Beverly Besmanos is the national coordinator of Bantay Kita-Philippines, a coalition of NGOs advocating for transparency and accountability of the extractive industries in the Philippines. Nsama Chikwanka is the national director of Publish What You Pay Zambia. They are both members of the Resource Justice Network.
The clean-energy transition, the solution to the climate crisis, is bulldozing through the Global South, driving a surge in demand for minerals such as copper, nickel, cobalt and lithium.
These transition minerals are crucial to build cleaner energy systems and help the world transition away from fossil fuels. Yet, without guardrails, the mining rush is fuelling human-rights abuses and environmental destruction.
As the seventh session of the United Nations Environmental Assembly (UNEA-7) gets underway in Nairobi this week, we need to sound the alarm and mobilise countries to stand for equity and rights in mineral governance.
Voluntary safeguards and corporate goodwill are not stopping are not stopping mining harms. National policies and laws are also falling short of what is needed.
What we need are binding global rules. What UNEA-7 can deliver is a credible pathway to deliver them.
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Since recent UN climate talks have ignored mineral governance, and domestic approaches have clearly failed to enforce consistent standards, UNEA-7 cannot afford to stall.
Under the leadership of Colombia, several mineral-rich Global South countries are taking action for stronger global mineral governance. This is a unique chance we cannot miss.
An opportunity to chart a way forward
Countries in Nairobi must adopt Colombia’s resolution to develop international instruments for the “socially and environmentally sound management of minerals and metals” across their entire life cycle, from mining to recycling.
Crucially, they must establish an ad hoc open-ended working group with an ambitious mandate, tasked to identify gaps, develop proposals for international rules, and unequivocally keep legally binding options on the table, so that these recommendations can be presented at the next UNEA session in 2026.
Binding rules are the only way to create a level playing field, reward responsible companies, and prevent a race to the bottom where purely voluntary schemes leave honest actors undercut.
The necessity for enforceable global standards is written in the polluted waters and degraded lands of our homes, from Zambia’s Copperbelt to the nickel mines of the Philippines.
The view from the mine
In Zambia, Africa’s second-largest copper producer, two tailings dam breaches six months apart in 2025— in Kalulushi and Mwense districts — released toxic effluent into rivers. These disasters disrupted livelihoods, killed aquatic life, and exposed communities to long-term health risks and loss of economic opportunities.
Weak local safeguards and the sheer impunity of multinational companies enabled this disaster. The alleged suppression of a study into the disaster’s true scale proves that when profits are threatened, truth and life are sacrificed. We cannot rely on companies to police themselves; we need a global legal hammer to enforce accountability.
In the Philippines, a key nickel supplier for electric vehicle batteries, nickel mines in Caraga Region, Tawi-Tawi, and Palawan are stripping forests and mangroves that protect coasts. Siltation and runoff choke farms and fisheries, water turns reddish-brown, carcinogenic chromium appears in drinking supplies. Food insecurity follows.
The social toll is equally severe. Too many projects proceed without securing Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) from Indigenous Peoples, and land and environment defenders face harassment and violence. A global instrument must centre FPIC, defender protection, due diligence, and access to remedy as enforceable obligations to halt this cycle of abuse.
The UN is the place to broker new rules
As mining supply chains are inherently transboundary, only cooperation and consistent, open standards will yield resilient, equitable, and transparent mineral extraction. We must hold multinational enterprises, which operate across borders, to the same environmental and human rights norms worldwide.
Such legally binding rules are essential to establish equal standards for all and operating certainty for businesses.
The UN is the right body to carry this work. As the world’s highest-level decision-making body for matters related to the environment, UNEA is tasked with setting priorities for global environmental law — a mandate that needs to include mining.
We don’t need another dialogue or a light-touch technical platform. Countries must instead turn best practice and voluntary principles into enforceable rules.
We want justice now for the communities and ecosystems being sacrificed in the name of the energy transition. By acting decisively, UNEA-7 can set a new paradigm across the full life cycle of minerals, rooted in environmental integrity, human rights, Indigenous Peoples’ rights, justice, and equity.
We urge countries to support Colombia’s initiative and adopt an ambitious resolution as a key step towards concrete, decision-ready options for a global instrument to govern mineral extraction.
The post Mining is destroying our homes: We need global binding rules for mineral extraction appeared first on Climate Home News.
Mining is destroying our homes: We need global binding rules for mineral extraction
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, 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 “