Negotiations over the strengthened Gender Action Plan (GAP) have entered a tense phase at the COP30 climate summit after disputes broke out on how to define gender. A conservative bloc is seeking to reduce the definition to biological sex — a shift that would erase trans and non-binary people from a central climate policy tool designed to ensure gender justice.

The updated GAP, widely seen as one of the key deliverables of COP30, was expected to pass smoothly at the summit now in progress at Belém in Brazil. But opposition has come from Argentina, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the Vatican, among others.

Advocates for a more inclusive definition now warn that the pushback could undo decades of updates to the UN’s language and weaken the very foundations of inclusive climate action. The fight,

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