For the first time in UN climate negotiations, countries attending COP30 in Belém, Brazil, are grappling with the implications of extracting minerals required to manufacture batteries, solar panels and wind turbines.
On Friday, a draft text on ensuring that the transition to clean energy systems is just and sustainable – a negotiation stream known as the Just Transition Work Programme – recognised “the social and environmental risks associated with scaling up supply chains for clean energy technologies, including risks arising from the extraction and processing of critical minerals”.
It also “recalled” the principles and recommendations of a UN expert panel, which called on governments and industry to put human rights at the core of the minerals value chain, from mining to recycling. The UN panel report, published last year, set out key principles to ensure that mineral supply chains benefit countries and local communities endowed with resources, create jobs, diversify economies and generate revenue for development.
“For the first time, minerals are on the main stage of COP negotiations – no longer a side show,” said Melissa Marengo, a senior policy officer at the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI).
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Demand for metals such as copper, cobalt, lithium, nickel and graphite that are vital for manufacturing clean energy transition technologies is soaring. But extracting them creates both new economic opportunities, as well as social and environmental risks for resource-rich countries.
Around the world, increased mining activity has fuelled environmental destruction, deforestation and conflict with communities.
Last week, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva told leaders gathered in Belém that it is “impossible to discuss the energy transition without talking about critical minerals, essential to make batteries, solar panels and energy systems”. Brazil has the world’s second-largest reserves of rare earths, which are used to manufacture permanent magnets for EV motors and wind turbines.
Developing countries have called for the impacts and opportunities of mining minerals for the energy transition to be included in the text. African countries, which hold more than 30% of the world’s critical mineral reserves, have been vocal on the issue. The African Group of Negotiators told COP30’s opening plenary that Africa’s resources “must translate into tangible benefits”.
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Earlier this week, the UK, backed by Australia and the European Union, proposed language on the importance of fair, transparent, traceable and environmentally sustainable mineral supply chains for the energy transition.
The whole draft text, which is described as an “informal note” and is meant as the basis for negotiations on the Just Transition Work Programme, is bracketed, meaning that none of it has yet been agreed by countries.
Yet, campaigners widely welcomed the inclusion of minerals in the document as “a real first step”.
Marengo said the draft reflected many of the priorities voiced by producing countries, communities on the frontline of mining projects and Indigenous peoples across developing countries.
“But the real test begins now,” she said. “Parties must hold the line to secure strong social and environmental safeguards, fair value creation, and a genuinely just approach to transition minerals” that focus “on prosperity for producing countries and communities, and not only on supply security,” she added.
The text notes that affected communities must be “central” to the design and implementation of climate measures and recognises the importance “of sustainable patterns of consumption and production”, including through circular economy approaches.
It also acknowledges “the importance of the rights of Indigenous Peoples” including self-determination and their right to free, prior and informed consent for development projects that affect them, in addition to “the specific rights and protections for Indigenous Peoples in voluntary isolation and initial contact”, which cannot give their consent to mining on their land.
More than half of energy transition mineral reserves are estimated to be located on or near Indigenous land.
“We are making history, as no previous COP decision has ever recognised the rights of Indigenous Peoples in Voluntary Isolation and Initial Contact so clearly,” said Bryan Bixcul, global coordinator of the Securing Indigenous Peoples’ Rights in the Green Economy (SIRGE) coalition. “Any attempt by countries to remove or weaken this text would represent a major setback for the fulfillment of those rights,” he said.
SIRGE has called for the text to go further still and establish exclusion or “no-go” mining zones on the land of uncontacted Indigenous groups.
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Meanwhile, the inclusion of language on the “transition away from fossil fuels” remains deeply contentious, with references to fossil fuels only included as “options” in the text, meaning not everyone agrees to it being there. Saudi Arabia, large emerging economies such as India and China, and African countries opposed references to fossil fuels, according to observers present in the negotiating rooms.
To help deliver a just energy transition beyond COP30, the draft text includes a demand from an alliance of 134 developing countries – known as the G77 and China – to establish a mechanism that could act as a one-stop shop to provide countries with technical assistance and help foster international cooperation.
The idea has been resisted by developed countries, which argue that creating another institution would take a long time and risk duplicating the work of existing initiatives. Alternative options include “improving existing modalities”, “developing a policy tool box” and “developing guidance” to support countries deliver just transitions.
These alternatives amount to “tweaking”, Teresa Anderson of ActionAid International told reporters. “We know that if those modalities worked, we would not be in the crisis we are facing now.”
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COP30 draft text includes energy transition minerals in UN climate first
Next week, diplomats from around the world will descend on Yerevan, Armenia, to negotiate a series of decisions under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
Between 19 and 30 October, 196 parties will gather to hammer out the precise wording of the dozens of legal texts that make up the decisions under the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the CBD.
This year’s summit is particularly significant, as it marks the halfway point between the agreement of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the deadline for achieving its targets.
