Climate change adaptation laws and policies: a review of trends, gaps and opportunities in 35 countries

Climate change impacts are intensifying, yet adaptation efforts are not keeping pace with the scale and urgency of emerging risks. Closing this gap requires strong domestic legal and policy frameworks to translate international adaptation commitments made under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Paris Agreement into action and to provide an enabling environment for implementation. This includes mobilising and allocating finance, institutionalising adaptation into public and private decision-making, and integrating adaptation into countries’ broader development priorities. But a lack of global analysis tracking the evolution of these laws and policies over time has hampered the ability to assess progress, identify gaps and best practices, and understand how legal and policy frameworks can support scalable adaptation implementation.

This report expands the knowledge base on adaptation-relevant laws and policies by identifying and analysing 902 of these laws and policies over time across 35 countries representing diverse regions, socioeconomic contexts and levels of exposure to climate risks. The analysis complements assessments by supranational institutions, including the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the UNFCCC.

The pace of policymaking on adaptation has accelerated in recent years: 75% of adaptation-relevant laws and policies have been adopted since the Paris Agreement in 2015, and 46% since 2020. In 60% of identified documents, adaptation and related concepts (including resilience and disaster risk management) are predominant. However, the rapid growth in volume of laws and policies does not, on its own, signify whether and how adaptation actions are being prioritised.

This is a timely study as countries recently agreed on a list of indicators to measure adaptation progress under the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA). This long-awaited agreement was made at the 30th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (COP30) in Belém, Brazil, in November 2025. Countries were also called upon to triple adaptation funding by 2035. Agreeing on the indicators is an important milestone in the process initiated under the 2015 Paris Agreement, which established the GGA, as it facilitates assessment of global progress and accountability towards the 11 global adaptation targets under the Goal.

Overarching recommendations

The authors provide three main policy recommendations for legislators and policymakers around the world:

1. Foster a whole-of-government approach to adaptation and systematically invest in institutional coordination mechanisms, both horizontally and vertically.
2. Institutionalise adaptation within public financial management and fiscal policy frameworks.
3. Increase policy coherence and integration of adaptation across disaster risk management and development policy domains.