Human mobility is multi-faceted and deeply interlinked with core adaptation sectors such as food, water, health, human settlements, or cultural heritage. As these sectors are reflected in the seven thematic targets of the UAE Framework for Global Climate Resilience, there is a prime opportunity to integrate mobility considerations into the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) and the ongoing process to develop indicators.

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Targets and indicators for a global goal

The GGA was established by Article 7 of the Paris Agreement as a counterpart to the overarching temperature goal, which aims to hold the increase in global average temperature to well below 2°C and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. To provide a similar direction for climate change adaptation, the GGA has the objective of enhancing adaptive capacity, strengthening resilience, and reducing vulnerability to climate change, with a view to contributing to sustainable development and ensuring an adequate adaptation response in the context of the above-mentioned temperature goal.

The operationalization of the GGA truly began in 2021 at COP26 with the launch of the Glasgow-Sharm el-Sheikh work programme, six years after the adoption of the Paris Agreement. Following the conclusion of this work programme and the establishment of the UAE Framework for Global Climate Resilience at COP28, the operationalization has now moved into a new phase through the two-year UAE-Belém work programme from 2024-2025. With seven thematic and four dimensional targets, the framework outlines the shape of the goal: now, the UAE-Belém work programme focuses on developing indicators to render these targets concrete and actionable.

In November 2024 at COP29, Parties to the Paris Agreement decided that this endeavour should result in a a manageable set of no more than 100 indicators, with characteristics including being globally applicable, constituting a menu that captures various contexts of adaptation action, and being designed to enable the assessment of progress toward achieving the different components of the targets. The experts convened by the Chairs of the Subsidiary Bodies (SBs) will further refine the indicators that have been compiled prior to COP29 and provide recommendations to Parties before the SB meetings in June 2025 in Bonn (SB62), following which Parties will make a final decision on the indicators by COP30 at the end of 2025.

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Incorporating human mobility into the GGA

Given the importance of human mobility for both adaptation and loss and damage, how can relevant considerations be incorporated into the indicator development process and become an integral part of the GGA? It is clear that mobility needs to be considered in adaptation planning and action at the local, national, and regional level, but what is its role for reporting towards a global goal?

While none of the targets specifically refer to human mobility, they all hold relevant for migration, displacement, or planned relocation. For the identification or development of GGA indicators, there are therefore two broad possibilities for incorporating human mobility: developing indicators specifically geared towards human mobility or modifying general indicators to capture human mobility, for example through disaggregated data collection for migrants and displaced persons.

As per the COP29 decision (CMA.6, para 21 (d)), Parties decided that the final set of indicators should include indicators that capture information pertaining to migrants, among other cross-cutting considerations such as gender, youth, children, disability, or social inclusion. However, the decision text does not specify which target such indicators should be connected to, if they should be relevant to multiple targets, or what exact form they should take.

Several mobility-related indicators can be found in the compiled list based on Party and non-Party submissions as well as the work of the Adaptation Committee on mapping indicators from national reports and documents. For example, there are quantitative indicators related to household displacement or out-migration, social protection coverage, or percentage of men and women consulted prior to relocation measures; qualitative indicators such as policy coherence between climate policy, migration policy, and disaster risk management; and indicators proposing disaggregation by migrant status or specific population subgroups.

Furthermore, the compilation prepared by the Adaptation Committee includes indicators that do not fit any of the targets. These indicators were placed in a separate category named “other” and tagged with themes for ease of reference. In this category, twelve indicators were tagged under the theme “migration,” highlighting the potential importance of this thematic area as a cross-cutting consideration for adaptation that is not tied to any single target.

