5. Fostering Human & Social Development
Axis 5 of the Global Climate Action Agenda places people at the centre of climate action by strengthening health, education, culture, and equity. This axis reduces the impacts of poverty and hunger, promotes resilient communities and ensures fair transitions through jobs, knowledge and social protection.
Climate change is not just an environmental challenge. It is a human one.
Rising temperatures are already eroding health, threatening food security, displacing communities, and widening inequality, particularly in the world's most vulnerable regions. Placing people at the centre of climate action is essential to achieving the Paris Agreement, delivering the Global Goal on Adaptation, and meeting the Sustainable Development Goals. Axis 5 connects climate action to the systems people depend on most: health, education, social protection, livelihoods, and cultural heritage. This axis ensures that the transition to a low-carbon world is inclusive, just, and built around the needs of those who have contributed least to the crisis.
Key Objectives:
Build resilient health systems through implementation of the Belém Health Action Plan, integrating adaptation of healthcare services, climate disaster readiness and coordination with global resilience task forces.
Reduce impacts of climate change on hunger and poverty by deploying climate-resilient social protection, financing for smallholders, protection of vulnerable groups and migration-sensitive adaptation strategies.
Promote education, capacity building, and job creation by advancing climate education for youth, strengthening resilience in learning systems, and developing skills for emerging green and digital jobs to prepare societies for just transitions.
Protect culture and heritage while advancing climate action by supporting adaptation plans for institutions, empowering narratives as catalysts for awareness, and fostering the resilience of cultural sites and practices.
Progress
437 million
people protected by climate adaptation plans in the Race to Resilience
$4.18 billion
USD deployed in adaptation finance
16 million
people energy jobs (grew from 10 million since 2015-2023)
*Data refers to Global Socioeconomic Indicators listed on the 2025 Yearbook of Global Climate Action and not to Plans to Accelerate Solution (PAS) progress. For more information read the 2025 Yearbook of Global Climate Action.
Be part of the implementation
Take action where your operations and value chain have the greatest climate-related risks. Drive change by seizing new opportunities across energy, nature, agriculture, cities, human development, finance.
Through Axis 5: Human and Social Development, businesses can foster human potential and social resilience by safeguarding workforces through climate-resilient healthcare, reducing community vulnerability, and funding the green skills training necessary for a just economic transition. Key actions businesses can take include:
Strengthen climate-resilient health systems to protect workforce well-being through Care Without Harm.
Increase people resilience, reducing vulnerability through ARISE - Private Sector Alliance for Disaster Resilient Societies
Scale green skills & workforce reskilling to enable a just & competitive transition through ILO’s Green Jobs and Global Skills Programmes and work with youth-led organisations such as Student Energy.
Related Campaigns & Breakthroughs
Net Zero Activation Group
Climate leadership is shifting from pledges to implementation as companies, organisations, cities and civil society now focus on building the net zero economy of the future.
Learn More Net Zero Activation Group
Race to Resilience
Race to Resilience has completed its first full delivery cycle, from ambition to implementation, and proven that people-centred resilience can be measured, delivered, and scaled.
Learn More Race to Resilience
2030 Breakthroughs
A “breakthrough” is a moment that marks a significant advance in the transformation of an economic sector or natural system.
Learn More Breakthroughs
Sharm El-Sheikh Adaptation Agenda
Adaptation outcomes in the Sharm el-Sheikh Adaptation Agenda helped protect lives, livelihoods, and ecosystems.
Learn More Sharm El-Sheikh Adaptation Agenda
Climate Proofing SMEs
Empowering and enabling Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to take ambitious climate action.
Learn More Climate-Proofing SMEsExplore the Granary of Solutions
Explore Granary of SolutionsThe Granary of Solutions presents concrete examples of climate action – from deploying renewable energy, to modernizing power grids, to improving industrial efficiency. Examples show how sustainable transport networks, low-emission technologies, and smart infrastructure reduce greenhouse gas emissions while maintaining reliable energy and industrial production at city and national scales.
Case Studies
Global Historic Water Systems for Increased Water Security
Reviving traditional water systems in India and Nepal to combat water scarcity worsened by urbanization, climate change, and infrastructure loss.
ILO’s Skills for Energy in Southern Africa (SESA) Project
SESA Project strengthened skills in renewable energy, energy efficiency, and regional integration in Southern Africa through industry-aligned training, public-private partnerships, and capacity building.
Greening technical and vocational education: a practical guidance tool
Supports TVET stakeholders to mainstream skills for the green transition in TVET and skills development in a systemic and holistic manner.
Pre-arranged drought insurance launched to protect food security in Syria
A US$9.25M macroinsurance policy in Syria enables rapid drought response in key food-producing areas, boosting climate resilience and protecting food security.
The unlikely link between goat milk, elephants, and women’s leadership in Africa
The Milk to Market Program in Kenya empowers 1,245 Samburu women through goat milk sales, earning $33/month each, aiding orphaned elephants, boosting income, confidence, and resilience.
Enel Foundation and SEforALL launch Open Africa Power initiative to provide technical, business, and regulatory skills to young energy professionals.
Initiated by the Enel Foundation, Open Africa Power builds the capacity of African youth and women in clean energy. Since 2018, it has trained 343 people and 49% of them women.
Empowering Assam’s Villages: Youth Fellows Driving Climate Resilience
Assam’s Youth to Build Climate Resilience engages post-graduate fellows through the Chief Minister’s Climate Resilient Village Fellowship Programme, blending science and local knowledge to empower communities.
Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL)’s STEM Traineeship Programme to provide activity-based technical training and soft skills development to young women in the energy sector.
SEforALL empowers young women from Sierra Leone, Ghana, Kenya, and Panama through education and training that prepare them for careers in the renewable energy sector.
Related Resources
01 October 2024 1. Transitioning Energy, Industry, Transport 2. Stewarding Forests, Oceans, and Biodiversity 3. Transforming Agriculture and Food Systems 4. Building Resilience for Cities, Infrastructure and Water Truly Global: A Regional Outlook on the 2030 Climate Solutions
This report, the second edition of the ‘2030 Climate Solutions’ report, adopts the perspective of non-Party stakeholders in three regions that traditionally have been underrepresented in global climate action.
This report, the second edition of the ‘2030 Climate Solutions’ report, adopts the perspective of non-Party stakeholders in three regions that traditionally have been underrepresented in global climate action. It looks closely at who is delivering this critical agenda across the Global South, the priorities they have set to transform each system, the barriers they face in doing so and the actions they recommend to accelerate system transformation.
04 December 2023 1. Transitioning Energy, Industry, Transport 2. Stewarding Forests, Oceans, and Biodiversity 3. Transforming Agriculture and Food Systems 4. Building Resilience for Cities, Infrastructure and Water 2030 Climate Solutions: An implementation roadmap
To support the first Global Stocktake, the High Level Champions and the Marrakech Partnership have compiled a set of solutions framed in specific actions that need to be scaled up and replicated to catalyze our race to a net zero emissions and resilient world.
22 November 2025 Global Climate Action Agenda Outcomes Report
Across six thematic axes and 30 key objectives, the revamped Action Agenda demonstrated clear, measurable progress at COP30 as consolidated in the Global Climate Action Agenda Outcomes Report.
11 November 2025 2025 Yearbook of Global Climate Action
The Yearbook of Global Climate Action 2025 reveals a decisive shift from promises to delivery
Showing how cities, regions, businesses, investors and communities are driving climate action implementation at scale, across each of the axes of the Action Agenda. The Yearbook also highlights that significant gaps persist, underscoring the need to accelerate implementation in line with the Global Stocktake – the UN’s official report card on climate progress.
