Gender Action Plan in the UNFCCC
The existing Gender Action Plan under the UNFCCC, has played an important role in building visibility and awareness of the gender-specific implications of climate change. However, notable gaps remain, including on implementation and impact.
The new Gender Action Plan set to be agreed at COP30 is a crucial opportunity to strengthen action. It should address:
- Finance: The lack of accessible funding for gender-responsive climate action undermines its implementation. Local actors, including women-, older-women-, youth-, and girl-led groups, including those with disabilities and Indigenous Peoples, face significant barriers to accessing finance despite their central role in community action. The Gender Action Plan should explicitly address how finance can be scaled up for gender-responsive climate action and the barriers to access removed.
- Intersectionality and data: The Gender Action Plan should explicitly reference the impacts, needs, and experiences of climate change based on people’s intersecting identities. To be effective, it is essential that the Gender Action Plan is inclusive of women and girls in all their diversity, and that intersectionality is reflected in data requirements so that gaps are identified and activities can be designed to respond to unique needs as well as universal rights.
- Structural barriers to gender equality: The Gender Action Plan must also address aspects of gender inequality that can become further exacerbated during times of emergency following climate change related impacts, including gender-based violence, unpaid care work, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and meaningful and systematic participation of women and girls. Addressing issues that affect women and girls, including those that affect specific groups of women and girls due to their intersecting identities, would help to improve their ability to adapt and to address loss and damage.
Coherence across national and international climate policy: Greater coherence is needed between the Gender Action Plan and climate policy processes at the national and international level, since gender is often treated in a siloed way and not across all aspects of policy.
Find out more:
- CAN-UK Statement on Inclusion (to be published on the website)
- CAN-UK Gender Action Plan policy brief June 2025 (to be uploaded to website)
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