Scientists have found that the devastating floods triggered by intense rainfall in Southern Africa in recent weeks were made worse by climate change and have exposed deep social vulnerability, causing a disaster described as “a textbook case of climate injustice”.
The scientists working with the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group said extreme 10-day rainfall events in the region are now about 40% more intense than in pre-industrial times, driven primarily by human-induced climate change – and on this occasion amplified by a weak La Niña pattern. While such rainfall remains relatively rare, the analysis shows it would have been far less severe in a cooler climate.
With more than 100 deaths recorded in Mozambique alone since the rains began in late December, the scientists said the impacts have been compounded by rapid urbanisation, weak planning and high levels of informal settlements, which left communities highly exposed and led to widespread collapses of housing and displacement of families.
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Renate Meyer, Southern Africa focal point for the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, said that when studying extreme events, the WWA group now also looks at people’s vulnerability and exposure, to understand the context and the drivers of risk beyond meteorological conditions.
“Mozambique and parts of South Africa, Eswatini and Zimbabwe are no stranger to floods, but the recurring frequency of the hazards such as drought and intense rainfall have had a significant impact on communities experiencing, amongst others, displacement, health challenges, socio-economic loss and psychological distress,” Meyer told the press launch of the WWA study.
Friederike Otto, professor of climate science at Imperial College London’s Centre for Environmental Policy, said the Southern Africa floods are “a textbook case of climate injustice” because the people of the affected countries have not contributed to climate change, nor are they profiting from using or selling fossil fuels, yet they are the ones losing their lives, homes and livelihoods.
Such disasters can no longer be treated as “acts of God” when they are the direct result of a system built on exploitation and a global failure to phase out fossil fuels, she argued. “We have the know-how and tools to stop this from getting worse,” she added. “We now need the political will that prioritises everyone instead of just the very rich and GDP [gross domestic product]. ”
Climate and social vulnerabilities collide
Separately on Thursday, the charity Water Aid said that in Mozambique and Malawi, more than 800,000 people have been affected, with thousands living in temporary accommodation and shelters, while the number of deaths and people missing continues to rise.
In a statement launching an emergency funding appeal, Water Aid’s Southern Africa director Robert Kampala said the floods are some of the worst the region has ever seen. “This is rapidly becoming a public health crisis,” he added, noting that water sources are become contaminated with floodwater and people are forced to live in cramped shelters, raising the threat of cholera outbreaks and other diseases.
Meyer of the Red Cross said health risks in the region have soared during the floods, with more than 11,500 pregnant women and about 169,000 women of reproductive age among those hit hardest. Many are sheltering in overcrowded conditions with limited access to sexual and reproductive health services, exposing them to stress and increased risk of preterm birth and low birth weight, she told journalists.
Flood risk is higher for people with disabilities when emergency shelters lack ramps and adapted sanitation and support services. “These structural exclusions force people to remain in high-risk locations, converting exposure into avoidable loss,” Meyer said.
Children are also vulnerable, she noted, with around 40% of children in Mozambique currently experiencing malnutrition. “These children are repeatedly exposed to droughts, floods [and] cyclones, with insufficient time or resources to recover nutritionally or physiologically between shocks – and this erodes the possibility of building resilience,” she added.
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Bernardino Nhantumbo, climate researcher with Mozambique’s INAM National Institute of Meteorology in Maputo, said the flooding had caused a “collision” between a climate that grows more dangerous by the day and the region’s deep-rooted social vulnerabilities.
“When 90% of homes are made of sun-dried earth, they simply cannot withstand this much rain,” he said. “The structural collapse of entire villages is a stark reminder that our communities and infrastructure are now being tested by weather they are just not designed to endure.”
Growing needs, shrinking aid
Field reports from aid workers on the ground echo the WWA’s scientific findings. ActionAid Mozambique has said that humanitarian funding cuts and the climate crisis are putting thousands at risk after the dramatic rains and flooding in central and southern parts of the country.
