Migrants working on renewable energy projects in the United Arab Emirates say they are the victims of abusive conditions that could amount to forced labour, an investigation by a human rights group has found.
Equidem interviewed 34 migrant workers from South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa employed in the supply chain of 10 major renewable energy developers mostly from Europe and the Gulf States, which operate solar and wind projects in the UAE.
They worked for 14 local subcontracting companies, including renewables specialists such as solar installers and technicians, and firms providing services such as transport, security and cleaning.
Two-thirds of interviewed workers said they experienced wage theft, through unpaid, delayed or irregular wages. Half reported working illegally-long hours and as many said they were charged recruitment fees – a practice widely deemed exploitative because it can lead to debt bondage. It is illegal in the UAE. Some workers also said their passports had been illegally withheld.
Mustafa Qadri, chief executive of UK-based Equidem, told Climate Home News the findings were “shocking” for a “high-tech sector” responsible for “some of the most sought-after investment opportunities in the global market”.
The labour rights advocacy group found violations in breach of UAE labour law and international standards that matched 10 of the 11 International Labour Organization’s indicators of forced labour.
This “create[s] conditions of forced labour for migrant workers in the renewables sector in the UAE,” Equidem concluded in a report released on Tuesday.
Treated ‘like animals’
The Gulf States continue to produce and export high volumes of oil and gas but have seen a rapid rollout of renewable energy infrastructure in recent years, reaching 5.6 gigawatts in 2022 from close to zero a decade earlier. The UAE – which hosted the COP28 climate summit last year – is one of the region’s fastest-growing renewable markets but it has “been rapidly built on the back of exploitation”, Qadri said.
Interviewees reported workplace discrimination, violence and harassment, especially targeted at new workers. One said he was living in overcrowded and unsanitary accommodation with 18 others, while half said their food allowances weren’t enough to meet their needs.
“The company treats all the workers like animals,” Suaid, an Indian worker subcontracted to pack solar equipment for a European renewable energy developer, told Equidem. “I work for 12 hours a day. If I do my work comfortably, the work will not be finished and if the work is not finished, the supervisor will shout at me. Even my salary can be cut. There is so much work that I do not get even a minute’s rest.”
Equidem chose not to identify projects and employers linked to rights violations because of the risk of reprisals for workers. “These workers are facing terrible conditions and suffering in incredible silence,” said Qadri.
The UAE government did not respond to Climate Home’s request for comment.
Double climate impacts
Migrant workers account for a vast proportion of private-sector employment in Gulf countries.
Mass public events such as the 2022 Qatar World Cup and the 2020 Dubai Expo have exposed some of the risks and abuses faced by migrant workers in the region. The Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC), which co-authored the report, has recorded 490 allegations of migrant worker abuse across Gulf States since 2022.
But some of the alleged abuse unveiled by Equidem is unique to the renewable energy sector, said Qadri, citing the extent of illegal working hours and workers’ isolation from urban centres while employed at renewable energy projects located in the desert, which also exposes them to heat stress.
Ten workers told Equidem they suffered health impacts after engaging in physical work in extreme temperatures without adequate water and breaks.
“Sometimes I am made to stand more than 10 hours in the scorching sun,” said Akira, a Kenyan worker employed as a security guard for a multinational energy company.
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Climate change is expected to make the UAE even hotter and more humid between June and September – a combination that can be deadly.
The interviewed workers originated from developing countries such as Kenya, India and Pakistan, where extreme weather impacts fuelled by climate change, from heatwaves to droughts and floods, are intensifying. Equidem previously found evidence of migrant workers seeking jobs in the UAE after losing their livelihoods to flooding in their home country.
Opaque supply chain
The investigation unmasks a sector characterised by multiple layers of outsourcing, where contractual ties between workers, subcontractors and major renewable energy developers are rarely disclosed.
This “blind spot” increases the risk of abuse, Isobel Archer of BHRRC told Climate Home.
