COP30 on the horizon: How to achieve gender equality in climate governance and planning?

From June 16 to 26, 2025, Bonn, Germany, once again became the hub of international climate negotiations. The meetings of the Subsidiary Bodies (SBs) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) provided a crucial platform for making progress on technical and political aspects that prepare the ground for COP30 to be held in Belem do Pará, the gateway to the Brazilian Amazon. In the context of growing climate urgency, with more ambitious goals, the delegations worked intensively to generate inputs that informed key decisions on financing, mitigation, adaptation, just transition, and gender equality, among other issues. All this, in an increasingly challenging international scenario that tests multilateral commitments and the continuity of progress in gender equality and environmental justice.

^{Photo: LinkedIn via Ingvild Solvang}

In Bonn, the negotiations of the draft texts to be taken to the COPs for definition are being followed up. It is there that the conditions that determine the course of global climate action are woven. Among the agenda items to be highlighted was the negotiation process for the Convention’s new Gender Action Plan on Climate Change (GAPCC). 

The GAP, established under the Lima Work Program on Gender, aims to promote the full, equal, and meaningful participation of women and to foster gender-responsive climate policy, including in the implementation of the Convention and in the work of the Parties, the Secretariat, United Nations entities, and all stakeholders at all levels.

Following the decision at COP29 to extend the Lima Work Program on Gender for an additional ten years, the content of the new GAP, the Enhanced Lima Action Program, is currently being negotiated and will be formally adopted at COP30. This review process and subsequent adoption will mark a new stage in the development of a climate architecture that recognizes gender equality not only as a guiding principle but also as an essential condition for effective, fair, and transformative climate action.

During the first week, the UNFCCC Secretariat convened a gender workshop with both face-to-face and virtual participation, whose objective was to create a participatory space for countries to exchange their experiences, ideas, and proposals regarding the content of the new Gender Action Plan. UN Women moderated the virtual sessions and accompanying the workshop in person, thus contributing to the dialogue and technical reflections.

During the second week, progress was made in the development of a new structure for the Plan, taking as a starting point the experience of the previous cycle, whose mandate, adopted in 2019, expired in 2024, with the aim of raising the ambitions for its formal adoption at COP30. To support the preparation of the region’s negotiators for this instance, UN Women (within the framework of the Global Gender Alliance) contributed to this process through previous technical workshops and support for concrete participation, which has resulted in active leadership in the discussions on gender equality within the UNFCCC.

In this scenario, gender and climate change action plans are consolidated as strategic tools for translating international commitments to gender equality into concrete policies and actions at the national and subnational levels. These instruments enable the operationalization of gender mainstreaming in climate planning, financing, implementation, and monitoring, thereby aligning national priorities with the international commitments outlined in the Convention’s mandates and other multilateral frameworks. In Latin America and the Caribbean, countries such as the Dominican Republic (2018), Colombia (2023), Ecuador (2024), and Guatemala (2024) have advanced in adopting GAPCC and are sharing their experiences with other countries in the region that are in the development phase.

Although the Gender and Climate Change Action Plans are key instruments for advancing towards climate justice, other frameworks exist that, although they do not have gender as a central axis, require incorporating this perspective to ensure coherence in climate policies, responding to the different realities of women without reproducing inequalities. A key example is the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), which are the climate commitments that each country submits to the UNFCCC to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. The updating of the NDCs will be one of the main milestones at COP30 and represents a concrete opportunity to integrate gender equality as a cross-cutting principle.

To further strengthen the integration of gender equality in the climate architecture, UN Women is currently developing an analysis tool to assess the degree of gender mainstreaming in the NDCs. This tool seeks to provide a technical, rigorous, and accessible basis to help governments identify progress, gaps, and opportunities for improvement in their climate commitments from a gender equality perspective. Its launch is planned for COP30, as a concrete contribution to support countries in building more inclusive and ambitious climate policies that are consistent with international human rights and gender equality commitments. The document, developed by UN Women together with IUCN and the Kaschak Institute, is currently available in its short version in English and presents the general analysis framework: “Enhancing Gender-Responsive Nationally Determined Contributions: Insights from the Gender Equality and Climate Policy Scorecard.

Achieving truly transformative climate action means leaving no one behind; for this, it is essential to recognize, integrate, and empower the voices, knowledge, and capacities of women in all their diversity. At both technical and political levels, and across local realities and international arenas, gender equality is a fundamental and indispensable component of successful climate action.