As the Planet Warms, We Must Ensure Culture is Included in COP30’s Adaptation Decisions
COP30 is being called the “COP of adaptation.” Here are four ways to make sure that promise extends to culture and heritage.
Culture and heritage are both highly vulnerable to climate change and vital enablers of adaptation. COP30 marks a critical opportunity to operationalize past successes in embedding both into climate adaptation policy. This article outlines how culture and heritage connect to COP30’s adaptation negotiations, what’s at stake, and the priorities advocates can press to transform past recognition of culture into future adaptation finance and action.
How Culture, Heritage and Climate Adaptation Intersect
Indigenous Knowledge, traditional and local knowledge systems, along with storytelling, and the arts strengthen climate literacy, shape risk perception, and foster behavioral change, making them essential to inclusive adaptation strategies. Losses to tangible and intangible cultural heritage erode identity, sense of place, and community resilience—especially for Indigenous Peoples and climate-dependent communities.
In Brazil, traditional communities face increasing threats from extreme events like storms, floods, and fires. Recent examples include heavy rains affecting quilombola communities in Camburi on the coast of São Paulo and devastating fires in the Pantanal. Our co-author Denir, chief of the Barra do São Lourenço village in the southern Pantanal, has described the impact this way:
The fire of 2024 was a very destructive fire, right? We no longer have cambará to make our dugout canoes. It is killing our culture. We planted saplings of louro and cambará, but how long will it take to grow? We even had difficulty collecting water hyacinth fiber for making handicrafts. These climate changes have greatly affected our territory, really affected our community.
Momentum for Adaptation at COP30
After years of being sidelined, adaptation has gained prominence in recent COPs. In his 8th public letter released on 23 October, COP30 President Designate André Corrêa do Lago declared that COP30 must be remembered as the COP of adaptation implementation, building on the foundation laid at past COPs – especially 2023’s COP28 which adopted the landmark UNFCCC Global Goal on Adaptation Framework (GGA).
Cultural Heritage in the GGA
In a breakthrough for mainstreaming culture into climate policy, the Global Goal on Adaptation Framework includes cultural heritage among its seven thematic targets. The new target calls for enhanced ambition by 2030 to protect cultural heritage by developing adaptive strategies for heritage sites and cultural practices and climate-resilient infrastructure informed by Indigenous knowledge systems. The GGA also identifies Indigenous Knowledge and traditional knowledge systems as well as attention to skills, values and attitudes as cross-cutting adaptation issues.
Two years after adoption of the GGA, however, many heritage sites and cultural systems remain ill-prepared for climate hazards and risks. Still, inclusion in the GGA can help opening doors for culture and heritage projects to be better reflected in local and national adaptation plans and to access climate finance. A coalition of organizations is already preparing to seize this opportunity, readying for launch in 2026 the Heritage Adapts! 3000 x 2030 campaign which aims to support thousands of heritage sites and cultural practices to implement locally-led adaptive strategies by 2030. But to truly scale these solutions, new GGA implementation mechanisms and indicators expected to be adopted at COP30 must be fit for purpose.
What Will Be Decided at COP30
COP30 is expected to adopt GGA indicators, building on the UNFCCC’s UAE–Belém Work Programme, which has spent the two years since COP28 working on metrics for measuring progress against GGA targets.
The Heritage Adapts to Climate Alliance (HACA)—led by the Climate Heritage Network, ICOMOS, and the Preserving Legacies project—actively engaged with this process. But advocates have concerns about a list of eight potential indicators for the GGA cultural heritage target released by a UNFCCC expert group in September, including:
Erasure of the concept of climate-resilient infrastructure guided Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge and local knowledge systems;
Heavy reliance on percentage-based metrics which can distort incremental progress and emphasize officially listed heritage over the local and vernacular;
Encouragement of use of Indigenous Knowledge and traditional knowledge systems without corresponding metrics for ethical and equitable engagement of and direct support for Indigenous Peoples and local knowledge holders;
Inadequate cross-linkages to adaptation of food and water systems and societal adaptation more broadly.
The final indicators adopted by UNFCCC Member States at COP30 will shape how governments, funders, and practitioners assess adaptation outcomes, prioritize investments, and report progress. Getting the cultural heritage indicators right may be the most consequential culture-specific issue of COP30.
