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Many indigenous peoples and marginalized populations live in environments that are highly exposed to climate change impacts, such as arid zones, small islands , high- altitude regions, and the Arctic . As a result of this heightened exposure and their natural resource- based livelihoods, these societies are already observing and responding to changes exacerbated by climate change. Local and indigenous knowledge is therefore a source of invaluable information for climate change assessment and adaptation . This unique transdisciplinary publication is the result of collaboration between UNESCO ’s Local and Indigenous Knowledge Systems (LINKS ) programme, the United Nations University’s Traditional Knowledge Initiative, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC ), and other organizations. Chapters written by indigenous peoples, scientists and development experts provide insight into how diverse societies observe and adapt to changing environments. A broad range of case studies illustrate how these societies, building upon traditional knowledge handed down through generations, are already developing their own solutions for dealing with a rapidly changing climate and how this might be useful on a global scale. Of interest to policy makers, social and natural scientists, and indigenous peoples and experts, this book provides an indispensable reference for those interested in climate science, policy and adaptation. This publication is the second in the “Local & Indigenous Knowledge” series published by UNESCO.

Since the ICPD in 1994, what was then referred to as “climate change” has evolved into today’s “climate crisis”, and is now recognized as the existential threat of our time. Recent increases in global warming are unprecedented in human history, causing the melting of polar ice caps, a rise in sea levels, the warming and acidification of the oceans, and the increasing frequency, duration and intensity of adverse weather events. Scientists agree that we have entered a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, in which humans are the primary drivers of change in the Earth’s atmosphere.

The latest estimates show that if the burning of fossil fuels and their corresponding carbon emissions are not drastically reduced, we will reach a 3.2°C degree increase in warming by the end of the century. Approximately 50 to 75 per cent of the global population could be exposed to periods of life-threatening climatic conditions due to extreme heat and humidity.

The climate crisis is already disrupting social, economic and natural systems. It is pressuring water availability, food production, transport and urban infrastructure as well as biodiversity and human health. Examples of devastating impacts have already been recorded in various climate hotspots. In West and Central Africa, global warming continues to worsen droughts, desertification, floods, food insecurity, human displacement, social unrest and insecurity. Climate impacts on large semiarid agrosystems are making livelihoods difficult to sustain, especially for those directly dependent on agriculture. Increasing drought has led to escalating competition over grazing land, heightening water stress and food insecurity, all of which are risk factors for conflicts; indeed, the region is currently home to 7 of 13 medium-intensity conflict countries. Other critical climate hotspots include many small island developing States, as rising sea levels and extreme weather events such as cyclones pose existential risks for these island nations. The consequences of the climate crisis amplify inequalities, such as gender inequality, and contribute to social trauma that heightens vulnerabilities and violence, including against women and girls.

The climate crisis will have an impact on everyone, everywhere, affecting both present and future generations to whom people today have a moral obligation. While no individual, country, system or sector is entirely spared from the consequences of the climate crises, climate impacts are grossly unequal, within and among countries. Low- and middle-income countries that have contributed the least to carbon emissions are the most severely impacted by the climate crisis, and are less able to afford and implement necessary adaptation and resilience strategies to prevent and recover from loss and damage. Among groups of people, poor women and marginalized populations bear the brunt. Around the world, individuals are being deprived of their “human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment of which a safe and stable climate is a key element. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report stresses that rights-based approaches to climate action are crucial to achieving outcomes that are both effective and sustainable.

The publication provides a summary on the state of the climate indicators in 2024 with sections on key climate indicators, extreme events and impacts. The indicators include global temperatures, greenhouse gas concentration, ocean heat content, sea level rise, ocean acidification, Arctic and Antarctic sea ice, glaciers , precipitation, with an analysis of major drivers of inter-annual climate variability during the year including the El Niño Souther Oscillation and other ocean and atmoshperic indices. The highlighted extreme events include those related to tropical cyclones and wind storms; flooding, drought and extreme heat and cold events. The publication also provides most recent finding on climate related risks and impacts including on food security and population displacement.

