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Dressed in vibrant indigenous attire crafted from feathers, seeds, plants, and beads, hundreds of people marched through the streets of Belém, Brazil, heading toward the COP 30 venue. Among them were representatives from 50 to 60 indigenous communities, demanding climate action and long-overdue recognition of their land rights. For Adelina de Assis Sampaio, a leader of a women’s indigenous group from São Gabriel da Cachoeira in the Amazon, the protest was both urgent and personal.
“We are fisher women. The heat is unbearable. Our crops fail, and outsiders invade our lands. We are not safe, and we need demarcation and climate action,” she told TNM amid the chants for justice.
Alongside her, hundreds of women like Delena, Gabriela, Sandra, and Josi called for recognition of their voices in climate negotiations, highlighting how women from indigenous communities are often the first to face the brunt of climate change.
Their demands underscore a growing global call for a Gender Action Plan (GAP), a framework that aims to put women – particularly those most affected by climate impacts – at the centre of climate policies and solutions. While the draft GAP presented at COP 30 is seen as a critical step, advocates stress that approval alone is not enough. Its implementation, funding, and integration into national climate plans remain urgent challenges.
“We are the first responders to climate change,” Adelina said. “We can no longer cultivate the foods we have traditionally grown. Instead, the government provides food kits containing rice and other industrially produced items, food that is not part of our culture and that our children cannot eat. Our staple foods are banana, pineapple, and cassava, yet we receive rice, beans, and pasta. How can we maintain our way of life when our daily culture is being replaced?”
Mariano, another protester, criticised government responses to climate emergencies as unscientific. “Women and children are the most affected. They either bear the brunt of climate change while men migrate, or they are forcibly displaced from their indigenous lands due to extreme weather conditions,” he said.
Highlighting the gendered impacts of climate change, the United Nations Women organisation has noted, “Climate change is not gender neutral. Its impacts exacerbate existing inequalities, placing women and marginalized groups at the frontlines of climate-related displacement, food insecurity, and loss of livelihoods.”
Among the 32 Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs — the climate action plans submitted by countries under the Paris Agreement — progress and gaps are tracked across six areas, which include economic security, unpaid care work, health, gender-based violence, participation and leadership, and gender mainstreaming.
Women across the world, who are often the first to face the impacts of climate change, share similar struggles. This has fueled a strong call for the Gender Action Plan to be finalised at COP 30 in Belém. Advocates argue that the time for action is long overdue.
“Global climate frameworks increasingly require human rights-based and gender-responsive approaches, and COP 30 is expected to finalise a new Gender Action Plan. Civil society groups are also pushing for the establishment of a Belém Action Mechanism for Just Transition,” Farah Kabir, Country Director for ActionAid Bangladesh, told TNM.
A just transition refers to shifting toward a low-carbon, greener economy in a way that protects workers, supports communities, and ensures that no group — particularly vulnerable or marginalised people — is left behind.
While the UNFCCC Presidency has released a draft of the GAP, many observers consider it both promising and challenging.
Draft GAP
The draft gender adaptation plan focuses on five main areas.
Priority A concerns building skills and knowledge. It asks governments to strengthen their ability to plan, carry out, and track climate actions that include women’s needs. It calls for supporting national gender-and-climate focal points and improving studies that show how climate change affects different groups of women, especially Indigenous women and women from local communities. It also highlights the roles that men and boys can play as partners in promoting equality.
Priority B aims to increase women’s participation and leadership. It encourages training to build leadership and negotiation skills for women and girls, especially those from marginalised communities. It also calls for removing barriers that keep women out of decision-making at all levels.
Priority C focuses on ensuring gender concerns are consistently included across UNFCCC bodies. It wants the chairs and members of these groups to be trained on gender-related responsibilities and to regularly exchange ideas on how to integrate gender perspectives more effectively.
Priority D concerns putting gender-responsive plans into action. This includes sharing experiences on how to use tools such as gender-responsive budgeting so that climate policies and funding actually support gender equality in practice.
