In contrast to COP30’s disappointing outcomes on finance, adaptation and fossil fuel transition, governments in Belém agreed to an ambitious Just Transition package. It combines the strongest language on rights and inclusion yet seen in the UN climate process with a new global mechanism to support countries reshaping their economies in a cleaner and fairer way.
Delegates described the win as a rare convergence of political will, technical facilitation and years of groundwork by civil society.
For Indian women workers, a just transition means surviving climate impacts with dignity
“This decision brings the highest level of commitment we’ve ever seen on rights, inclusion and cooperation in climate planning,” said Anabella Rosemberg, Just Transition lead at Climate Action Network International.
“In a COP where many other rooms were struggling, this shows what is possible when the people who have been carrying Just Transition for years finally get heard.”
Civil society kept the issue alive
The work programme on Just Transition, launched in 2022, remained low-profile across several COP cycles. During that time, unions, youth networks, feminist groups, Indigenous advocates and NGOs continued refining their proposals and pushing negotiators even when political attention was limited.
As momentum built toward COP30 this year, these groups began referring to their proposal as the Belém Action Mechanism – the “BAM” – signalling the level of institutional ambition they believed the process required. “There would be no Just Transition mechanism without civil society,” Rosemberg said.
She noted how different groups kept the issue alive over the past three years – drafting text, feeding ideas into consultations, and staging actions – from June’s ‘picketnic’ in Bonn to demonstrations in Belém.
“The strongest rights and inclusion language ever agreed at a COP comes directly from that sustained work,” she added.
Governments shifted faster than expected
A key moment arrived on day two of COP30, when the G77+China group of developing countries signalled its support for establishing a Just Transition mechanism. Negotiators from several regions described this as the turning point that made an ambitious outcome possible.
This was followed by the EU at the end of the first week and then by the UK. Behind the scenes, civil society groups in Canada, Australia and Switzerland pushed their governments to align with the emerging consensus.
COP30: Spain’s unions say just transition means renewing communities beyond jobs
Facilitators and ministers closed the gaps
The technical co-facilitators of talks on the Just Transition Work Programme, Joseph Teo (of Singapore) and Federica Fricano (Italy), were credited with producing a clear, workable draft text that helped bridge divides. Delegates said its readability – unusual for UNFCCC text – helped maintain trust.
Last year at COP29 in Baku, the Just Transition track of the negotiations ended without an outcome, partly because no ministers were mandated to land one.
Belém took a different approach: Mexico’s Alicia Bárcena and Poland’s Krzysztof Bolesta were appointed as ministerial leads and played a central role in balancing strong rights language with the institutional detail needed to implement it.
UNFCCC secretariat staff supported the process with rapid revision work through the second week.
Brazil’s presidency and the significance of place
As the COP host nation, Brazil made Just Transition one of its three priorities, ensuring the track remained visible amid wider disputes. The presidency directed parties toward “institutional arrangements” – the diplomatic route that made a mechanism possible.
Belém’s context also mattered. The region is a long-standing focal point for debates around livelihoods, extractivism of natural resources and environmental protection, grounding the negotiations in a real-world context.
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“Brazil was the right place for this breakthrough,” Rosemberg said. “Here the tension between social protection and environmental protection is lived, not abstract. A mechanism agreed in the land of trade unionist and environmentalist Chico Mendes – that means something.”
What the Just Transition decision changes
The final text approved at COP30 sets out principles for rights-based, inclusive transitions and decides to develop a global mechanism to support countries in implementing those principles – elevating it to a structural component of how climate action will be delivered in the Paris Agreement era. The mechanism is due to be operationalised at COP31 next November.
The COP30 agreement also reinforces the expectation that social and economic dimensions must be central to national climate plans, not appended to them.
The work starts now
The mechanism’s impact will depend on the operational details agreed by governments in the months ahead. Key questions include the design of the mechanism’s committee, what form secretariat support will take, and whether civil society and trade unions will have a formal role in its work.
Parties also need to decide whether the mechanism should help convene a wider network of practitioners. Its first workplan, the identification of support needs, and clarification of how it will interact with existing UNFCCC bodies will shape how effective it becomes – decisions that are expected to be taken at COP31.
A just transition for renewables: Why COP30 must put people before power
“What comes next is making sure this mechanism speaks to reality,” Rosemberg said.
