysis data combines past observations with climate models to create a historical climate record.) Then, using an algorithm, they analyse how these events overlap in both time and space.
The study covers the period from 1980 to 2023 and the world’s land surface, excluding polar regions where CDHEs are rare.
The research finds that the area of land affected by CDHEs has “increased substantially” since the early 2000s.
Heatwave-led events have been the main contributor to this increase, the study says, with their spatial extent rising 110% between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, compared to a 59% increase for drought-led events.
The map below shows the global distribution of CDHEs over 1980-2023. The charts show the percentage of the land surface affected by a heatwave-led CDHE (red) or a drought-led CDHE (yellow) in a given year (left) and relative increase in each CDHE type (right).
The study finds that CDHEs have occurred most frequently in northern South America, the southern US, eastern Europe, central Africa and south Asia.
Threshold passed
The authors explain that the increase in heatwave-led CDHEs is related to rising global temperatures, but that this does not tell the whole story.
In the earlier 22-year period of 1980-2001, the study finds that the spatial extent of heatwave-led CDHEs rises by 1.6% per 1C of global temperature rise. For the more-recent period of 2022-23, this increases “nearly eightfold” to 13.1%.
The change suggests that the rapid increase in the heatwave-led CDHEs occurred after the global average temperature “surpasse[d] a certain temperature threshold”, the paper says.
This threshold is an absolute global average temperature of 14.3C, the authors estimate (based on an 11-year average), which the world passed around the year 2000.
Investigating the recent surge in heatwave-leading CDHEs further, the researchers find a “regime shift” in land-atmosphere dynamics “toward a persistently intensified state after the late 1990s”.
In other words, the way that drier soils drive higher surface temperatures, and vice versa, is becoming stronger, resulting in more heatwave-led compound events.
Daily data
The research has some advantages over other previous studies, Yeh says. For instance, the new work uses daily estimations of CDHEs, compared to monthly data used in past research. This is “important for capturing the detailed occurrence” of these events, says Yeh.
He adds that another advantage of their study is that it distinguishes the sequence of droughts and heatwaves, which allows them to “better understand the differences” in the characteristics of CDHEs.
Dr Meryem Tanarhte is a climate scientist at the University Hassan II in Morocco, and Dr Ruth Cerezo Mota is a climatologist and a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Both scientists, who were not involved in the study, agree that the daily estimations give a clearer picture of how CDHEs are changing.
Cerezo-Mota adds that another major contribution of the study is its global focus. She tells Carbon Brief that in some regions, such as Mexico and Africa, there is a lack of studies on CDHEs:
“Not because the events do not occur, but perhaps because [these regions] do not have all the data or the expertise to do so.”
However, she notes that the reanalysis data used by the study does have limitations with how it represents rainfall in some parts of the world.
Compound impacts
The study notes that if CDHEs continue to intensify – particularly events where heatwaves are the precursors – they could drive declining crop productivity, increased wildfire frequency and severe public health crises.
These impacts could be “much more rapid and severe as global warming continues”, Yeh tells Carbon Brief.
Tanarhte notes that these events can be forecasted up to 10 days ahead in many regions. Furthermore, she says, the strongest impacts can be prevented “through preparedness and adaptation”, including through “water management for agriculture, heatwave mitigation measures and wildfire mitigation”.
The study recommends reassessing current risk management strategies for these compound events. It also suggests incorporating the sequences of drought and heatwaves into compound event analysis frameworks “to enhance climate risk management”.
Cerezo-Mota says that it is clear that the world needs to be prepared for the increased occurrence of these events. She tells Carbon Brief:
“These [risk assessments and strategies] need to be carried out at the local level to understand the complexities of each region.”
The post Heatwaves driving recent ‘surge’ in compound drought and heat extremes appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Heatwaves driving recent ‘surge’ in compound drought and heat extremes
Greenhouse Gases
DeBriefed 6 March 2026: Iran energy crisis | China climate plan | Bristol’s ‘pioneering’ wind turbine
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Energy crisis
ENERGY SPIKE: US-Israeli attacks on Iran and subsequent counterattacks across the Middle East have sent energy prices “soaring”, according to Reuters. The newswire reported that the region “accounts for just under a third of global oil production and almost a fifth of gas”. The Guardian noted that shipping traffic through the strait of Hormuz, which normally ferries 20% of the world’s oil, “all but ground to a halt”. The Financial Times reported that attacks by Iran on Middle East energy facilities – notably in Qatar – triggered the “biggest rise in gas prices since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine”.
‘RISK’ AND ‘BENEFITS’: Bloomberg reported on increases in diesel prices in Europe and the US, speculating that rising fuel costs could be “a risk for president Donald Trump”. US gas producers are “poised to benefit from the big disruption in global supply”, according to CNBC. Indian government sources told the Economic Times that Russia is prepared to “fulfil India’s energy demands”. China Daily quoted experts who said “China’s energy security remains fundamentally unshaken”, thanks to “emergency stockpiles and a wide array of import channels”.
‘ESSENTIAL’ RENEWABLES: Energy analysts said governments should cut their fossil-fuel reliance by investing in renewables, “rather than just seeking non-Gulf oil and gas suppliers”, reported Climate Home News. This message was echoed by UK business secretary Peter Kyle, who said “doubling down on renewables” was “essential” amid “regional instability”, according to the Daily Telegraph.
China’s climate plan
PEAK COAL?: China has set out its next “five-year plan” at the annual “two sessions” meeting of the National People’s Congress, including its climate strategy out to 2030, according to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post. The plan called for China to cut its carbon emissions per unit of gross domestic product (GDP) by 17% from 2026 to 2030, which “may allow for continued increase in emissions given the rate of GDP growth”, reported Reuters. The newswire added that the plan also had targets to reach peak coal in the next five years and replace 30m tonnes per year of coal with renewables.
ACTIVE YET PRUDENT: Bloomberg described the new plan as “cautious”, stating that it “frustrat[es] hopes for tighter policy that would drive the nation to peak carbon emissions well before president Xi Jinping’s 2030 deadline”. Carbon Brief has just published an in-depth analysis of the plan. China Daily reported that the strategy “highlights measures to promote the climate targets of peaking carbon dioxide emissions before 2030”, which China said it would work towards “actively yet prudently”.
Around the world
- EU RULES: The European Commission has proposed new “made in Europe” rules to support domestic low-carbon industries, “against fierce competition from China”, reported Agence France-Presse. Carbon Brief examined what it means for climate efforts.
- RECORD HEAT: The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has said there is a 50-60% chance that the El Niño weather pattern could return this year, amplifying the effect of global warming and potentially driving temperatures to “record highs”, according to Euronews.
- FLAGSHIP FUND: The African Development Bank’s “flagship clean energy fund” plans to more than double its financing to $2.5bn for African renewables over the next two years, reported the Associated Press.
- NO WITHDRAWAL: Vanuatu has defied US efforts to force the Pacific-island nation to drop a UN draft resolution calling on the world to implement a landmark International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling on climate, according to the Guardian.
98
The number of nations that submitted their national reports on tackling nature loss to the UN on time – just half of the 196 countries that are part of the UN biodiversity treaty – according to analysis by Carbon Brief.
Latest climate research
- Sea levels are already “much higher than assumed” in most assessments of the threat posed by sea-level rise, due to “inadequate” modelling assumptions | Nature
- Accelerating human-caused global warming could see the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C limit crossed before 2030 | Geophysical Research Letters covered by Carbon Brief
- Future “super El Niño events” could “significantly lower” solar power generation due to a reduction in solar irradiance in key regions, such as California and east China | Communications Earth & Environment
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)