COP30 marked a symbolic turning point in the international climate debate. For the first time, care gained visibility as an essential dimension of adaptation and a just transition. This new approach made it clear that responses to the climate crisis depend not only on technologies and carbon targets but also on the ability to care for people, territories, and ecosystems.

Care is the first and last line of defense against the climate crisis. It sustains the continuity of relationships and the conditions for the planet’s regeneration. This work is carried out mainly by women, Black people, Indigenous peoples, and traditional and marginalized communities. Incorporating care as climate infrastructure means recognizing it as part of the solutions, not merely a social consequence of environmental emergencies. But the care agenda is also directly linked to decent work and a just transition.

Care work, paid or unpaid, sustains life, economies, and territories. Yet it remains invisible, undervalued, and deeply unequally distributed. In regions such as Latin America and the Caribbean, women perform three to five times more hours of unpaid care than men. In Brazil, 91% of domestic workers are women, and 65% of them are Black, highlighting how gender, race, and class inequalities structure the work that upholds human dignity. It is, therefore, feminized and racialized labor.

Climate change worsens this reality. The intensification of extreme events, health impacts, water and food scarcity, and community displacement increase the time and effort devoted to care—a burden that falls mainly on women in peripheral, rural, riverside, and Indigenous territories. At the same time, these women lead community actions for adaptation, biodiversity protection, and resilience building, often without recognition or fair pay.

The new Gender Action Plan of the UN Climate Convention (UNFCCC), currently under discussion, recognizes for the first time care work as an emerging issue essential for gender equality and climate action. This historic step requires political commitment to translate into funding, training, and the effective participation of women caregivers and workers in climate and economic decision-making.

During the conference, Belém became the stage for an unprecedented experience that brought together collectives, organizations, and networks from the Global South to affirm that there is no possible future without care. Activities were decentralized, spread across neighborhoods and islands in the metropolitan region. The Jurunas neighborhood, on the outskirts of Belém, hosted the first pavilion in COP history dedicated to the theme.

The experiences gathered in these spaces showed that a just transition is already happening, even before being recognized. Practices such as community gardens, collective kitchens, listening networks, and care mutirões express a politics of the commons that connects art, culture, and social regeneration. Where there is care, there is adaptation. Every everyday act of care is also a seed of resilience.

For this perspective to advance, it is necessary to confront the structures that produce both the climate crisis and care inequalities: patriarchy, colonialism, and the economic model centered on exploitation. A truly just transition is one that places the sustainability of life at the center of economic and environmental policies, recognizing the vital role of women, communities, and all those who care for human life and nature.

The international debate on care is also updating its conceptual foundations. The set of so-called “5 Rs”—Recognize, Reduce, Redistribute, Reward, and Represent—needs to be expanded to include Resilience, Resources, and Reparations. Resilience acknowledges that care systems must be sustainable; resources ensure adequate funding; and reparations point to correcting the historical injustices that affect care workers.

These ideas reinforce the urgency of promoting investments in public care infrastructure and integrated systems that strengthen social and environmental resilience. It is also essential to guarantee the effective participation of women, caregivers, and workers in climate negotiations and decision-making spaces and ensure that the new Gender Action Plan includes targets and monitoring mechanisms on care, social justice, and gender equality.

Resilience is not built only with machines or physical infrastructure but with networks of care and mutual support. Climate finance must invest in people, not just concrete. Every dollar allocated to care returns in health, well-being, and social stability. Care is an investment and must be recognized as climate infrastructure.

Recognizing care also means acknowledging the contribution of the Global South in shaping new paradigms. From the Amazon to urban peripheries, there are practices and knowledge that already sustain the planet. What is missing is for international mechanisms to finance them with the same priority given to industrial technologies.

COP30 also leaves a political legacy: care must be inscribed in the Baku–Belém Roadmap as an investment criterion and impact indicator. There is no possible decarbonization without recognizing and valuing the work that sustains life—work carried out mainly by women, Black, Indigenous, peripheral, and rural communities. Caring is climate action. And care is the oldest and most urgent technology of our time.

This piece was written by Georgia Nicolau, Mariama Williams, and Carolina Robino as a press release from the Instituto Procomum. Photo: CARE Climate Justice Center.