Lack of consensus on adaptation at COP30 worrying: Grace Fu

She hopes parties will make more headway in agreeing on indicators to track progress

- Ang Qing

With UN climate summit COP30 set to draw to a close on Nov 21, the lack of consensus on how countries should track progress on adaptation is concerning, said Minister for Sustainability and the Environment Grace Fu.

Adaptation refers to actions that help reduce vulnerability to climate impacts, such as building sea walls to keep out rising tides.

“Many small island states, like Singapore, face existential threats of sea-level rise and more severe storm surges, which could wipe out our people,” she said in a media interview on Nov 18. “Coastal protection and flood management infrastructure is of great urgent need.”

Agreeing on a set of indicators for how countries can measure progress on implementing adaptation measures is a major - and highly contested - focus of the 2025 conference.

Having this list of standardised indicators will allow nations to better track their vulnerabilities against the impacts of climate change, and start to address them.

For example, if countries start tracking deaths due to heat exposure and see a growing trend of such mortalities, they can start taking steps to reduce this.

Ahead of the conference, experts had whittled down an initial list of thousands of indicators to just 100.

They include indicators that track whether countries have early warning systems, and whether they measure the proportion of water and sanitation infrastructure systems that can withstand climate-related hazards.