As the world’s eyes turn toward the lush, high-stakes landscape of Belém, Brazil, for the thirtieth United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties—better known as COP30—a critical battle for the soul of environmental policy is beginning to take shape. While negotiations often center on carbon credits and emissions targets, UN Women is leading a powerful charge to ensure that the human element of the crisis remains front and center. The organization is issuing a clarion call for the adoption of a transformative, well-funded, and rigorously accountable Gender Action Plan (GAP), a framework designed to ensure that global climate policies are not just effective, but inherently just.
The stakes in Belém could not be higher. The decisions made at COP30 will effectively blueprint the next decade of international climate intervention. For UN Women and its allies, this is a “make or break” moment. The adoption of a robust GAP will determine whether gender equality remains a central pillar of the global climate process or is relegated to the sidelines as a secondary concern. As the climate crisis intensifies, the international community is beginning to recognize a sobering reality: climate change is not gender-neutral. Its impacts do not fall equally across society, and without a gender-responsive approach, the world risks leaving half its population behind in the transition to a greener economy.
To understand why the Gender Action Plan is so vital, one must look at the frontlines of the crisis. Across the globe, women and marginalized groups are disproportionately affected by climate-driven displacement, food insecurity, and the erosion of traditional livelihoods. In many rural societies, women are the primary providers of food, water, and fuel—resources that are becoming increasingly scarce as temperatures rise and weather patterns become more volatile. When a drought strikes or a flood destroys a harvest, it is often women who must travel further to find water, work harder to feed their families, and face the greatest risks of violence in the chaos of displacement.
“Failure to adopt a robust GAP would set back gender equality and human rights, undermining hard-won progress and signaling that women’s leadership and experience are expendable in the climate fight,” warns Sarah Hendriks, Director of the Policy, Programme and Intergovernmental Division at UN Women. Her words underscore a growing anxiety among advocates that the momentum gained over the last several years could stall. The original Gender Action Plan, established in 2017, was a landmark achievement. It successfully embedded gender considerations into the DNA of the UNFCCC process, influencing everything from mitigation and adaptation strategies to the complex world of climate finance and technology transfer. It allowed governments and civil society to move beyond rhetoric and begin making gender equality a tangible, measurable part of climate decision-making.
However, the 2017 framework was only a beginning. As COP30 approaches, UN Women is pushing for a “next generation” GAP—one that is not only more ambitious in its goals but also equipped with the financial resources and transparency mechanisms necessary to turn promises into reality. The organization is calling on world leaders to adopt a plan that prioritizes women’s leadership at all levels of governance, ensures that climate finance reaches women-led grassroots organizations, and utilizes gender-disaggregated data to track progress accurately.
In a move to provide negotiators with the data they need to make informed decisions, UN Women, in collaboration with the Kaschak Institute for Social Justice for Women and Girls, has officially launched the Gender Equality and Climate Policy Scorecard. This pioneering analytical tool is designed to pull back the curtain on how national governments are—or are not—integrating gender into their climate strategies. The Scorecard specifically examines Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), which are the individual climate action plans submitted by countries under the Paris Agreement.
The initial findings from the Scorecard offer a mixed and often troubling picture of the current global landscape. After analyzing 32 NDCs across various regions, the report identifies significant gaps in how countries approach the intersection of gender and climate. While a majority of nations now acknowledge that women are uniquely vulnerable to climate impacts, very few take the necessary next step: recognizing women as essential leaders and innovators in the search for solutions.
The Scorecard evaluates policies across six critical dimensions: economic security, unpaid care work, health, gender-based violence (GBV), participation and leadership, and gender mainstreaming. The data shows that while some progress is being made, it is dangerously uneven. Only ten countries, representing five different regions, are currently leading the way with comprehensive policy commitments that span most or all of these dimensions. On the other end of the spectrum, sixteen of the 32 countries analyzed take a limited or only moderately comprehensive approach, and six countries fail to commit to any future gender-responsive actions in their NDCs whatsoever.
One of the most glaring omissions identified by the Scorecard is the lack of attention paid to the “care economy.” As climate disasters increase in frequency, the burden of unpaid care work—looking after children, the elderly, and the sick—almost always falls on women, limiting their ability to participate in the formal workforce or engage in climate adaptation programs. Similarly, the link between climate stress and an increase in gender-based violence remains largely unaddressed in national policies. When resources become scarce and communities are displaced, the risk of domestic violence and exploitation skyrockets, yet these issues are rarely integrated into environmental planning.
“The adoption of a strong GAP at COP30 will be a defining moment of global commitment to gender equality and the integrity of the UNFCCC as a platform for inclusive and rights-based multilateral climate governance,” Hendriks says. For UN Women, the goal is to shift the narrative from seeing women merely as victims of climate change to seeing them as the architects of a sustainable future.
This shift in narrative will be the focus of a high-profile side event at COP30 on November 20, titled “Gender-Responsive Climate Action: Unleashing and Accelerating Implementation of the Paris Agreement.” Hosted in partnership with the Government of Liberia and the Kaschak Institute, the event will bring together policymakers and activists to discuss how the Scorecard’s findings can be used to drive real-world policy changes. The venue, the Government of Liberia’s pavilion, serves as a reminder that many of the most innovative ideas for gender-responsive climate action are coming from the Global South, where the stakes are highest.
The push for a stronger GAP is also about ensuring that those on the absolute frontlines—Indigenous women and those living in rural areas—have a seat at the negotiating table. These women often possess generations of traditional knowledge regarding biodiversity, water management, and sustainable agriculture. Their exclusion from high-level decision-making is not just an injustice; it is a strategic error that deprives the world of vital expertise. UN Women maintains that achieving true climate justice is impossible without the full, equal, and meaningful participation of women in every room where a decision is being made.
As the delegates gather in Belém, the message from UN Women is clear: gender equality is not a “fringe” or “soft” issue to be dealt with after the “real” work of emissions cutting is done. It is, instead, a central pillar of effective climate action. A policy that ignores the needs and potential of half the population is a policy that is destined to fail. By adopting a transformative Gender Action Plan at COP30, global leaders have the opportunity to reaffirm their commitment to a future that is not only cooler and greener but also more equitable and just for everyone. The world is watching, and for the millions of women currently navigating the harsh realities of a changing planet, the outcome in Brazil will be a matter of survival.