The CBD has found that countries are currently not on track to meet 22 out of the framework’s 23 targets.
During the fortnight, delegates will also be negotiating decisions relating to the two supplemental protocols to the CBD: the Cartagena Protocol, which covers biosafety; and the Nagoya Protocol, which covers access and benefit-sharing for the use of genetic resources.
(The Cartagena and Nagoya Protocols, which are each governed by a “meeting of the parties”, or “MOP”, have fewer parties than the CBD as a whole, with 173 and 141, respectively.)
Carbon Brief is tracking the progress of countries towards consensus on dozens of negotiating texts using the interactive table below.
The tracker includes texts from the COP, as well as the MOPs for the Cartagena and Nagoya protocols. It also includes draft decisions from the most recent subsidiary body meetings, as these form the starting point for the negotiations in Yerevan.
The CBD has three subsidiary bodies: the subsidiary body on scientific, technical and technological advice (SBSTTA), the subsidiary body on implementation (SBI) and the subsidiary body on article 8(j) and other provisions (SB8J).
SB8J focuses on issues related to the Indigenous peoples and local communities. It was established at COP16 in Cali, Colombia, in 2024.
The first two columns of the interactive tracker list the topic of each agenda item and the relevant body, with subsequent columns including dates, page counts and links to the original documents.
The table is searchable and can be sorted using the arrows in the header.
Areas of disagreement in UN draft texts are denoted by square brackets. Counting the brackets in a particular iteration of a text therefore gives a sense of how far parties are from reaching consensus.
The bracket column is colour-coded, with dark green indicating a low number of brackets and red indicating a high number of brackets remaining.
Texts can also present parties with choices using “options” or alternatives (“alt”), which are counted together in the sixth column of the table.
The key discussions in Yerevan will centre around two agenda items in particular. The first is the global review, which will assess progress towards the GBF and make recommendations for accelerating action.
The second is finance, which can be separated into two parts: resource mobilisation and the financial mechanism. On resource mobilisation, biodiverse global south countries are likely to push for an increased amount of international finance for conservation.
Disagreement over the creation of the financial mechanism led to the suspension of COP16 in Cali in October 2024, as parties failed to find agreement on the mobilisation of finance before the end of the summit.
Global south countries want the establishment of a separate financial mechanism under the control of the CBD; global north countries largely prefer to maintain the existing mechanism, which sits under the Global Environment Facility.
At the resumed session of COP16 in Rome in early 2025, countries agreed on a roadmap that would lead to the establishment of a permanent mechanism.
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The post Interactive: Tracking negotiating texts at the COP17 biodiversity summit appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Interactive: Tracking negotiating texts at the COP17 biodiversity summit
A beacon of love
On an outer island of Fiji, two thousand nautical miles from Sydney, is a shining light of hope and resilience for our troubled world.
The island of Kioa is home to a Tuvaluan community who migrated from their atoll of Vaitupu in the late 1940s. It is a land of warm hearts, big smiles, and deep cultural roots; a place where the sound of a conch still summons the island together, where islanders paddle out to fish in carved outrigger canoes, and healthy happy children walk barefoot to school.
Here, culture is life. Kioans live sustainably through their traditional knowledge and practices. The island is alive with song, dance and the rhythms of a life tied to the tides, the winds, and the seasons.
Facing the future
Greenpeace has been lucky to have a relationship with Kioa for a number of years now, and we are continually learning from this remarkable community.
Last week, as part of our Voyaging Oceania project, we returned to the island. Our purpose was twofold —- to carry messages from the island to leaders gathering in Nadi this week for the Pacific Pre-COP, and to support the Kioa community in their efforts to improve water security for the island.
Unlike Tuvalu itself, with its eight atolls, Kioa is a mountainous, forested and richly fertile island. It will remain habitable far into the future. Kioans did not initially migrate from Vaitupu due to climate change, but the move was prophetic. They now have a lifeboat.
However, even Kioa faces challenges on our rapidly warming planet, in particular when it comes to water. Climate change is shifting once reliable rainfall patterns. On top of this, the island is already feeling the effect of this year’s intensifying El Niño event, which for Fiji means reduced rainfall and prolonged dry spells.
Right now, fresh water has to be carefully rationed, and is only available for a few hours a day. During last week’s visit aboard our campaigning ship Oceania, Greenpeace was privileged to work with the Kioa community on a new solar-powered water distribution project for the island.
Designed and led by the island, the project involves using a solar pump to move water from a reliable source to a storage tank and then using gravity to distribute the water around the village.
It was a lesson in how local knowledge and ingenuity can be the backbone of today’s climate solutions. To build a dam around the source, the local community knew the exact spot where they could gather gravel at low tide to mix with the cement. They took only what was needed, knowing that all resources must be carefully conserved. Kioa has no roads and no machinery, and it was an all-of-island effort to carry the materials up to the project site, including many heavy bags of sand and rock.
Such projects truly bring to life the vision of a resilient, locally-led, fossil fuel free Pacific.