A RALLYING CRY FOR THE GENDER ACTION PLAN AT COP30
Because 50/50 is not just about equity, it is about effectiveness and survival
A PLAN STILL STUCK
COP30 is close to its end, and the extended Gender Action Plan remains unresolved. Inside Belém, the mood is a mix of exhaustion and anger. COP30 was meant to be the moment the world finally agreed on a new Gender Action Plan that is clear, ambitious, and shaped by women who live the realities of climate change every day.
But protesters have been on the streets and inside the COP arena. "We can’t eat money. We want our lands free from agribusiness, oil exploration, illegal miners and illegal loggers," says Nato, an Indigenous leader from the Tupinamba community. For many women and underrepresented groups, it feels like their voices are being squeezed out of a process that is supposed to centre them.
At COP29, governments stepped back from committing real finance to gender equality. That unfinished work hangs over this year’s negotiations. On top of that, the Gender Action Plan talks are stuck in unresolved text, with political fights over what “gender” even means, with some governments pushing to narrow it to “biological sex”, a move that could roll back decades of inclusion and progress. But there is another truth: women are already leading — on farms, in forests, in neighbourhoods, across movements — often with little or no support. A Gender Action Plan without real resources behind it will not match their momentum.
Across Brazil, India, Nepal, Kenya, Zimbabwe and beyond, women’s groups and youth activists are pushing for one outcome at COP30: inclusive climate action, with gender equality built into the extended Gender Action Plan (GAP), not added as an afterthought or a last-minute fix with footnotes.
THE COST OF LEAVING GENDER OUT
UN Women, which has called for the GAP to be “transformative, well-funded, and accountable, has also warned that what happens in Belém will decide “whether gender equality remains at the heart or slips to the margin of the UN climate process”. A strong GAP is a matter of justice. It will decide whether climate action works. As Sarah Hendriks, Director, Policy, Programme and Intergovernmental Division at UN Women says, “Failure to adopt a robust GAP would set back gender equality and human rights, undermining hard-won progress and signalling that women’s leadership and experience are expendable in the climate fight”.
From here, the question is: how are countries such as Brazil, India, Nepal, Kenya, and Zimbabwe actually responding, and what could a 50/50 change in practice entail? SHE Changes Climate country networks are bringing these conversations home and showing what COP decisions mean for forests, finance, and frontline communities.
BRAZIL | FORESTS, FINANCE AND A JUST TRANSITION
As the host nation and home to over 60% of the Amazon, Brazil carries immense responsibility and unprecedented opportunity. Its credibility hinges on curbing deforestation, delivering on restoration commitments, and protecting the world’s most critical biomes.
This momentum aligns with the COP30 Presidency’s Tropical Forest Finance Framework (TFFF), designed to mobilise large-scale, predictable finance to keep forests standing, restore degraded landscapes, and channel resources to Indigenous peoples and forest communities. Brazil is positioning the bioeconomy as a flagship development strategy, showing how standing forests can generate jobs, innovation, and income when communities—including women and Indigenous leaders—are properly resourced.
Yet Brazil is navigating deep tensions. It champions global climate ambition while expanding offshore oil and pre-salt exploration, raising hard questions about its long-term net-zero pathway.
In food systems, Brazil must reconcile industrial agriculture—a major driver of emissions and deforestation—with the growing movement for regenerative agriculture, agroecology, and smallholder inclusion. Indigenous rights and territorial governance sit at the heart of this: Indigenous peoples safeguard Brazil’s most intact forests. There is an expectation of stronger protections, land regularisation, and direct financing for their stewardship.
What is at stake is whether Brazil can turn this historic opening—its natural assets, and social innovations into a coherent, just climate strategy that aligns forests, people, and prosperity, and centres those who have protected these ecosystems the longest.
INDIA | HARDWIRING 50/50 INTO ADAPTATION PLANS
In its opening statements at COP30, India reiterated its position on equity: “all parties must remain committed to and guided by equity”
India faces a paradox. It is the world’s fastest-growing renewables market, while being the world’s second-largest consumer of coal. It continues to rally behind the architecture of the Paris Agreement (2015) and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR). All countries must curb fossil fuel emissions, but without compromising on national economic-development priorities. “We must reaffirm our strongest commitment to the principles here, not attempt to sideline and ignore it,” India delegation member Suman Chandra said as part of a collective of Like-Minded Developing Countries (LMDC).
At the same time, India is signalling that adaptation finance and justice for vulnerable communities are urgent priorities, especially for those who have contributed the least to emissions but stand to lose the most.
SHE Changes Climate India has called the forthcoming National Adaptation Plan, where gender responsiveness is one of the eight key pillars, a golden opportunity to correct gaps across all climate frameworks (NAPCC, SAPCC, NDCs, NAP). This includes institutionalising 50/50 representation in climate decision-making, creating gender responsive climate budgets, and securing dedicated climate finance windows.
If India chooses this path, it can lead by example from the Global South—showing what 50/50 looks like not just in numbers, but in laws, budgets and implementation.
NEPAL | FROM PROMISES TO DIRECT INVESTMENT
Women—especially Indigenous and marginalised women— are on the frontlines of landslides, floods and water scarcity in Nepal, often walking further every year just to secure a bucket of water.
