Explainer: Why Gender Will Be High on the Agenda at COP30

At November’s COP30 climate conference in Belém, Brazil, gender will be a major focus topic. But why should action on climate change, which affects every person on the planet, require a specific action plan related to gender?

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“Of all of the big problems, the biggest is the assumption that climate change is not a gender issue,” Mwanahamisi Singano, Director of Policy, Women’s Environment & Development Organization (WeDo), told Earth.Org. “Women have direct dependency on nature, so the changing environment impacts them.” 

According to Singano, women often lack access to climate change information, finance, adaptive abilities and capacities, as well as alternative means of livelihood. “When they are impacted, women are not as mobile as men. When the rain doesn’t fall, the father can migrate to the city and find a day wage job, but women with a family can’t easily do that. They are the first ones to suffer a shortage of food from a changing environment and changing patterns,” she said. 

A review of the UN Sustainable Development Goals found that by 2050, climate change may push up to 158 million more women and girls into extreme poverty (US$2.15 per day), 16 million more than men and boys. At the same time, WeDo found that women are often only thought of as victims, even though they have a great deal to offer as solution providers. 

As the Women and Gender Constituency Co-focal Point, Singano is on the frontlines of the interaction between climate change and gender. At COP30, to be held this November in Belém, Brazil, gender will be one of the major topics on the agenda. In particular, a decision is expected at this year’s conference on a new Gender Action Plan.

Since 2011, and shortly before COP17, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has recognized the Women and Gender Group as an official interest group in the COP process. The roots of the Gender Action Plan stretch back to COP20, which took place in 2014 in Lima, Peru. There, the first Lima work program on gender, later known as the LWPG, was established, aiming “to advance gender balance and integrate gender considerations … so as to achieve gender responsive climate policy and action.” The LWPG was long-term and open-ended, rather than a concrete list of specific actions. 

At subsequent meetings, the plan was extended and enhanced with thematic days, but no agreement was achieved. Finally, at last year’s COP29, the parties decided to develop an entirely new Gender Action Plan, aiming to be adopted at COP30. “There will be a big decision coming out at COP in Belém on the Gender Action Plan,” explained Singano. “It has to translate the work program, create concrete milestones, say who has to do what, and what the party or secretariat has to do to advance gender.”

Priority areas for the new Gender Action Plan include capacity building, knowledge management and communication, gender balance, participation and women’s leadership, coherence, gender-responsive implementation and means of implementation, and monitoring and reporting. In particular, the plan is expected to address advancing access to finance and gender – including funding for the plan itself – and closing the gap in gender-specific climate data. 

However, a number of important milestones need to be reached before a decision can be made on the plan in Belém. 

The window for all of the parties – the signatories of the Paris Climate Agreement – to make submissions related to the new gender action plan ended on March 31, 2025, and a summary of these submissions is expected to be published in mid May. Following this, the development of the new plan will begin in earnest at one of the intermediate negotiation sessions that happen in between COP events, known as the Subsidiary Body sessions. An important round of negotiations on the plan will take place at the Subsidiary Body session in June 2025 in Bonn, Germany, reviewing the design, structure and content of the plan. 

Gender is also an important aspect of another focus area for COP30 – the so-called “Just Transition”, the commitment introduced in 2023 to ensuring that no one is left behind or pushed behind in the transition to low-carbon and environmentally sustainable economies and societies. 

In line with the Just Transition approach, individual countries have included gender topics in their long-term low-emission development strategies; a recent analysis by the World Resources Institute showed that 25% of these strategies had a gender equity chapter described in detail. In a statement, Brazil’s Minister of Women Cida Goncalves said, “More than a result for COP30, Brasil’s real legacy at this summit will be the inclusion of a gender perspective and women’s rights as a foundation for addressing the climate crisis and promoting a just transition.” 

Solutions in these plans should include a gender lens in order to be effective, according to Singano. “A classical example is that most of the land is owned by men, and women can’t invest in land that is not theirs. So if we are going to subsidize irrigation equipment, it’s unlikely that women will take the opportunity. Or when we are doing training in the evening, you find that during these times women don’t come because they are busy doing household work.”

The role of women in creating solutions is highlighted in the climate solution awards, held annually by Women Engage for a Common Future and presented during the COP sessions. For example, in one case from Senegal, women had been generating income by smoking fish with mangrove charcoal. When the government banned mangrove harvesting, the women created a mangrove conservation that would keep the mangroves healthy while retaining their income generation activities. 

The role of culture and gender in climate change is also under consideration for the upcoming Gender Action Plan. In a seminar in April, Rosilena Lindo, Advisor and Former Secretary of Energy of the Government of Panama, referenced a local capacity building process with Indigenous women aiming to ensure they had access to renewable electricity as well as resources to start their own companies. However, “As they were used to not being the head of the family, this started disputes among families and communities.”

Lindo explained: “When you start to intervene in a community, you can’t do it by isolating one person in the family. You have to provide psychosocial support and new opportunities, depending on their traditions. The top down approaches always contribute to that loss of culture and traditional practices.”

Featured image: Karen Toro/Climate Visuals Countdown.