The 2015 Paris Agreement under the United Nations climate change convention committed parties to a vague “global adaptation goal,” but left it to future convenings to work out the details. Climate adaptation is harder to define and measure than mitigation. Mitigation refers almost exclusively to reducing emissions, but adaptation refers to virtually any response to climate change across all sectors of society. Thus, agreeing on how to assess progress on climate adaptation is challenging.
At COP30 in Brazil, concluded in late 2025, negotiators adopted a small set of indicators to measure progress toward this goal, but they jettisoned 2 out of every 5 among the 100 metrics submitted. Why? A closer look reveals that a number of the rejected measures would have assessed national budget commitments to climate adaptation. For example, among those indicators that were dropped were:
- Proportion of government budget allocated to climate adaptation and resilience
- Costs of adaptation actions identified in adopted national adaptation plans
- Annual adaptation finance expenditure
While this result may have been a predictable result of challenging global politics of climate finance, it is clearly a missed opportunity for people who depend on their governments to ramp up finance for climate adaptation. Domestic public finance metrics cannot ultimately be ignored by world leaders. Even as poorer countries push for more global support to finance adaptation, they must also be willing to measure their investments and report on them. Read this brief for comprehensive insights.
