Why is AGWA going to COP?
As countries gather in Bélem next week, AGWA aims to ensure that water remains a critical enabler of resilience, supporting both mitigation and adaptation goals. AGWA will be onsite, sharing concrete and scalable solutions that are already being integrated into countries’ climate planning. Our goal: to build climate action fit for today and tomorrow.
Building resilient momentum
Since COP26, water has gained traction in climate dialogues. This year marks the first Baku Dialogue on Water, mainstreaming formal COP-to-COP conversations on water and climate. We're at a critical juncture: maintaining momentum on water as a system connector and resilience multiplier is vital.
Water resilience isn't optional. Unaddressed, its negative impacts will return with even greater force. AGWA ensures that water remains a critical enabler of resilience, supporting both mitigation and adaptation as Parties implement their commitments.
Brazil's Presidency calls for greater civil society engagement, particularly on implementation. However, the unusually high attendance cost of attendance this year means many groups won't be present in Belém. By contributing to the larger non-state actor agenda through our engagement with the COP30 Global Climate Action Agenda, and to the negotiations through our affiliation with the Research and Independent NGOs Constituency, we seek to amplify our messages throughout the COP.
This year, we are also participating in events in the Green Zone as well as Brazil’s AgriZone. Across a range of sessions with partners from around the world, AGWA will share tools, finance mechanisms and models to help close financing and implementation gaps. Brazil has placed a strong emphasis on the protection of nature as an essential climate solution, along with increased finance for developing countries to meet the new targets set at COP29. For this reason, our official COP30 Side Event will focus on improving investment in national climate plans, including for water resilience.
We will also track several policy processes such as the negotiations on the final list of Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) indicators and the Just Transition Work Programme, which has been stalled since last year’s COP29.
Brazil leading by example
Year-round AGWA works with communities, countries and companies to develop water-wise climate strategies. The Water Resilience Tracker (WRT) is one way we do this: by helping countries build stronger NDCs and NAPs and resilience roadmaps.
Brazil exemplifies the impact the WRT can have in achieving better water and climate integration. Facing extreme events – flooding, landslides, drought, wildfires – as well as intensifying competition for water across energy, agriculture, and food security, Brazil used the WRT to demonstrate water's interdependence with other sectors, developing an integrated approach across sectoral adaptation plans.
Success has been such that Brazil is rolling out the WRT in six sub-national basins to account for regional specificities. Belém offers the perfect moment to showcase this example of concrete, fundable and actionable climate planning.
Global trends and perspectives guiding action
Experts working on WRT compiled a Global Trends Report that serves as a timely guide to climate and water resilience, highlighting policy, finance, and institutional challenges.
The WRT Policy Group will launch a perspective paper during COP30 highlighting the important strategic choices that countries need to make to prioritize water in climate planning now, choices that will only become more difficult as climate change accelerates and hydrological shifts intensify.
While many national climate plans increasingly recognize the critical role of water in achieving their climate commitments, most do not consider water resources in a systemic way as an enabler of climate resilience. With this publication, we hope to encourage the development of water-wise climate strategies through stronger NDCs and NAPs.
Measuring progress meaningfully
Next week, Parties are set to debate and adopt a set of globally-relevant adaptation indicators that will guide adaptation action and track countries’ progress under the GGA. AGWA experts’ analysis of the process thus far, identifies fault lines that threaten an agreement.
Bridging technical readiness and political realism requires refining indicator definitions and agreeing on financing, capacity-building, and technology transfer mechanisms.
Developing countries see the core issue being that the indicators, as they stand, may be technically sound but appear detached from the means required to implement and report on them. Many fear that domestic or private finance references shift responsibility away from those with historical obligations.
Developed countries, meanwhile, view the GGA as a global endeavor, arguing that tracking adaptation progress should encompass all sources of effort, including domestic and private finance, to reflect the collective nature of resilience-building under Article 7. Without clarity on data systems, custodian agencies, and monitoring resources, Parties won't see these indicators as their own.
Building trust around support, transparency, and accountability will therefore be essential. AGWA will be following developments in Belém, hoping the GGA framework transitions from technically credible to politically legitimate.
The following AGWA staff and partners will be on site in Belém:
Ingrid Timboe, Deputy Executive Director, AGWA | 14 - 21 Nov
John Matthews, Executive Director, AGWA | 10 - 14 Nov
Idrees Malyar, Director, Water Resilience Tracker, AGWA | 11 - 15 Nov
Glauco Kimura de Freitas, Brazilian National Consultant for the Water Resilience Tracker, IWMI | 10 - 15 Nov
Heading to COP30 and need an expert speaker or want to learn more about our work and partnerships? Reach out to Ingrid Timboe >