Trade unionists and climate justice advocates seeking a fair deal for workers whose jobs will be affected by the transition away from planet-heating fossil fuels are placing their hopes in next year’s UN climate conference in Brazil following a disappointing outcome at COP29 in Azerbaijan last month.
From coal mines and oil refineries to car factories and construction, the global shift to cleaner sources of energy will alter the nature of employment, leading to job losses in some sectors and creation in others, opportunities and risks in clean technology supply chains, and new threats and benefits for the communities where the changes are happening.
In a bid to share the pain and gain more equally, governments at the 2022 COP27 climate summit in Egypt launched a “Just Transition Work Programme” (JTWP). But so far it has delivered little – and talks on how the programme should proceed in practice ended without agreement at COP29.
The Azerbaijan presidency running the talks instead focused on landing a new deal on climate finance for developing countries, and governments ended up delaying further discussions on the JWTP until the mid-year climate talks next June in Bonn and COP30 in Belém.
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Bert De Wel, global climate policy coordinator at the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), tagged this year’s Baku summit a “wasted COP” in terms of implementing the JTWP. He said just transition was not given the attention it deserves, noting that the interests of workers are often “kicked out or minimalised” at UN talks. “When there is reference to rights, they tend to leave out labour rights. We want to be mentioned too,” he added.
But others said no deal on just transition at COP29 was better than a bad deal.
Kenya’s Fatuma Hussein, who is the African Group’s lead negotiator on just transition, said she preferred the option of having “no outcome” than “putting the process at risk”. She told Climate Home that developed countries in Baku had avoided discussing finance, international cooperation and adaptation to climate impacts in the context of a just transition – and this was “the biggest problem”.
Telling developing nations, including those in Africa, that they must work towards just transition on their own would be “missing the point” and not delivering on the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement, she added.
Right to develop
According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), climate change and extreme weather conditions affect 70% of the world’s economic sectors, with rising global temperatures and environmental risks harming businesses and workers through damage to property and productivity. It estimates that transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energy would lead to about 6 million job losses but would in turn create around 24 million new jobs by 2030.
Under the ILO’s guidelines for a just transition to a low-carbon, climate-resilient world, the organisation calls for economic, environmental and social policies, as well as education and training, to help companies, workers, investors and consumers play a proactive role.
Climate campaigners and labour rights activists had looked – in vain – to COP29 to agree a work plan for governments to help them take the concrete steps needed.
According to the ITUC’s De Wel, the outcomes they were hoping for included provision of finance to implement national-level efforts to secure a just transition and guidance on preparing new national climate plans based on consultation with workers’ representatives and trade unions. Support is also required to put in place social protection systems for workers who might lose their jobs, as well as defining what the energy transition will mean for the future of employment and industrial development within countries.
“Systematising these things and taking lessons out of it for the whole group of countries – that’s what we want and recommend,” he said.
De Wel called for a broad global view of just transition that is not narrowly focused on Polish or German coal miners, for example, “without taking into account the robbery of minerals and materials from Africa” or denying the right of countries in the Global South “to have industrial development”.
Activists call for end to fossil fuels, payment by polluters and a just transition for workers, at the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan, November 16, 2024. (Photo: Climate Home News/Megan Rowling)
Amos Wemanya, a campaigner with Greenpeace Africa, said Africa’s colonial history continues to pose development and economic challenges that fuel indebtedness and keep the continent mainly as a provider of raw materials to the rest of the world and a dumping ground for low-value-added products.
Wemanya said current global trade policies and finance flows worsen the structural socioeconomic and technological inequalities between developed and developing countries and should be addressed by the UN’s Just Transition Work Programme.
At the local level, Gvantsa Gverdtsiteli, research and policy coordinator for climate governance with Transparency International, said communities needed to own and benefit directly from transition projects, such as renewable energy power facilities, in their area.
Attention should be paid to ensuring that “their economic status is changing, that they get better opportunities and better living conditions, and their socioeconomic environment improves”, she added.
Early action needed from Brazil
Climate justice advocates say that the JTWP must deliver on its mandate of leaving no one behind as the world consumes less fossil fuel and more clean energy, while ensuring fair collaboration in global efforts to address the challenges posed by the transition. Under the Paris Agreement, governments committed to take into account “the imperatives of a just transition of the workforce and the creation of decent work and quality jobs in accordance with nationally defined development priorities”.
De Wel said the JTWP offers an avenue to discuss these issues more deeply at COP30 and in the coming years, as the green transition picks up pace. He said he hoped the Brazilian presidency of next year’s climate summit would give the JTWP “more centre space in the negotiations” and put it “much higher on the agenda” than at COP29, where workers’ rights and concerns got little prominence.
“We want a voice at the table and we want to be respected,” De Wel said, outlining expectations that Brazil will take the social impacts of the energy transition on workers and their communities seriously and ensure they are reflected in the decisions taken at COP30 on its soil.
Gverdtsiteli of Transparency International said COP30 should give priority to “strong governance, transparency, accountability and integrity in the transition initiatives” that will be implemented, to prevent corruption and make them accountable to the people affected.
Anabella Rosemberg, senior strategist on just transition and climate justice at Climate Action Network International, said she hoped governments would “heal and redress” the failure on just transition at COP29 with a fresh approach to moving the conversation forward. She emphasised that Brazil would need to play an active role in convening informal discussions among governments before the Bonn talks to pave the way for effective decisions at COP30 in November.
Greenpeace Africa’s Wemanya said work on just transition at COP30 should advance ideas on the social, economic and environmental aspects of sustainable development, as well as eradicating poverty, boosting food and energy security, and protecting fragile ecosystems.
“COP30 must lead to just transition outcomes that take into consideration domestic and local realities to ensure well-being and safeguard the rights of communities and people,” he added.
(Reporting by Vivian Chime; editing by Megan Rowling)
The post After Baku setback, activists call for ‘just transition’ to be front and centre at COP30 appeared first on Climate Home News.
After Baku setback, activists call for ‘just transition’ to be front and centre at COP30
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.