BHRRC reviewed publicly available governance policies of the 27 largest renewable energy developers in the Gulf region, including French companies EDF and TotalEnergies, Chinese firm Jinko Power, the UAE’s state-owned Masdar and Shell.
It found that just 12 companies recognised risks specific to migrant workers and only eight prohibited recruitment charges.
“Given the Gulf region’s record on human rights abuses, companies operating in this field must conduct heightened human-rights due diligence, assess and mitigate the risk their operations pose to migrant workers in their value chains,” said Archer.
“We have to push for a fast transition to renewables. But the so-called creation of green jobs doesn’t give [companies] a free pass to ignore the rights of the most vulnerable in the supply chain,” she added.
BHRRC contacted all 27 companies about its findings. At the time of publication, Masdar was the only company to respond. It said it was “deeply committed to safeguarding the rights and wellbeing of all individuals, including migrant workers”, with “relevant risk mitigation measures… fully embedded” in its policies.
(Reporting by Chloé Farand; editing by Megan Rowling)
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Rights group finds abusive conditions for migrants working on UAE renewables
Governments at the COP17 nature summit in Armenia agreed on Saturday to scale up their policies to protect the planet’s shrinking biodiversity, and for the first time invited large emerging economies like China and Gulf states to take on donor responsibilities to help fund those efforts.
For the past two weeks, countries held talks in Yerevan under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity to outline a plan to ramp up currently “insufficient” policies to conserve land and marine ecosystems. A recent UN progress report found the world is off track to meet 22 out of 23 global targets aimed at reversing species loss and protecting 30% of land and seas by 2030.
While a response plan, called the “Global Review of Collective Progress”, was expected to be the main outcome of COP17, negotiations struggled to advance amid a deadlock over the controversial subject of how to finance the boost in conservation measures needed.
After an all-night session on Friday, delegates agreed to invite developing countries to voluntarily signal their interest in assuming donor funding obligations alongside developed nations. Negotiators repeatedly warned that any stronger provisions on expanding the donor base would collapse the deal.
COP president: Results beat expectations
An exhausted COP17 president Hambardzum Matevosyan, Armenia’s environment minister, told journalists in the early hours of Saturday that “we’ve achieved more than we could’ve expected” given the “importance” of the decisions being taken.
“It was 100% possible that those items did not made it through. 100% possible,” he said, adding that the conference had made progress on “all the most important items”.
Speaking at the closing plenary, the group of Pacific Islands said that, while the summit had achieved “great outcomes”, delegates are also departing Yerevan “with realities not reflected in the official text”, such as the low replenishment of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), a key funder of nature projects.
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Some observers also said the deal did not go far enough. Steven Guilbeault, a former Canadian environment minister who helped broker the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), said the Yerevan package of action is “an important step forward”, but still “falls short of what is needed to meet our 2030 commitments”.
An Lambrechts, biodiversity politics expert at Greenpeace International, said COP17 had kept things moving forward and set well-intentioned promises, but added that these “won’t remove major roadblocks to implementation” such as insufficient finance and debt constraints in developing countries.
WWF chief conservation officer Daudi Sumba noted that financial issues were not fully resolved. Despite the deal in Yerevan, “I fear finance will remain the key issue that continues to haunt the UN biodiversity summits,” he said in a statement.
‘Yerevan Pathway’ tackles nature plans and subsidies
In the lead-up to the summit, the UN assessment report showed countries are falling short on virtually all targets in the GBF, the 2022 global deal often referred to as the ‘Paris Agreement for nature’.
They include a landmark target to protect at least 30% of the planet’s land and sea by 2030. If countries all stick to their current national goals, about 26% of land would be protected and only about 12% of marine ecosystems would be under conservation measures.
The main COP17 decision – named the Yerevan Pathway by the presidency – calls for countries to revise their biodiversity plans, subject to available funding, with a particular focus on addressing the gap in coverage of “marine, coastal and inland water ecosystems”.