Women and girls are taking action worldwide to realize human rights, particularly the human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, and the rights of nature. They are defending land, water, natural resources, territories, and communities from environmental harms and climate impacts, often at great personal risk, facing criminalization, threats, stigmatization, violence, and even death.

Women environmental human rights defenders (WEHRDs), many of whom are indigenous peoples and people of African descent, face gender-specific challenges and violence. They are targeted not only as defenders of rights, land, and natural resources but also as women defying discriminatory societal gender norms. These threats include gender-based violence, assault, threats to their families, defamation campaigns, and other forms of gender-based intimidation, offline and online, to silence their voices and undermine their work.

As we mark the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (Beijing+30), which emphasized the importance of women’s participation in environmental decision-making and action, this brief outlines key actions for defending the women who defend our planet. It underscores the importance for Member States to reaffirm their commitments and responsibilities, and to respect, protect, and fulfil their human rights obligations to WEHRDs, including the right of indigenous peoples to free, prior, and informed consent, and ensure WEHRDs’ full, meaningful, and equal participation in decision-making processes and environmental and climate action.

Sustainable finance taxonomies have emerged as a key policy tool in global efforts to channel capital towards sustainable development priorities. While notable progress has been made globally in the publication of green-oriented taxonomies, which classify economic activities based on their contribution to environmentally sustainable objectives, less emphasis has been placed to date on socially sustainable objectives, including gender equality. A just transition to a resilient future for all relies on accelerating investment in gender equality and social inclusion.

Within this context, this issue paper aims to provide guidance on integrating gender equality considerations into sustainable finance taxonomies. It covers both how gender equality can be targeted as a priority objective within social- and sustainability-oriented taxonomies as well as how gender equality considerations can be integrated into green-oriented taxonomies. The paper underscores the need to go beyond just codifying a list of gender-labelled activities to systematically integrate gender equality considerations throughout the taxonomy development process: from governance structures to technical criteria to monitoring and consultation.

Considering that gender is a more nascent area in taxonomies, the paper highlights emerging examples as well as insights and lessons learned from other relevant policy toolkits and methodologies for practitioners.

Targeting financial regulators, government authorities, financial institutions, the private sector, gender advisors, and other stakeholders, this paper seeks to contribute to evolving conversations on social objectives in taxonomies and to support the development of new taxonomies and the enhancement or refinement of existing ones to better support gender equality and women’s empowerment objectives.

Leadership is at the heart of quality education. There is a growing belief that educational leadership is the second most important factor explaining learning outcomes. Leaders at multiple levels matter, from those within the school, to those outside of the school such as middle managers, and including those outside of education systems in government, or those working on legislature and oversight.

The 2024/5 GEM Report released on 31 October, 2024, at the Global Education Meeting in Fortaleza, Brazil examines the requirements of good leadership in education and how they vary between countries and over time. It looks at the visions and goals that are driving leadership in education and examines the extent and through what practices the exercise of leadership contributes to better education outcomes.

External factors including social, cultural, governance conditions are looked at to see how they impact on effective leadership, as well as the policy levers that can be used to develop leadership skills in different contexts.

211 PEER country profiles containing laws and policies related to the selection, preparation and development of school leaders helped to inform the report.

The 2025 edition of the United Nations World Water Development Report highlights the importance of mountain waters, including alpine glaciers, which are vital for meeting basic human needs such as water supply and sanitation. They are also essential to ensuring food and energy security to billions of people living in and around mountain regions and areas downstream. They also support economic growth through various water-reliant industries. As the ‘water towers’ of the world, mountains are an essential source of fresh water. They store water in the form of ice and snow during cold seasons, releasing it during warmer seasons as a major source of fresh water for users downstream. Mountains play a unique and critical role in the global water cycle, and they affect atmospheric circulation, which drives weather and precipitation patterns.

The World Meteorological Organization’s State of the Climate in the South-West Pacific 2024 report warns that unprecedented ocean warming, sea level rise, and extreme weather are endangering lives, ecosystems, and economies across the region—especially in coastal and island communities.

2024 saw record sea-surface temperatures and near-record ocean heat content, with marine heatwaves affecting over 10% of the global ocean. On land, extreme heat, intense rainfall, and a historic cyclone season caused devastating impacts, while Indonesia’s last tropical glacier nears extinction.

