Why adaptation can't wait

Climate action in Yemen has mostly meant responding after disaster strikes - rebuilding flood damage, trucking in water, and providing food assistance. These efforts save lives, but they do not address the underlying challenges that make new shocks more devastating and destructive.

Adaptation planning works differently: identifying where risks are highest, deciding what to protect first, and directing limited resources toward lasting solutions. Done well, it also unlocks climate finance Yemen would otherwise struggle to access, since many donors require a credible national plan before investing. This is precisely the shift Yemen's National Adaptation Plan is designed to drive.

What is a National Adaptation Plan?

National Adaptation Plans, or NAPs, are the United Nations' framework for countries to plan for the medium- and long-term effects of climate change. Rather than a single project, a NAP is an ongoing process: mapping climate risks, setting priorities across key sectors, and building the institutions, data and financing to address them over time.

For Yemen, the goal is to move from scattered projects toward one coordinated national approach - where ministries, communities, civil society and the private sector work from the same evidence and priorities. Adaptation becomes part of everyday planning rather than a crisis response. Built and sustained through  collaboration among state institutions, partners and communities, NAPs aim to make adaptation into a shared national effort rather than an initiative led  by a single actor.

How Yemen's NAP process works

Moving from design into active implementation, Yemen's NAP process brings institutions together, including ministries, technical experts and development partners into one coordinated process.

A Technical Climate Coordination Committee (TCCC) and dedicated national thematic clusters are being established for Yemen's most climate-exposed sectors - water, agriculture, coastal zones and health – to guide the planning, implementation, monitoring, and coordination of Yemen’s National Adaptation Plan.  A Cross-Sectoral Humanitarian Sub-Cluster is also being established to strengthen coordination between climate adaptation and humanitarian response.

This structure is deliberate. Most countries can build a NAP on stable institutions and reliable data; Yemen has to work around conflict. The process accounts for this from the start, including an analysis of how conflict and climate risks intersect, to help ensure adaptation actions build stability rather than fuel local tensions over water and land.

Building the evidence base

That coordinated structure only works if it is grounded in solid evidence. Good adaptation planning starts with reliable climate data, which has long been scarce in Yemen. Years of conflict have damaged weather stations and disrupted the systems that once collected and monitored climate information.

To fill that gap, the NAP is producing detailed climate projections and risk assessments for catchment areas and wadis chosen to represent Yemen's diverse landscapes, including the coastal Abyan Delta, the highland Wadi Rasyan, farming-dependent Wadi Seham, and the arid Wadi Hadramawt. These landscapes have shaped how Yemenis farm, manage water, and build their livelihoods. Together, they are home to more than a third of the population and capture the country's full range of climate risks.

The findings will feed into a new online NAP Portal - a shared home for climate forecasting, risk maps and lessons learned. It turns scattered knowledge into one resource the whole country can use, beyond the life of the project.

A plan built with - not just for - Yemenis

Yemen's process reaches well beyond the ministries - to local authorities, civil society, universities, the private sector and, above all, the communities most affected. Genuine engagement with each of these groups, beyond simple consultation, is what will make the plan credible and durable.

Women and girls carry more than their share of that burden. In much of rural Yemen, women are responsible for securing water for their households and supporting families through droughts and floods, while often having limited influence over decisions that shape their futures. The NAP process includes a guidance framework and training to change that, for women, youth and displaced communities alike.