Climate Blog
2025-06-16
2025 Bonn Climate Conference Special Feature: The Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA)
In the global effort to address climate change, Article 7 of the Paris Agreement introduced the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA)—a critical framework designed to enhance countries' adaptive capacities, drive policy implementation, and secure financial investments. Despite its importance, progress on establishing the GGA has been slow since the Paris Agreement was adopted in 2015. It wasn't until COP28 in 2023, held in the UAE, that the GGA was formally established under the UAE Framework for Global Climate Resilience (UAE FGCR), laying the groundwork for future implementation.
At COP29 in 2024, the GGA gained further momentum. The Baku Adaptation Roadmap officially integrated the GGA into the permanent agenda of all future COP meetings. It also set a significant milestone: a comprehensive review of GGA's progress during the second Global Stocktake (GST) in 2028. However, unlike mitigation efforts, evaluating adaptation progress, effectiveness, and equity poses unique challenges. The lack of universally applicable metrics for adaptation makes the process particularly complex.
The Challenge of Quantifying Climate Adaptation
The GGA encompasses seven broad thematic goals:
- Water resources
- Food security and agriculture
- Health
- Ecosystems and biodiversity
- Infrastructure and human settlements
- Poverty eradication and livelihoods
- Cultural heritage
These themes are supported by four adaptation cycle objectives: Assessing climate risks and vulnerabilities; Developing adaptation plans; Implementing and monitoring actions; and Evaluating and learning from outcomes. Despite this comprehensive framework, progress in these areas is often constrained by local environmental conditions, societal structures, and gaps in data availability. Particularly, disagreements among countries regarding adaptation financing, action definitions, and implementation methods have hindered substantial advancements on crucial issues. Many hope that the 2025 Bonn Climate Conference will provide an opportunity for deeper discussions and pave the way for concrete progress.
One of the primary objectives of the Bonn Conference is to further streamline and finalise the indicator system for the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA). Since the launch of the GGA, the Expert Working Groups have managed to reduce the initial 9,000 proposed indicators to 490. The goal is to narrow this down further to a concise, actionable set of 100 indicators by the end of the year, ahead of COP30. This ambitious effort aims to create a scientific, comprehensive, and practical indicator framework. However, the process has been far from smooth, with multiple challenges still unresolved.
Some of the key obstacles include: Striking a balance between global applicability and regional specificity; Expanding data coverage and improving data quality; and Addressing issues of overlapping indicators or unclear categories.
For instance, in the water sector, global indicators need to account for the differing needs and vulnerabilities across regions. In the health sector, insufficient disaggregated data for vulnerable populations and low-quality data on disease response continue to hinder progress. Similarly, indicators for poverty eradication and livelihoods often suffer from vague classifications, making it difficult to align them directly with the core adaptation goals.
Experts suggest that flexible technological support mechanisms should be adopted to address these issues. Solutions such as digital tools and adaptive reporting frameworks could help close data gaps. Moreover, the indicator system must incorporate the concept of Transformational Adaptation—a systemic approach aimed at addressing the root causes of social inequality, rather than merely implementing incremental adaptation measures.
The Importance of GGA: Promoting Equitable Climate Adaptation
The outcomes of the Bonn Conference will have a profound impact on the future progress of the GGA. For example, introducing gender-responsive indicators could help uncover the root causes of climate vulnerability by identifying the groups most in need of support, thereby ensuring equitable adaptation efforts. A well-constructed GGA indicator system will also enable the measurement of global climate action progress, influencing funding allocation, policy design, and long-term adaptation planning at the national level.
With such indicators in place, global adaptation actions will become more transparent and specific. This would not only provide concrete data to support the Global Stocktake (GST) and climate financing mechanisms but also offer clear guidance for adaptation efforts at the country level. The Bonn Conference's achievements will ensure that adaptation actions are not only ambitious but also equitable, meeting the diverse needs of countries while balancing fairness and effectiveness.
From Global to Local Adaptation: Lessons for Hong Kong
The progress of the GGA offers important insights for Hong Kong’s climate adaptation efforts. Currently, the Hong Kong Climate Action Plan 2050 lacks specific targets and monitoring indicators for adaptation actions, particularly in areas such as cultural heritage protection and support for vulnerable communities.
CarbonCare InnoLab has urged the Hong Kong SAR government to use the mid-term review of the Climate Action Plan 2050 as an opportunity to align local adaptation efforts with the GGA framework. Hong Kong can establish clearer directions for tackling climate change challenges by adopting localised indicators and actionable plans inspired by the GGA. This would ensure that its adaptation strategies are not only aligned with global standards but also tailored to address local vulnerabilities and priorities effectively.