The report highlights the importance of strengthened early warning systems, featuring success stories from the Philippines and Fiji that demonstrate how anticipatory action and community-led responses can protect lives and preserve cultural heritage. It calls for urgent investment in adaptation, early warnings, and climate-resilient development.

Accelerating efforts to manage climate and water and sanitation in a more coordinated and sustainable manner is a cross-cutting theme with the UN System-Wide Strategy for Water and Sanitation. This background document clarifies the purpose of global and national monitoring, and the scope of indicators, measures and methods that should be considered for inclusion for this project. It also presents a conceptual framework or ‘theory of change’ that locates these indicators, measures and methods in relation to existing theories and definitions of resilience and related concepts in climate change adaptation

The 2025 WHO Health and Climate Change Global Survey: Support Document has been developed to support Member States in completing the 2025 WHO Health and Climate Change Global Survey. The Global Survey tracks the health sector’s response to climate change. The document includes guidance on survey registration and completion, background information, expected outputs, and a glossary of key terms.

WHO has been working on climate change and health for over 25 years and has developed a comprehensive approach aiming to support countries to assess and manage the health impacts posed by climate variability and change.

WHO’s approach aims to strengthen national capacities and improve the resilience and adaptive capacity of health systems to deal with the adverse health effects of climate change.

The package of technical support being provided by WHO to Member States ranges from specific topics (e.g. development of plans and strategies or climate-informed health early warning systems) to more programmatic approaches to those countries implementing projects on climate change and health.

This visual guide provides an overview of the various means of support WHO offers to member states to advance climate-resilient health. The guide offers answers to key questions to understand WHO’s support to countries on climate change and health, including:

• What are the impacts of climate change on health and the potential health co-benefits of climate change mitigation?
• How do we develop comprehensive plans and strategies to address climate-sensitive health risks and build climate-resilient health systems and facilities?
• How do we access climate financing for climate change and health, including the Green Climate Fund (GCF) Readiness programme?
• What interventions can be implemented to address climate-sensitive health risks and strengthen the resilience and environmental sustainability of health systems and facilities?
• How do we monitor progress made at national level on climate change and health?

A review of the work on climate change and health was carried in 10 member states of South-East Asia region between 2014 and 2015. The review explored awareness levels of the impact of climate change on health among key stakeholders and capacity of health sector to respond and adapt. The country findings were analyzed and synthesized into a regional report. The report details out status of work on climate change and health and provides directions for strengthening health adaptation to climate change in future. This report was supported by the Global Program Adaptation to Climate Change in the Health Sector implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH and commissioned by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

Climate change undermine global food systems, increases food and nutrition insecurity and and exacerbates malnutrition in vulnerable populations. In the next decade, climate change is likely to reverse many of the gains made in improving nutrition of populations, unless countries urgently implement transformative policies that address nutrition and climate change.

While the Regional Resolution on addressing the double burden of malnutrition urges countries to prioritize actions to malnutrition, climate change requires multi-sectoral adaptation actions across sectors and systems: health, agriculture and food systems, social protection, water and sanitation systems, industry and others. This Regional workshop brought key stakeholders from nutrition and climate change together to discuss and prioritize actions to mainstream nutrition considerations in the context of climate change actions.

In July 2022, the UN General Assembly passed a groundbreaking resolution affirming the universal human right to access a clean, sustainable, and healthy environment. This resolution calls upon countries, international entities, governments and the private sector to increase their endeavours in guaranteeing a clean and healthy environment for all while addressing the triple planetary crisis confronting our planet: the climate crisis, biodiversity loss, and pollution.

The interconnected and interdependent connection between human health and a healthy environment is becoming increasingly clear. An unhealthy environment can result in a myriad of significant negative health outcomes for humans and given this fluid and symbiotic relationship between the two, cross-sectoral cooperation, as well as the dismantling of the barriers between the conservation and public health sectors, should be encouraged to attain healthier ecosystems and healthier people.