Women leading climate policy in Nepal point out that while the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) mention gender, they are rarely backed by dedicated budgets, technical support, or monitoring. “Gender” is thus often treated as a box to tick, not a commitment to honour.
“We do not need more commitments; we need direct investment in women and Indigenous-led climate action. When you fund women, you fund the planet,” says Suni Lama, Chairperson, National Indigenous Women Forum (NIWF). Their call to governments and donors is simple: stop issuing new promises, and start directing climate finance straight to women-led and Indigenous-led initiatives.
KENYA | STRONG POLICIES, SLOW POWER SHIFT
Kenya, a historically low emitter, has robust institutional frameworks to mainstream gender into climate policy. There are also shining examples of women driving innovation and models for scaling community-level solutions. But women’s influence in decision-making is slow.
This mirrors neighbouring contexts like Zimbabwe, where gender is embedded into climate action plans, but women’s representation and power still advance at a stubborn pace.
ZIMBABWE | LOSS AND DAMAGE THAT REACHES WOMEN AND GIRLS
Zimbabwe, a frontline climate state, is pressing for the operationalisation of the Loss and Damage Fund, seeking financial assistance not just for climate action, but for coping with and recovering from unavoidable climate fallout. Over 60% of its people rely on rain-fed agriculture, and repeated droughts and floods are already undoing years of development gains.
The scale of required investment for adaptation and mitigation measures outlined in its ambitious Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC 3.0) far outstrips domestic financial capacity. Meeting this need is key to achieving all goals, including gender equality in climate action, as the country accelerates its renewable transition based on its solar, hydro, and biomass potential.
Zimbabwe’s pre-COP30 processes have featured youth demands for accessible climate education, stronger gender responsive finance, including direct support for women and girls — not just hard infrastructure, but social protection, education, health and care. The government has also signed a Declaration on Children and Climate Change.
URGENCY TO BUILD 50/50 INTO PLANS
Two recent studies are proof — the world needs an urgent reminder to build 50/50 into the foundation of climate plans.
A recent study of 32 Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)—climate action plans submitted by countries under the Paris Agreement reveals a bitter truth: while most countries acknowledge women’s disproportionate vulnerability to climate change, fewer recognise their contributions to climate solutions, or take a comprehensive approach to addressing gender inequalities.
Another study of 36 NDCs tells us what this means in numbers:
Only one in five countries meaningfully integrates gender in their latest climate action plans.
78% still lack the depth needed to translate gender commitments into real impact.
Only 16.7% allocate resources for gender-responsive budgeting.
Just 13.9% include sex, age, and disability-disaggregated data to track progress.
As countries renew and renegotiate their commitment to bringing down emissions and phasing out fossil fuels, gender has to be written into the core text, in stone, not pencilled into side paragraphs and siloed “gender terms”.
“We need to stop segregating climate as a technology issue and gender as a social justice issue. Gender needs to be mainstreamed such that all national environment plans include gender, and all gender plans, of course, include gender,” says Australia-based Janet Salisbury of the Women’s Climate Congress that advocates for women’s leadership and influence in climate decision making.
In Australia’s parliament, women are close to 50%, she notes, but are they effectively able to influence decision-making, when the agenda "has been set way back into patriarchy in deep time? It’s like turning the Titanic around”, she adds.
Her question sits at the heart of the 50/50 campaign: the benchmark is equality, not exception.
PRESENCE IS NOT POWER
Even when women from India, Zimbabwe, Brazil, Kenya, Australia and beyond are present in international spaces, influence is uneven.
“It’s not just about being in the rooms, but about bringing our voices to the room,” says Tafadzwa Kurowi, the country lead for SHE Changes Climate in Zimbabwe. “This can only be done when there is capacity building to ensure that we have the knowledge and skills to strengthen the gender agenda, in its entirety.”
Trained under the government’s leadership programme, Tafadzwa Kurowi has four recommendations:
Gender equal representation across UNFCCC processes and at the level of political parties, with concrete targets so that delegations reflect a balance at home
Stronger national policies that integrate gender into all climate policies, not just standalone strategies
Robust data collection and data-driven decision making
Equitable climate finance, capacity building of women and youth-led organisations with direct access to funds and a say in how they are used
COLOUR THEM PURPLE
Across Belém, women’s rights groups have already turned entire days of COP30 purple—a colour claimed in solidarity—to demand an ambitious and well-funded Gender Action Plan. Their message is blunt. The time for promises has passed. This COP must deliver concrete action, with gender woven through every part of the climate regime, not parked in one negotiation room.
Civil society groups warn that they are still seeing deliberate efforts to slow progress and that any rollback on gender equality is ultimately a rollback on climate ambition itself. Feminist networks like WEDO stress that the real measure of the GAP’s success will not be in elegant wording, but in whether climate finance becomes genuinely gender-responsive — shifting power and resources to those already leading work on the ground, and hardwiring gender into national climate plans.
As COP30 edges towards its close, SHE Changes Climate is calling on delegates to step up and deliver a plan that actually backs women’s leadership, not just celebrates it in speeches.