Effective climate resilience requires data that captures the realities of people’s lives – their capacities, vulnerabilities, and circumstances.

It also requires data that supports governments and decision-makers to develop targeted strategies and solutions that respond to those realities, as well as data that enables advocacy for awareness, action and accountability. 

With the High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) recently reviewing progress towards climate-related goals on clean water and sanitation (SDG 6) and clean energy (SDG 7), and as global attention shifts to COP31, these six reflections explore why individual-level data is essential to strengthening climate resilience that leaves no one behind and advances action on global climate commitments.  

Climate resilience is often measured through the impacts we can most easily see and quantify — damage to infrastructure, economic losses, or damage to ecosystems. 

These are essential measures, but they don't tell the whole story.  

We must also understand how climate impacts affect individuals — their livelihoods, wellbeing, daily responsibilities, and their ability to recover and adapt. 

Climate impacts are layered and deeply subjective, yet our data systems still struggle to capture the complexity of people's lived experiences.

This includes the increases to women’s unpaid care burdens following a climate event, a message that came through clearly at the Women Deliver conference earlier this year. 

The Women’s Major Group outlined in their position paper for HLPF 2026 the impact of persistent gender data gaps including on SDG 5 on gender equality, which lacks sufficient data to monitor progress.  

Furthermore, SDG 7 on energy remains one of only six goals without a dedicated gender indicator, “a gap that renders women's energy poverty and exclusion from the energy transition largely invisible in global accountability frameworks.” 

Similarly, in relation to SDG 17 on partnership for the goals, civil society across the Asia Pacific called for better financing of data systems to address major gaps in collection, analysis and accessibility of disaggregated data (gender, age, disability, geography, health status, income), recognising that stronger data systems are essential for inclusive and evidenced-based policymaking. They also highlighted the importance of integrating citizen-generated and people-led data into decision-making.  

We know that the impacts of climate change are unevenly distributed at both global and local levels.  

Two people living in the same household can experience the same flood or heatwave very differently depending on their livelihood, caregiving responsibilities, mobility, or access to information, for example.  

These experiences are often shaped by factors such as gender, age across the life course, disability, and other characteristics that influence people's vulnerability to climate impacts, their capacity to adapt, and the ways they exercise agency.  

Yet these differences are not always reflected in the evidence that informs climate policy. This is because most data on climate resilience or sustainable development is collected at a household level.

But households are not homogenous, and measuring at a household level can hide differences that exist between people living in the same home.  

Globally, surveys such as the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICs) or Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) have generated critical evidence for health and development policy.

However, these surveys have tended to use a household-level approach, and combined with a focus on women of reproductive age, evidence gaps are notable. Women over 50 are missing from the data — a growing population in many countries that face distinct and intersecting challenges related to climate change, poverty, inequality, and health. 

Individual-level data provides these insights. It enables climate action that is more inclusive, equitable, and ultimately more effective, so resilience strategies can respond to the realities of people's lives, rather than the averages that can obscure them. 

Women Deliver also underscored the power of combining numbers with narrative in making evidence count, highlighting the work of organisations and collaborations bringing visibility to lived experience of climate change.

Individual-level data, plus community leadership plus resourcing should — and must — be at the centre of climate action.  

Data is often presented as objective, but the way data is collected and analysed is not gender neutral. 

Similarly, the climate crisis has differentiated impacts, in which women, girls, and other marginalised groups are disproportionately affected.

Gender norms shape how women, men, and gender-diverse people experience climate impacts, respond, and adapt. Without a gender lens, data can overlook important dimensions of climate resilience — from unpaid care responsibilities which increase following a climate shock; to unequal access to land, resources and information; to livelihood impacts; occupational exposure to climate hazard; and increased rates of gender-based violence following a natural disaster.

Individual-level data illuminates these lived realities. It provides the evidence needed to design climate policies and strategies that are more inclusive, equitable and informed by the experiences of all people. 

The importance of gender and age-responsive data, intersectional considerations, and engaging multiple stakeholders in implementation were central themes in discussions about data and advancing climate justice at the June Climate Meetings (SB64).  

These conversations canvassed a wide range of climate justice issues, including identifying opportunities to enhance coherence by leveraging existing datasets to inform gender-responsive climate policy and action; surfacing persistent methodological, financial, institutional and political gaps and barriers; and exploring standards and modalities for non-extractive, rights-based and data-sovereign approaches. 

Just 0.01 percent of global finance supports initiatives that address both climate and women’s rights, despite widespread evidence of the gendered impacts of the climate crisis.  