Acknowledging that human health and a healthy environment are interconnected and interdependent, the concept of Nature-based Solutions (NbS) can act as a way to bridge the gaps between conservation and public health for holistic approaches. NbS are actions to protect, sustainably manage and restore natural or human-modified ecosystems, offering benefits for both environmental preservation and human well-being. Adopting NbS as a means to tackle human health issues derived from an unhealthy environment aligns with One Health, an integrated approach that recognises the interdependence of animal, ecosystem and human health.

The purpose of the joint WHO-IUCN report is to break the silos between conservation, climate and health sectors, and explore the interplay between biodiversity conservation and global public health while highlighting how NbS can yield mutual benefits.

Healthy communities rely on well-functioning ecosystems. They provide clean air, fresh water, medicines and food security. They also limit disease and stabilize the climate. But biodiversity loss is happening at unprecedented rates, impacting human health worldwide, according to a new state of knowledge review of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and WHO.

The report synthesizes the available information on the most important inter-linkages between biodiversity, ecosystem stability, and epidemic infectious diseases such as the Ebola virus; and the connection between biodiversity, nutritional diversity and health. It also covers the potential benefits of closer partnerships between conservation and health, from improved surveillance of infectious diseases in wildlife and human populations, to promoting access to green spaces to promote physical activity and mental health. It also highlights the many areas in which further research is needed.

The Joint report hopes to provide a useful reference for the Sustainable Development Goals and post-2015 development agenda, which represents an unique opportunity to promote integrated approaches to biodiversity and health by highlighting that biodiversity contributes to human well-being, and highlighting that biodiversity needs protection for development to be sustainable.

The world is facing a new and intensifying era of crisis for children. Many of these crises – including climate change, conflict and economic instability – are closely interconnected. They reflect a world of rising geopolitical tensions and competition among nations, which are hindering the implementation of solutions.

To uphold children’s rights and well-being, action is needed to rethink and strengthen systems. Systems approaches (i.e., approaches that go beyond mere service delivery) are essential to build resilience into every area of children’s lives, whether it is disaster preparedness frameworks that safeguard schools and communities, education systems that can adapt during emergencies, or inclusive health-care systems that respond to immediate needs while planning for future risks.

These systems must not only address current global challenges but also anticipate and prepare for what lies ahead, including in the thematic areas covered in this report’s ‘Issues to watch’ section.

Climate shocks are disrupting children’s education, putting their learning and their futures at risk.

A new UNICEF analysis reveals that at least 242 million students in 85 countries or territories had their schooling disrupted by extreme climate events including heatwaves, tropical cyclones, storms, floods and droughts in 2024, exacerbating an existing learning crisis.

Globally, Thailand is ranked as the 9th most affected country by climate change according to the Global Climate Risk Index. In UNICEF’s Children’s Climate Risk Index (CCRI), Thailand is ranked 50th out of 163 countries with children most at risk living in the northeastern and southern provinces of Ubon Ratchathani, Nakhon Rachasima, Sri Saket, Nakhon Srithammarat and Narathiwat facing the highest risks. This snapshot provides an overview of the climate impacts on children in Thailand and how it is affecting their education.

This solutions book provides practical guidance for policymakers, program developers, and international development partners to support youth on the move, particularly those living in poverty or with low educational attainment, in accessing green skilling opportunities. It highlights the importance of including youth migrants, refugees, and forcibly displaced youth in discussions and efforts related to the green transition. The book emphasizes the need for tailored, context-specific solutions to address the unique challenges faced by youth on the move, recommending three main approaches: leveraging successful skilling programs, promoting access to green job opportunities, and fostering self-employment and entrepreneurship in green sectors. In implementing these solutions, principles of inclusion, empowerment, and protection should guide policymakers to address the diverse needs and vulnerabilities of youth on the move. Ultimately, by prioritizing the skilling needs of these youth, policymakers can contribute to a just, green transition and support their active participation in the workforce.

Recognizing children’s heightened vulnerability to climate change, this policy brief urges the inclusion of childsensitive and child-specific indicators for measuring progress achieved towards the targets referred to in  paragraphs 9–10 of decision 2/CMA.5. It outlines five core principles – child rights-based, disaggregated, ageappropriate, holistic, and participatory – to guide the development of these indicators, crucial for ensuring that  climate policies and actions effectively safeguard children.