Policy Brief: Opportunities for Enhancing the Process and Output of the UAE-Belém Work Programme

Locally Led Adaptation & Resilience

Advocacy

Background

The outcomes of the 28th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC, COP28) marked significant progress in operationalizing the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA). At COP28, parties established the UAE Framework for Global Climate Resilience framework 1 outlines (UAE-GFCR).This seven thematic and four dimensional targets for the GGA with timelines for achieving ranging between 2027 and 2030, and beyond (UNFCCC, 2023, (2/CMA5) paragraphs 9 and 10)). The framework also defined a pathway towards defining indicators for measuring progress through a two-year work programme, dubbed the UAE-Belém work programme (UNFCCC, 2023, (2/CMA5) paragraph 39).

The outcome of the first Global Stocktake underscored existing gaps in assessments of climate adaptation, reinforcing the need for concerted efforts to define systematic methodologies and guidelines for measuring the adequacy and effectiveness of adaptation (UNFCCC, 2023, (1/CMA5) paragraph 48). Building on these momentous COP28 decisions, at the 60th session of the Subsidiary Bodies of the UNFCCC (SB60), parties further defined modalities for the UAE-Belém work programme on indicators, emphasizing the necessity of expert engagement. Additionally, the draft conclusions of SB60 established a criteria for mapping existing indicators, providing a robust foundation for the GGA framework. This approach helps to identify existing gaps, thus informing efforts to develop new indicators.

The African continent has a strong interest in operationalizing the GGA for several key reasons. First, relative to mitigation, adaptation remains a top priority in Africa’s climate action, given its high vulnerability to climate change despite negligible emissions. Second, the establishment of the GGA was first proposed by the African Group of Negotiators (AGN), elevating adaptation to the same level as mitigation and defining an ambition that parties could work towards collectively. Consequently, Article 7 of the Paris Agreement established, for the first time, the GGA with an aim to “enhancing adaptive capacity, strengthening resilience and reducing vulnerability to climate change, with a view to contributing to sustainable development and ensuring an adequate adaptation response in the context of the temperature goal of holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels while pursuing efforts to limit it below 1.5°C.”

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