Data is a key accountability mechanism, critical for monitoring and meeting global commitments and advocating on a range of climate justice and resilience issues including adaption, just transition, and loss and damage. 

Individual-level data is also foundational to the nine-year Gender Action Plan (GAP) which was adopted at COP30 in Belém, and works to foreground gender equality in climate policy and action.

The GAP recognises that gender equality and climate action are inseparable priorities, and data and evidence are the foundation for effective action.

The plan further outlines a pathway to increase the collection and use of data for climate action and reporting on global commitments.

Realising the ambitions of the GAP requires looking beyond disaggregation alone. The value of disaggregated data depends on the underlying data being collected.

Individual-level data is essential to understand how climate impacts and resilience differ by gender, age, disability, minority status, and their intersections.

Recognising that climate change impacts people differently, the GAP places a strong emphasis on multidimensional factors, outlining concrete actions to strengthen the evidence base for gender-responsive climate policies, including at the nexus of climate and care work, health, gender-based violence, safety and protection mechanisms for women, and nature-based solutions.

Data that helps us see people’s circumstances and the differential impacts of a changing climate can catalyse and accelerate action with urgency, towards gender and climate justice. 

New tools are making it possible to measure how people perceive their ability to prepare for, cope with, and recover from climate shocks, including the Individual Self-Evaluated Resilience Measure. 

Two people facing the same climate hazard may experience it very differently, including having different perceptions of their level of safety, support, and capacity to adapt. ‘Subjective resilience’ is a person’s perceptions of their own resilience.

Asking people directly about their confidence, concerns, access to support, and ability to respond to changing conditions provides a deeper understanding of what resilience looks like in everyday life. 

These insights can complement traditional indicators and help identify differences in perception of prevalence and risk, implications for policies and investments, how these are working, for whom, and where additional or different support is needed. 

Yet, there are few validated tools for reliably tracking gender-differentiated experiences and perceptions. So — as often the case in change work — a first step is developing the tools needed to do the work needed.

The Individual Subjective Self-Evaluate Resilience Scale (iSERS) was developed by the University of Technology Sydney Institute for Sustainable Futures from a household-level measure, to assess subjective experiences of individual climate resilience in relation to four climate events (floods, drought, landslides and severe storms — but other events are possible).

Piloted in 2022 and 2024 in Bhutan, Laos and Nepal, the work demonstrated that resilience is individual, and individual-level measurement is vital to capture differences.

Women and men in Bhutan and Nepal did not agree on what many would consider an ‘objective’ fact — the number of floods in the last two years. And gender was found to be the most important influence on differences in scores. 

Individual-level data is also particularly critical for Small Island Developing States (SIDS), which are on the frontlines of the climate crisis and at the forefront of climate justice movements.

SIDS countries across the Pacific — including Fiji, Solomon Islands, and Tonga — are global leaders in demonstrating the importance and impact of individual-level data for sustainable development including providing insights into the relationship between inequalities linked to climate change, natural hazards, and other areas of life. 

At the last International Conference on Small Island Developing States (SIDS4, in 2024) SIDS feminists and gender justice groups led the Women’s Major Group statement in naming the moment as one of ‘unprecedented urgency.’  

These conversations were continued at the Women Deliver conference in April 2026, which was historically hosted by the Oceanic Pacific region and spotlighted the voices, demands, and priorities of Oceanic Pacific feminists and advocates who brought together the issues of climate justice, gender equality, inclusive data, data sovereignty, and Indigenous leadership among other issues.

The Prime Minister of Tuvalu, The Hon Feleti Penitala Teo, called on world leaders to address the intersecting issue of gender inequality and climate resilience, stating: "Climate change resilience and gender equality are not parallel agendas. But we keep on acting like they are."

First Nations and Indigenous girls, women, gender diverse and intersex people issued a landmark global statement declaring their ongoing demands.

In relation to climate justice and environmental stewardship, they renewed calls for recognition of Indigenous knowledge systems; resourcing for Indigenous-led monitoring, mapping, and research; and accountability for governments and industries, among other demands, asserting "We are the scientists and experts documenting environmental degradation."

Data was identified as a key strategy to realise deep structural transformation, with specific demands including: develop "Indigenous-led data systems; accurately measure our realities; use evidence to hold governments accountable; and maintain ownership and control of our data and our stories."

In their words, "We are not asking for inclusion in systems that have harmed us. We are transforming them. We assert jurisdiction. We uphold sovereignty of our lands, our bodies, and our futures. We define justice."