Powering Gender Climate Action With Gender Data

Reflections on COP30 and the new Gender Action Plan

Following the adoption of the new Gender Action Plan at COP30 in Belém, attention now shifts to implementation. Gender data is a critical tool that can power the shift from aspiration to action.  

Decades of feminist organising and activism in multilateral spaces have sought to advance gender and climate justice, sowing seeds of resistance, collaboration, and care as we work to create thriving futures for people and the planet.  

This was no different at COP30 where the nine-year Belém Gender Action Plan (GAP) was adopted, following years of sustained advocacy and builds on progress under the previous GAP. The new GAP exists despite efforts to block both ambitious climate action and gender equality at COP30 by lobbyists and anti-rights actors, with feminists holding the line. 

The GAP offers an important framework to advance intersectional and rights-based approaches to global climate action. It aims to ensure gender equality is foregrounded in climate policy and action, rather than relegated to the margins or considered a ‘nice to have.’  

Agreement on the GAP comes amidst growing recognition that the climate crisis is not gender neutral. Women, girls, and gender diverse people are disproportionately affected by climate change and underrepresented in decision-making processes, with these impacts intensified for people who experience intersecting inequalities and marginalisation.  

This means that the GAP is not only critical for advancing gender equality, but also for effective and inclusive climate action that is rooted in justice, care, and transformation. It works to strengthen implementation at global and national levels, and covers a range of work areas at the convergence of gender and climate, including health, violence against women and girls, and care work. This new focus on unpaid care work is particularly significant, as research shows that climate change influences the amount, distribution, and conditions of care work, and largely carried out by women and girls worldwide.  

The GAP further mandates the participation and leadership of women and girls in decision-making processes at all levels; enhanced safety, protection, and support for women environmental defenders; and enhanced coherence across sectors to strengthen gender climate action.   

Gender Data for Gender Climate Action

Underpinning the 27 activities outlined in the GAP is gender data, which is integrated throughout the framework. Gender data enables the design of climate policies that respond to real needs and lived experience, ensuring climate action is inclusive, effective, and grounded in evidence.  

As such, gender data is critical for planning and implementing gender-responsive national climate policies, as well as monitoring and reporting on progress. It is an important accountability tool that helps build transparency and trust.   

For many countries, gaps in capacity, resources, and technical skills limit the collection and use of gender-climate data, despite growing recognition of its value. The GAP seeks to address these gaps through a focus on institutional capacity strengthening and facilitating strong linkages between national gender apparatuses and statistical bodies.  

Gender data is the foundation for equitable, effective, and gender-responsive climate action that is grounded in evidence, helping the world to move from aspiration to action. It reveals feminist solutions, and amplifies a diversity of voices, perspectives, and ways of working that result in different approaches and frameworks.  

Importantly, the GAP includes activities to build the evidence base around the gender-differentiated impacts and opportunities of climate change, with a focus on women including Indigenous women and women from local communities. It shines a light on the ways women are leaders and agents of change, often at the forefront of solutions in their communities. In this way, gender responsive approaches hold the potential to create greater opportunities for ambitious climate action.  

In order to implement and realise the commitments laid out in the GAP, appropriate and adequate climate finance is needed. Gender-responsive climate finance ensures resources are directed towards those most affected by the climate crisis and enables the realisation of gender-transformative outcomes. An opportunity exists to better resource women’s rights organisations, Indigenous Peoples, and local communities through climate finance, recognising their outsized contributions to protecting people and the planet, despite the extremely limited funding they receive. Just 0.01% of global finance supports projects that address both climate and women’s rights. 

Ultimately, the GAP promises meaningful steps toward gender climate justice, but it must be matched by sustained political will, adequate resourcing, and inclusive implementation. Gender data is an important tool that powers collective action and creates the conditions for truly transformative outcomes. Now, the courage and commitment to fully resource and implement the GAP must follow. 

The International Women’s Development Agency is proud to be collaborating with the University of Technology Sydney’s Institute for Sustainable Futures to deliver the Revealing Resilience project, which advocates and supports the use of data and measurement approaches that strengthen social inclusion and gender equality in climate resilience. The initiative is enabled by resourcing from the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.