Priority E deals with tracking progress. It calls for better monitoring and reporting on women’s participation in leadership roles within the UNFCCC and on how well countries are implementing gender-responsive climate policies.
Implementation remains a concern
Speaking to TNM at the COP 30 venue in Belém, a young negotiator said, “[The GAP] is not perfect. A lot of strengthening is needed, but at least it is necessary now. Improvements can be made through further interventions.” Many other observers at COP 30 shared a similar view.
“We all hope it will be approved. The language is a bit watered down, but the action plan itself has not been significantly altered. The women and gender constituency still considers the text strong and the actions implementable,” said Margareta Kolta, policy advisor at Act Church of Sweden, part of Act Alliance, a global network of churches and church-related organisations working on disaster relief, development, and advocacy.
“If the GAP is approved, it will be considered one positive outcome of Belém. Of course, this is not the full result we want from COP 30, but it would at least provide a small actionable outcome. Still, it would be very disappointing and unacceptable if there are no means to implement the plan,” she added.
Farah Kabir emphasised that nations must consciously align their National Adaptation Plans with their Nationally Determined Contributions. “The means of implementation will be critical for the effectiveness of the new GAP, yet there is still no clear indication of how it will be financed. Challenges persist at the national level, including the implementation of gender-related commitments and ensuring adequate resource allocation,” she said.
NDCs are each country’s climate action plans under the Paris Agreement. They outline how a country will cut emissions and prepare for climate impacts, and each country must regularly update these plans and take action at home to meet the goals they set.
Finance is at stake
Advocates of the Gender Action Plan warn that without proper financing, global collaboration to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement while upholding human rights will remain difficult. ActionAid’s Fund Our Future 2024 report shows that only 2.8% of global climate mitigation funds from multilateral sources are directed toward ‘just transition’ efforts that prioritise workers, women, and frontline communities.
Margareta Kolta noted that even this small share of funding for gender-responsive work is already producing tangible results. Yet challenges remain.
“Beyond the Gender Action Plan, gender considerations must be fully integrated into financial flows so they can be properly tracked, and they need to be included in adaptation efforts as well,” she said. She added that while adaptation strategies and new indicators offer ways to address vulnerabilities and promote inclusivity, the major bottleneck is the lack of adequate financing. “This meeting at COP 30 plays a key role in guiding how large climate finance, managed by the World Bank and regional development banks, will be allocated. If these decisions are not made here, the next step is to take them directly to the banks and hold them accountable,” she added.
Farah Kabir observed that although recent efforts to include gender considerations in major multilateral climate finance mechanisms, including the fully operational Green Climate Fund, represent important progress, gender-responsive approaches remain far from mainstream across climate programmes, national planning processes, and sectoral policies.
“Data from the Global Gender and Climate Alliance illustrates the scale of the gap: only 0.01% of global funding supports initiatives that address both climate change and women’s rights. In 2011-2012, merely $469 million – around 2% of all bilateral aid – was allocated to projects with women’s economic empowerment as the primary objective,” she said.
She also highlighted that the UNFCCC has gradually recognised this imbalance. A decision at COP 16 in Cancun reaffirmed climate finance commitments and explicitly acknowledged that gender equality and women’s participation are essential to all aspects of climate action, while calling for gender-sensitive National Adaptation Plans. COP 18 and COP 20 further mandated parties to work toward gender-responsive climate policies in all relevant areas of the convention.
“Despite these policy signals, significant gaps remain between commitments and implementation, demanding renewed attention, resources, and accountability,” Farah Kabir said.
Amid these challenges, advocates hope that the approval of the GAP will mark a first step toward addressing these longstanding gaps and ensuring that gender considerations are central to climate action.
Meanwhile, India did not participate in any official negotiations on the GAP. Delegates at Belém confirmed to TNM that there were no representatives from the country, and India has yet to submit its updated NDC.