With many people already living in poverty and informal housing, the floods have devastated lives and livelihoods, the aid organisation said. Elsa Manhique, a resident of the Buna area in Manhiça district, told ActionAid she had to “flee with nothing”. “Everything I had was taken by the water. The houses collapsed. We left without documents, without clothes, without anything,” she said.
Marcia Cossa, ActionAid Mozambique’s acting head, said the country is one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations, facing cyclones, floods and droughts that are intensifying due to climate change. “As needs grow, international aid and cooperation are shrinking, and that rollback is costing lives,” she added.
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Save the Children, an international aid charity, reported that thousands of children are at risk, with some families rescued by boat from submerged areas. Temporary shelters are overstretched, with some housing both people and livestock, creating serious health and hygiene concerns, the agency warned.
Ilaria Manunza, the charity’s country director, said the floods are unfolding amid a wider humanitarian emergency, pushing already exhausted communities further into crisis. With continued heavy rains forecast and emergency response capacity severely strained, families are being uprooted and children are at extreme risk, she said, calling for urgent support to prevent the emergency escalating further.
The WWA study said strengthening resilience against floods will require full implementation of existing policies and better coordination across river basins. It recommended investing in infrastructure and early warning systems, and building community capacity to prepare for, respond to, and recover from flooding.
The post Southern Africa floods intensified by warming highlight climate injustice, scientists say appeared first on Climate Home News.
Southern Africa floods intensified by warming highlight climate injustice, scientists say
One of the key expected outcomes from the upcoming COP31 climate summit in Antalya, Turkey, is the launch of a “just transition mechanism”.
This follows years of calls from civil society to support a “just transition” as countries shift towards low-emissions energy systems and away from fossil fuels.
At the COP30 UN climate talks last year in the Brazilian city of Belém parties agreed to establish a “mechanism” to support this goal, called the “Belém-Antalya mechanism” (BAM).
Groups that have championed the BAM want it to act as a central hub on just transitions, providing support for workers and communities around the world.
However, the details of exactly what the much-touted BAM will consist of remain vague, with developed and developing countries disagreeing about its functions and purpose.
Disagreements continued at the UN climate talks in Bonn in June 2026, including on the crucial question of how the BAM will be financed.
Here, Carbon Brief looks at where the idea for the BAM came from, how it could support just transitions and what to expect from COP31.
How has a ‘just transition’ featured in UN climate talks?
A “just transition” is the idea that workers and communities should be supported in the shift to a low-carbon economy. It is a central principle behind the idea of climate justice.
Often, the term refers to those linked to the fossil-fuel industry, but it can also refer to transitions taking place in agriculture, heavy industry and various other sectors.
The concept originated in the 1980s, when US labour unions forged alliances with environmental justice groups. It has since become a key part of international climate discussions.
The preamble to the 2015 Paris Agreement includes a commitment to “tak[e] 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”.
Bert De Wel, policy officer at the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), tells Carbon Brief:
“The labour movement is very happy with the wide audience and broad political support that the concept has received since its inception in the 1980s. The inclusion in the Paris Agreement, with the reference to the creation of decent work and quality jobs was a milestone for the movement. While other demands have been added…we continue to stress the labour dimension as being central to the concept.”
Three years after the creation of the Paris Agreement, at COP24 in the former coal-mining city of Katowice, the Polish presidency highlighted the issue of just transitions.
The need for carbon-cutting policies to ensure “a just transition of the workforce” that creates “decent work and quality jobs” was included in the “Silesia declaration”, issued by the presidency during the first week of COP24.
While the declaration was only signed by 50 countries – roughly a quarter of the parties at the summit – it was still “noted” in the final COP text.
This helped to drive momentum behind the idea, culminating in formal agreement at COP27 in Egypt to launch a “work programme on just transition” (JTWP).
De Wel says the establishment of the JTWP was a “major step forward” that allowed parties to “speak about just transition in more concrete terms”.
