ELEVATE-ProClima will investigate how targeted interventions, such as policy sprints and legal reform, can turn this tide so that COPs can drive scientifically rigorous and gender-responsive policymaking, at the intersection of the national and the international levels. In 2025, Parties to the Paris Agreement must submit new national climate policies and demonstrate how these have been informed by the evidence of the first global stocktake (GST), including evidence that ties effective policies to gender-responsiveness. The GST measured progress in implementing the Paris Agreement. We examine how GST evidence is used nationally, and how COPs as interface mechanisms could prioritise, coordinate, and amplify evidence demand and supply.

It forges the first empirical account of how the GST, itself an evidence-informed political process, influenced NDCs 3.0. We combine legal and textual analysis with a comparative evaluation of policy outcomes. Based on a preliminary analysis conducted for this proposal, our hypothesis is that the strength of NDCs, including the existence of an economy-wide quantified emissions reductions target, is directly affected by the extent to which the interdisciplinary GST evidence has informed the policymaking. Our account will significantly enhance the evidence base related to systemic constraints that impede climate research informed policymaking.

It examines the underrepresentation of women at COPs as a major constraint for gender responsive climate policymaking. We examine how the GST’s imperative, that climate policies must be gender-responsive, shapes NDC 3.0. The GST urges Parties and stakeholders to join efforts to accelerate delivery through gender-responsive measures (GST, FCCC/PA/CMA/2023/16/Add.1). Yet current NDCs 2.0 fail to provide interventions that could overcome restricting effects of gender inequality in responding to climate initiatives (Gender and NDCs, UNDP, 2019; NDC SYR, 2024). Our hypothesis is that the capability of women to participate in evidence based and gender-responsive policymaking is constrained by a lack of conceptualisation of “gender-responsiveness” and the fact that only two per cent of delegations achieve gender parity.

It establishes where new effective interventions can embed and sustain evidence-based, gender-responsive policies, using the so far under-utilised interface mechanisms of COPs to adjust national climate policies. We will test evidence focused policy sprints as pilot interventions at COP30, to be used in future practice, and expect to generate knowledge for legal reform.

ELEVATE-ProClima is timely and significant: (1) It examines COP’s as drivers for evidence uptake in NDCs. (2) It addresses major constraints of representation and gender-blind policymaking. (3) It builds knowledge for interventions, nationally and internationally, that can sustain evidence-based policymaking. (4) It enables working with Brazil, a country that faces multiple climate change challenges while carrying the responsibility for a critical carbon sink. (5) It strengthens collaboration with the COP30 hosts, beyond the lifetime of the project.

Professor Petra Minnerop, Professor of International Law at Durham University, is the principal investigator of ELEVATE-ProClima.

Core team includes: 

From the United Kingdom:  Professor Petra Minnerop, Dr Owen Boyle, Mustafa Kamran, Simeng Wang, and Mansi Dwivedi.

From Brazil: Professor Caio Dias, Dr Flavia Trentini, Pedro Rocha, Gabriella Barros, and Vitor Abrahao.