It also urges the over 60 countries who have not submitted a biodiversity plan yet to finalise them “as soon as possible” and taking into account the gaps identified by the UN progress report.
Countries also agreed to tackle the drivers of biodiversity loss by “accelerating” the reduction of subsidies for activities that damage nature. Subsidy reform, covered by Target 18 of the GBF, is where countries have made the least progress so far, according to the assessment report.
Jill Hepp, director of nature and marine policy and incentives at green group Conservation International, said singling out subsidies in the Yerevan Pathway “gives a strong signal” that closing the gap for biodiversity action requires “more urgent efforts to reform harmful incentives and scale up positive incentives”.
“Timid” steps to expand base of donors
Having failed to meet a target to channel $20 billion for biodiversity conservation by 2025 and faced with shrinking aid budgets, the EU pushed a proposal to expand the list of which countries count as donors, so that wealthy emerging economies like China and Saudi Arabia could also voluntarily contribute. The group of Arab nations strongly opposed this.
During the talks, Irish minister of state for nature, Christopher O’Sullivan, whose country holds the EU presidency, said the bloc wanted the world’s “new realities” to be reflected in the donor list.
Negotiations remained gridlocked for most of the two-week talks, until a last-day compromise was struck to invite developing countries that may want donor status “to indicate to the [Convention on Biological Diversity] secretariat their interest in being included in the corresponding list”.
Countries also asked the secretariat to send an invitation to emerging economies wanting donor status at each subsequent COP, and requested a technical report on “the implications of inclusion in the list” for emerging economies.
Swiss lead negotiator Gabriela Blatter said during one of the sessions that her country had expected greater steps towards expanding the base of contributing countries, but added that “if we’re mutually unhappy, it’s probably the closest we can get on these very delicate political compromises”. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, also noted their dissatisfaction but said it had expected “a lot less”.
The fragile deal was approved in a package of decisions together with the Global Review, after some delegations including Brazil and China appealed to the plenary not to make further changes to the text at the risk of collapsing the whole agreement.
In a statement delivered to the closing plenary, the EU said the finance outcome had delivered “timid” progress towards fully broadening the base of donors.
Cali Fund still not operational
Adopted two years ago at COP16, the Cali Fund was seen by some observers as a way to channel private-sector finance into biodiversity conservation, as governments struggle to find public funds. But it is still struggling to get up on its feet.
The fund allows big corporations to access certificates for the use of genetic material found in biodiversity in return for a financial contribution, which experts estimate has the potential to raise up to $6.9bn for biodiversity. While voluntary, companies are encouraged to pay 1% of their profits or 0.1% of revenue into the fund.
But since its creation, the fund has received little more than $10,000, which Guilbeault argued is because the rules for disbursements to local communities and the operation of the fund had yet to be fleshed out. This was due to happen at COP17.
Yet, while the final decision on the fund laid out some of the rules – including how companies can earn “Cali Fund certificates” – some key technical details were left to the next COP in 2028 in Ecuador. This includes the issue of whether companies can pay a lower rate if they use genetic data for only a small portion of their products.
“By punting essential decisions to two years from now, parties have all but ensured the fund remains empty until then,” said Pakhi Das, a public policy advisor at NGO Plant-for-the-Planet.
The post COP17 delivers fragile deal to boost conservation and funding for nature appeared first on Climate Home News.
COP17 delivers fragile deal to boost conservation and funding for nature
SYDNEY, Thursday 30 October 2026 — In response to reports that the Albanese government is set to introduce draft legislation this year that would seek to ban data centres in Australia’s suburbs, Joe Rafalowicz, Head of Climate and Energy at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said:
“These reports are a testament to the growing community opposition to these completely inappropriate AI factories that have sprung up across our suburbs, and Big Tech corporations should take heed — the data centre build-out must not happen without the endorsement of the Australian people.