The work of the expert groups until SB62 in June 2025 will determine which—if any—of these indicators find their way into the final list to be adopted at COP30/CMA7. In addition to technical considerations, this process also has a political dimension, and Parties will aim to develop an indicator list that integrates considerations of equity, gender, regional balance, and climate justice, as well as the need for context-specific adaptation action at different levels, across all sectors, and throughout the stages of the iterative adaptation cycle. This is especially important given the challenge of not only finding indicators that are globally applicable but also those that capture local needs, priorities, and circumstances, possibly through a tiered approach that scales based on data availability or utilizes different methodologies across different levels.

The last consideration also points to the potential interplay between thematic and dimensional targets and how they relate to each other. For example, when it comes to disaggregation, target 10 (a), which focuses on impact, vulnerability, and risk assessments to inform the formulation of National Adaptation Plans (NAPs), policy instruments, planning processes, and/or strategies, could serve as a foundation to ensure that migration or displacement status are disaggregated and mainstreamed. Similarly, target 10 (d) on monitoring, evaluation, and learning holds significant potential to incorporate human mobility into national adaptation measures and build the required institutional capacities to monitor their impact and success.

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Possibilities and considerations

Finding indicators that capture human mobility as well as the wide range of other considerations outlined above and in the CMA5 and CMA6 decisions is a complex undertaking for experts and Parties. For any indicator to be widely applicable, it must overcome constraints related to data availability, accessibility, quality, and disaggregation, for instance, related to informality (such as informal rural-urban migration from agricultural communities) or the transboundary movement of people. While there are existing metrics and data sources related to aspects of human mobility, they might need to be cross-referenced with demographic data and examined based on their specific relevance to climate change adaptation.

However, the often informal or transboundary nature of human mobility also provide an opportunity in this regard, as mobility-related indicators could help to track transboundary risks or transboundary elements of adaptation using the well-established tools and databases of the human mobility community. For example, a proposal for a limited set of migration-related indicators was recently developed under the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration (GCM) and the United Nations Network on Migration (UNNM), drawing on the global indicator framework for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and other relevant frameworks, such as the Migration Governance Indicators (MGI) and the indicators identified by the UN Expert Group on Migration Statistics (EGMIS). Existing indicators and databases (for example, the annual Global Report on Internal Displacement published by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre) could be integrated into the GGA indicators and reflect important considerations related to informality or transboundary climate action.

There is also a need to use precise terminology and definitions to avoid oversimplification, which could result in ambiguous indicators and protection gaps. For example, it is important to distinguish between descriptive terms without a clear legal definition (e.g., climate-related migrant or displaced person), concrete mobility-related adaptation measures (e.g., planned relocation or social protection), and terms denoting a national or international legal status that awards specific rights and protections (e.g., refugee or labour migrant).

Another potential area of tension is the fact that human mobility and immobility in the context of climate change can be a successful adaptive strategy but also lead to maladaptation or constitute a form of loss and damage. For example, for climate-related human mobility to be considered a successful adaptation strategy, it would need to ensure subsistence and economic opportunities, protection for those who are on the move, and the conservation of ways of life, traditional practices, cultural heritage, and community networks. From the perspective of achieving a global goal, human mobility is therefore neither necessarily positive nor negative, and any indicator or target element will should aim to either identify specific vulnerabilities related to human mobility or support successful adaptation actions based around the voluntary, safe, secure, legal, and orderly movement of people.

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Connecting the dots

Understanding the intersection of human mobility with climate change adaptation is important to ensure that the needs and priorities of migrants, displaced persons, and mobile or immobile communities are included in the GGA. Countries are already making these connections in their NAPs and other national policies: the GGA could provide a better structure for these efforts and allow peer learning and the identification of best practices. Furthermore, addressing human mobility through GGA indicators promises to elevate awareness and understanding of this complex nexus, helping policymakers and practitioners to more effectively address it and mobilize adequate climate finance and other means of implementation.

‍For a full overview of the current state of negotiations around the GGA and the operationalization of the UAE Framework, SLYCAN Trust has prepared a technical briefing capturing the state of play after COP29. Access it here as a reference document for the political and technical process in 2025 and beyond.