In the years since, negotiators have worked to flesh out the JTWP, with disagreements between parties about what its purpose should be.
Broadly, developed countries would like it to focus on domestic workforces, while some nations want a more global outlook, including support for transitions in developing countries.
The JTWP has proved a challenging negotiating space, with talks at the COP29 summit in 2024 closing without an agreement, in what one observer dubbed a “betrayal”.
However, despite these frustrations, parties at COP30 in Brazil agreed to establish a new institutional mechanism on just transitions, which has become widely known as the BAM. The move was hailed as a “victory” by civil society.
Where did the ‘just transition mechanism’ come from?
In the run-up to COP30, civil society began to push for the establishment of an “institutional arrangement” that would move work under the JTWP from talk into action.
(This was originally called the “Belém action mechanism” by civil society groups, who subsequently updated this to the “Belém-Antalya mechanism” following the outcome at COP30. However, in the JTWP text agreed at COP30 it is only described as a “mechanism”, sometimes also referred to as the “just transition mechanism”.)
Anabella Rosemberg, senior advisor on just transition at NGO umbrella group Climate Action Network (CAN) International, tells Carbon Brief:
“The idea of the mechanism emerged from the collaboration of civil society, trade unions, feminist groups, youth and Indigenous peoples in the UNFCCC.
“It was clear that the kind of activities being run under the JTWP – two dialogues a year and one ministerial – would not support the delivery of just-transition strategies on the ground, so a new approach was developed to get words into action.”
Following the inception of the idea, civil society did “tonnes of stuff to boost it up the agenda”, Dr Leon Sealey-Huggins, a senior campaigner at the charity War on Want, tells Carbon Brief.
This ranged from presenting demands and proposals to different constituents, organising joint letters and writing policy papers, all the way through to designing logos, creating memes and even a song.
These efforts ultimately paid off: during the Bonn climate negotiations in June 2025, one draft text included the idea for a new institutional arrangement. One of the options in the draft text was for a “toolbox, guidance framework, global platform, technical assistance network [or] mechanism”.
![Paragraph 28 of the JTWP text published 25 June 2025. The text reads "28. Options for further implementation of the United Arab Emirates just transition work programme Option 1: Improving existing modalities Option 2: New institutional arrangements [toolbox, guidance framework, global platform, technical assistance network, mechanism] Option 3: Defer decision to 2026"](https://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/para28-1024x334.png)
This inclusion was broadly welcomed as a “big win” for civil society groups, although parties acknowledged that more needed to be done to flesh out the idea.
Going into COP30, civil society groups continued to push the idea of creating a BAM, with protests, banners and badges visible around the venue.
Early in negotiations, the G77 and China – a large coalition of developing countries at UN climate talks – put forward their own proposal for a just transition “mechanism”. This, they suggested, could provide technical assistance, support international cooperation and help to foster partnerships in an effort to address implementation gaps.
Their proposal faced initial pushback from developed-country parties including Norway, the UK and others, who opposed it due to concerns that it would duplicate existing systems and require additional funding.
Developed countries also opposed the use of the term “mechanism”, with the EU suggesting an “action plan” as a potential alternative. Nevertheless, the creation of a “mechanism” was included in the final draft text on the JTWP.
This text was formally approved during the COP30 closing plenary to extended applause from many in the hall.
In a statement at the time, Chiara Martinelli, director at CAN Europe, welcomed the decision:
“Delivering BAM was a major civil society win. It creates a coordinated institutional home to drive forward progress on the just transition.”
The decision to develop the mechanism included a request for parties to work over the subsequent year – through to COP31 – on a plan to get things started.
What role could the mechanism play in facilitating ‘just transitions’?
According to civil society, the BAM could help tackle the fractured just-transition landscape by centralising resources and helping to overcome a number of barriers.
Speaking to Carbon Brief, Rosemberg says the just-transition space “lacks coordination and the right kind of support and is quite disconnected from climate action imperatives”. She adds:
“The BAM can play a role in bringing those [people] trying to make just transition happen together, identify gaps and barriers, foster cooperation and accelerate support.”