Finance, Means of Implementation, and Loss and Damage
Indicators alone won’t unlock action. COP30 must also address means of implementation. The Baku Adaptation Roadmap (BAR) process launched at COP29 could help. While a decision is expected at COP30 on how to operationalize this new UNFCCC function, so far governments remain divided.
Culture advocates should push for a BAR decision that focuses on means of implementation for adaptation, including financial resources, technology transfer (including traditional technologies), and capacity-building support from developed countries. These mechanisms must support culture-based adaptation action and operationalize the new GGA indicators.
Adaptation Finance and Cultural Heritage
Many hope that COP30 will set next steps for adaptation finance, especially with the expiration of the “Glasgow pledge” to double finance from 2019 levels which was adopted at COP26. This is especially urgent for culture and heritage which have long been excluded from climate finance, forcing reliance on limited culture budgets to fund adaptation measures.
The New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) agreed to at COP29 tripled annual climate finance for developing countries to $300 billion by 2035, with a broader goal of mobilizing $1.3 trillion annually from public and private sources. The Baku-to-Belém Roadmap set for adoption at COP30 is meant to outline how to reach that larger target. Crucially, the 2024 NCQG linked the need to dramatically scale up adaptation finance to the GGA’s targets—including cultural heritage. Culture and heritage advocates must ensure this linkage is strengthened in the final Roadmap adopted at Belem.
Loss and Damage
Loss and damage refers to harm from climate impacts where adaptation is no longer possible. Cultural heritage, Indigenous Knowledge and traditional and local knowledge systems are already experiencing loss from slow- and rapid-onset hazards—and sometimes from maladaptation or poorly designed mitigation.
Following COP27’s creation of the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) and COP28’s operationalization of the fund, attention to loss and damage has waned ahead of COP30. However, there is an urgent need for further capitalization of the FRLD with predictable resources. As part of this broader effort, culture and heritage advocates should push for COP30 to deliver clear operational rules and funding criteria that enable simplified, direct-access, and non-debt-inducing instruments for so-called “non-economic losses” which include loss to culture, heritage, Indigenous Knowledge and traditional and local knowledge systems.
Brazil’s Example: Local Leadership in Action
Brazil offers a compelling example of translating COP commitments into national action. Its updated Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) aligns with the GGA and includes adaptation goals on protecting traditional ways of life and cultural heritage.
Brazil’s cultural sector has also developed a Brazilian Charter on Cultural Heritage and Climate Change through participatory workshops across biomes. The Charter emphasizes local vulnerability assessments, integration of traditional and scientific knowledge, and the creation of financing mechanisms and public policies that mainstream culture in climate agendas. Strong outcomes from COP30 can support realization of these aims within Brazil and scaling of this model to other countries.
Conclusion
COP30 presents a rare opportunity to move culture and heritage from symbolic inclusion to operational reality within global adaptation and loss-and-damage regimes. Decisions made in Belém—on indicators, finance, and implementation—will determine whether cultural heritage, Indigenous Knowledge and traditional and local knowledge systems are protected, funded, and integrated into adaptation strategies. Culture advocates must act decisively to ensure COP30 delivers the tools and resources needed to turn recognition into resilience.
The 2025 UN Climate Conference (COP30) will take place in Belém, Brazil from 10–21 November. This article is the second in a series exploring the connections between cultural and climate activism and the political decisions expected to be taken at the COP by national ministers and negotiators. The first looked at past and future efforts to mainstream culture into international climate policy while the third and final article will examine entry points for culture and heritage in COP30’s mitigation negotiations.
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Luana Campos – PhD in Quaternary, Materials, and Cultures. Professor at the Pantanal Campus of the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul. Secretary of the Committee on Climate Change and Heritage of Icomos – Brazil.
Denir Marques Da Silva (Negré) is the Chief of the Barra do São Lourenço Village in the Pantanal of Mato Grosso do Sul – Corumbá, MS
Andrew Potts is the Director of Policy and Practice for the National Geographic Society-funded Preserving Legacies project where he manages the Heritage Adapts to Climate Alliance (HACA).
Dr. Salma Sabour (she/her/hers) is a physical and environmental engineer and a climate risk and adaptation specialist who integrates geospatial modelling, risk analysis, and participatory approaches to co-develop locally led solutions to climate change. Her work explores the interconnected risks and adaptations shaping coasts, communities, heritage, ecosystems, and human mobility in a changing climate.
