https://www.unwomen.org/en/news-stories/explainer/2025/11/climate-change-gender-action-plan
Climate change is not gender neutral. Women and girls bear the brunt of its impacts, which amplify existing inequalities and threaten their livelihoods, health and safety.
At this very moment, world leaders at COP30 in Brazil have the opportunity – and the obligation – to combat the climate crisis and gender inequality, at the very same time. That opportunity: the adoption of a new, transformative Gender Action Plan.
“Climate change is a manmade problem that requires a feminist solution.”
– Former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson
What is the UNFCCC Gender Action Plan (GAP)?
The Gender Action Plan (GAP) is a strategy document that ensures climate action works for everyone. The GAP serves as the user manual for integrating gender perspectives across all climate actions. It is a tool to ensure that the policies designed for climate mitigation, adaptation, finance, technology, capacity-building and transparency all serve to boost women’s participation and leadership – not hinder them.
While the first GAP was adopted in 2017, Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are due to submit an updated plan at COP30. (This second revision of the GAP is part of the extension of UNFCCC’s Enhanced Lima Work Programme on Gender.) The final document – which should be adopted by consensus – will shape the next decade of global climate action and determine whether gender equality remains at the heart of the UN climate process or slips to the margins.
We’ll get deeper into what the Gender Action Plan means for women and girls. But first, some helpful context.
What is gender-responsive climate action?
UN Women and our partners are demanding that gender equality isn’t just an afterthought of climate solutions, but built in.
- Gender-responsive climate action is designed to recognize the unique risks women and girls face, and to protect and promote their rights. These considerations make climate solutions more effective. For example, women and girls, who make up more than half of the world’s poor, tend to be impacted worst when natural resources like water are stressed. Gender-responsive climate action names and addresses these disproportionate effects.
- Gender mainstreaming is about normalizing the connections between gender equality and climate policies. It ensures women and men equally benefit from climate solutions – and prevents existing gender inequalities from being carried over into the design of new policies. For instance: purposefully investing in women’s access to green jobs, as much as men’s.
- Feminist climate justice brings a gender lens to the fight against climate change and pollution, acknowledging how the drivers of environmental harms are also the drivers of gender inequalities, such as the lack of economic opportunities.
In addition to the new GAP, there are many outcomes under negotiation at COP30. UN Women is advocating for every facet to take gender into account. This includes initiatives relating to:
- climate financing: the funding of climate mitigation, adaptation and sustainable development
- the just transition: the necessary move away from fossil-fuel based, extractive and high-polluting economies – and towards thriving economies that are circular, safer and better for everyone
