From aspiration to application: making the Global Goal on Adaptation work

The 2025 United Nations climate change conference (COP30) delivered the first agreed indicator package for tracking progress under the 2023 United Arab Emirates (UAE) Framework for Global Climate Resilience, but it also exposed a gap between political agreement and practical use.

This briefing traces the evolution of the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) from its adoption in Paris in 2015 to now, and analyses the UAE-Belém indicator process and the 59 Belém Adaptation Indicators that emerged from COP30. It argues that COP30 should be treated as a milestone, rather than an endpoint, for adaptation indicators.

Looking ahead to COP32 in 2027, this briefing highlights the Belém-Addis Vision on Adaptation as a pathway for turning the indicators into practice, prioritising early piloting, clearer methods and metadata, and investment in national data and reporting capacity.