“It has to work for workers facing job loss, for communities left out of climate decisions, and for governments trying to shift economies away from extractivism. If those voices shape it, this can be an eye-opener rather than a repetition of old conversations.”
Social justice at the forefront
COP30 will likely be remembered for its unresolved debates and for outcomes that fell short in areas many countries consider essential. Against that backdrop, the Just Transition decision stands out as a rare instance of coordination between civil society, governments and the presidency.
It marks the first time the UN climate process has created an institutional structure dedicated to ensuring that social and economic justice is embedded in the shift away from fossil fuels and other high-carbon sectors that must change.
The Just Transition outcome may not resolve the broader challenges faced by the UN climate process, but it establishes a foundation that many negotiators and observers say could shape climate policy for the better in the years to come.
The post How Belém built a new Just Transition mechanism appeared first on Climate Home News.
https://www.climatechangenews.com/2025/11/27/how-belem-built-a-new-just-transition-mechanism/
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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Early speakers’ list suggests few powerful leaders will attend COP31
Just 77 heads of state or government are scheduled to address the COP31 climate summit in Antalya, a third less than the COP28 peak -
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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, COP30 CEO Ana Toni and Dutch climate minister Stientje van Veldhoven said “coalitions of the willing” can move ahead without needing consensus from the COPs. This, they said, was evident this year at the first global conference on TAFF, co-chaired by van Veldhoven and attended by 60 countries.
“Consensus or no-consensus in the general COP doesn’t make a difference for the choices I have to make in my country to get my country to phase out fossil fuels,” said the Dutch minister. The Netherlands recently became one of the first to publish a national TAFF plan.
COP31 banks on flagship voluntary initiatives
This thinking has permeated the management and expected outcomes of this year’s COP too. Earlier this year, Türkiye, supported by international energy agencies, floated the idea of a voluntary goal to boost electrification to 35% of the world’s final energy consumption by 2035 – and this is now being touted as one of the main results to be expected from Antalya.
Türkiye is also championing a pledge on AI and climate, while co-host Australia is pushing to ease access to climate finance for least developed countries and small island states.
COP31 presidency announces AI pledge as UN climate chief says Big Tech ‘on thin ice’
None of these needs consensus. But with a political cover decision already in the works, as trailed by the COP presidents, they – and perhaps the fossil fuel roadmap – may find a home in the official text if language acceptable to most can be found, giving them them additional weight.
UNFCCC reform process in the shadows
Formal reform is underway too, if quietly. UN climate chief Simon Stiell is leading a review informed by ongoing consultations with a group of 15 well-respected climate policy experts, three of whom signed the open letter in 2024.
Among them is leading Swedish climate and sustainability scientist Johan Rockström who has strong ideas about how to make COPs function better, including a switch to majority voting. He told the same press briefing nothing stands in the way of this, because the rules of procedure for making decisions at COPs have never been formally agreed.
Still, to get away from the default setting of consensus would require agreement on a new system that may be impossible to achieve given the rise in bullying tactics by fossil fuel heavyweights.
Comment: The UN climate process was built for negotiation – now it must support implementation
The deliberations with the high-level policy gurus, as reflected in a summary of June’s session in Bonn, largely echo what’s already happening organically, calling for stronger partnerships and accountability both in and between the Action Agenda and negotiations. It doesn’t mention voting.
A general overview of the reform exercise says that “improving and optimizing the [UN climate] process over the medium to long term… will be critical to fostering trust, enhancing collaboration, and catalyzing increased ambition”.
In the short term, don’t hold your breath for anything concrete on reform at COP31 but watch for signs in what ends up dominating the headlines from Türkiye.
The post Editor’s Desk: COP reform is happening quietly, behind the headlines appeared first on Climate Home News.
Editor’s Desk: COP reform is happening quietly, behind the headlines
With the COP31 climate summit in Turkey looming, all eyes are on China to see what the country will push for in the negotiations.
At COP30 last year, China helped to secure a “dialogue” on climate-related “unilateral trade measures”, as well as a two-year “work programme” concerning climate finance.
The nation also championed south-south cooperation throughout the conference and co-led a summit on methane, alongside Brazil and the UK.
In a recent press conference, China’s environment vice-minister Li Gao noted the need to “uphold multilateralism” and send a “clear political signal” that the global community is united around climate action.