Civil society has put forward a number of proposals likely to inform the structure of the BAM. Most consist of a mechanism with three parts, which would encompass and expand upon the work that is currently being carried out under the JTWP.
One proposal by a coalition of five NGOs suggests the mechanism is formed of a steering body, a “knowledge arm” and an “implementation arm”.
The steering body would coordinate the work of the two arms of the BAM, including deciding the topics that should be discussed under the ongoing JTWP, which will continue to feature in climate negotiations. They suggest the body would recommend topics that require negotiation when “gaps that require political guidance are identified”.
Their proposal is illustrated in the infographic below, showing the steering body acting as a central hub for work within the BAM.
The final part of the BAM, the “implementation arm”, would act as a hub to enable and coordinate technical, financial and knowledge-based assistance for those pursuing a just transition.
Rosemberg says the vision of civil society is for work to go “beyond negotiators’ dialogues”. She says the BAM could enable the organisation of a “matchmaking platform” to provide support faster, as well as dedicated groups to identify and mobilise financial resources. She adds:
“Finally, through bottom-up identification of barriers, the BAM can also allow a discussion on enabling just transition that is informed by practitioners. The BAM can show that implementation does not necessarily mean taking issues outside of the UNFCCC.”
A separate proposal for the structure of the BAM from the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice (DCJ) – a separate coalition of NGOs – similarly proposes three elements. These would be: coordination and coherence; knowledge generation; and international cooperation and support.
Sealey-Huggins, who is affiliated with DCJ, notes:
“If it works in practice, what we’ll see is a cascade of just-transition policies implemented across countries, across sectors in a unifying, transformational moment for justice-centered climate action, and that will be the key to unlocking the transition that’s been missing so far.”
Another proposal for the BAM comes from the Grantham Institute at the London School of Economics. It suggests the three functions of the mechanism should be capacity-building, technical assistance and knowledge-sharing, but it recommends a dual-arm structure comprising a policy arm and an operational arm.
De Wel tells Carbon Brief that while there is “rather broad consensus on the functions”, parties are pushing in “very different directions” on how the BAM will be set up.
What are the financial implications of the mechanism?
Within UN climate negotiations, some parties have raised concerns about the potential cost of the mechanism.
The push to launch the BAM comes at a time when the UNFCCC itself is facing a funding gap, following the US withdrawal. Several other parties have also delayed or reduced their contributions, in response to changes in domestic priorities.
This has led to the UNFCCC cancelling events and not filling vacated positions, as the organisation struggles to carry out its existing functions.
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As such, some parties have expressed hesitancy about creating another mechanism under the remit of the UNFCCC, which also requires funding. However, proponents of the BAM argue that the costs of running it would be minimal.
Rosemberg tells Carbon Brief that the BAM represents “an opportunity to streamline and make efficient use of public resources”. She adds:
“The mechanism does not necessarily require the creation of a costly new institution. Instead, it can leverage existing climate-finance channels and philanthropy.”
She adds that a “similar body” to the potential mechanism, the Climate Technology Centre and Network, costs less than $10m a year. Rosemberg notes that this is “not an impossible amount to be found if there is political will to make just transition happen”.
De Wel notes that the mechanism will build on existing work inside the UNFCCC and out, including the International Labour Organization’s “just transition policy gateway”. He further emphasises that “we’re clearly not asking for a new [just-transition] fund, we want all climate finance to be just-transition proof”.
Alongside highlighting the potential efficiencies of the BAM design, many have argued that the potential benefits are well worth the cost of the new mechanism, with Sealey-Huggins telling Carbon Brief:
“The cost to the [BAM] secretariat pales in comparison to the potential benefit of the action.”
What is likely to happen in Antalya?
Despite the “victory” in Belém of agreeing to set up the new just-transition mechanism, climate negotiations in Bonn in June 2026 quickly hit sticking points.