“But the government can’t simply ship this problem out to regional Australia without addressing the fundamental issues with this extractive new industry.
“We’re already seeing a trend of AI data centre proposals moving to the regions, in areas that are more water-scarce, more environmentally sensitive, and next to sources of fracked and coal seam gas to support their massive BYO gas-fired power plans — a pattern we’ve seen play out in the United States.
“From the Beetaloo Basin in the NT to the Western Downs in Qld, we’re seeing a wave of AI data centre proposals that would see new gas fast-tracked to support their massive energy demand, and threaten to completely derail Australia’s energy transition.
“Just as suburban Australians are asking, “what for?”, regional communities like Berry Springs and Dalby do not want dirty data centres setting up shop with absolutely no benefit to their communities. Greenpeace is calling for a moratorium on AI data centre developments until strict and enforceable safeguards are in place to protect our climate and our communities.”
-ENDS-
Media contact
Kate O’Callaghan on +61 406 231 892 or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org
AI data centre ban in suburbs would not address fundamental issues: Greenpeace
In the thick of the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan in 2024, the UN climate talks were rattled by what can only be described as a major PR disaster. The BBC, Reuters and The Guardian all carried headlines, attributed to leading climate policy experts, that the COPs were “no longer fit for purpose”.
The articles outlined a series of reforms called for in an open letter signed by 22 eminent scientists and politicians, including a former UN secretary-general and previous UN climate chief, with a further 150 lending their support. The headlines shook confidence in the COP process, just as governments were wrestling over a new climate finance goal.
The Club of Rome – which handled the media relations for the letter – hurried to say that its “constructive, supportive ideas” had been “misinterpreted”. Negotiators kept calm(ish) and carried on, in the end landing the finance goal after some high-stakes drama on the final day.
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To my surprise, when I went back this week to read the letter again, I could not find the offending line about the COPs not being fit for purpose. The Club of Rome has yet to respond to my query about its disappearance.
Whatever happened to the wording, that sentiment has been widely shared. COPs have ballooned in size while the importance of their outcomes seems to have diminished since the 2015 Paris Agreement (with the exception of the 2023 COP in Dubai where countries agreed to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems).
The same on the surface
Two years on from those painful headlines in Baku, has anything changed for the better? You might be forgiven for thinking not. Official decisions are still made by consensus rather than the majority voting some have called for to stop blockers.
Tens of thousands of officials, activists and business execs still scurry around the halls to an ever-growing list of side events, roundtables and dialogues, while deals still come down to rows, all-nighters and jargon-filled texts adopted to rounds of applause.
But it would not be true to say that COPs have completely failed to respond to the very real need to translate the words of the Paris Agreement into action in the outside world.
Global warming is projected to be around 1.3C lower this century than it would have been if the world had not committed to tackle the climate crisis under that accord. Developing countries have a valued space at COPs in which their voices have equal weight in decision-making, unlike in many other international fora. And most importantly, perhaps, there has been a subtle shift, tipping the balance away from negotiating towards doing.
Brazil branded last year’s summit in Belém as the “COP of Implementation”, corralling the sprawling Action Agenda into six axes. This was a bid to impose some structure on the mushrooming efforts between governments, UN agencies, cities, businesses and civil society to set targets and spur faster results on their pet issues, from methane emissions to health and adaptation in conflict zones. COP30 alone saw the launch of 120 “plans to accelerate solutions”.
COP30 roadmaps off the cuff
Meanwhile, as the formal negotiations drew to a close, it was clear that consensus decision-making was evolving into something a little more improvised.
With only around half of all countries on board with the idea of a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels, COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago announced his team would put one together over the coming year, along with another on how to meet a global goal to halt deforestation by 2030. Those roadmaps will be launched next week, presented and discussed at COP31, though it’s still unclear whether or how they’ll be incorporated into the formal negotiating agenda.
Some leading policy-makers don’t think that matters too much. Speaking to journalists before the Antalya summit