As climate negotiators in Bonn work through another round of technical discussions, social movements gathering outside the UN venue see this as a moment – nearly a decade after Paris – to bring the voices of real people into the room and make the COP process something communities can see themselves reflected in.
As climate action comes under attack from populist elites and Big Tech billionaires, decision-makers must shift gears – climate policy must start delivering for those who keep our societies running: working people.
From factory workers and waste-pickers to Indigenous leaders and feminist economists, dozens of groups have come together under the banner, “Just Transition Rising”, to insist that real climate action must start from the ground up.
“A transition is happening, but justice is nowhere to be found,” said Boitumelo Molete of South Africa’s trade union federation COSATU. “Not enough support is going to communities to find alternative livelihoods nor to workers to find decent jobs – we need recognition, finance and space to lead, especially for South Africa’s women workers who are the first affected by the climate crisis.”
Of the US$12.8 billion pledged to support South Africa’s transition away from coal, only about US$1.9 billion has so far been disbursed – and just US$676 million of that was in the form of grants.
An analysis of roughly half of these grants (US$330 million) found that less than a quarter went to South African entities, while the bulk was channelled back to foreign implementers – most based in the donor countries themselves.
Picket-nicking with purpose: People before profits
Wednesday’s rally outside the World Conference Center Bonn will take the form of a picnic – with a twist. Called a “picket-nic” to reflect the participation of workers and unions and the fighting spirit of the convergence, the event will feature music, food, a massive banner for people to gather around, and a clear call: climate policies must put the workers and communities on the frontlines of the transition first.
Organisers hope the event will also help build diplomatic consensus – by reminding government negotiators to focus on the needs of their people, not just rehearse entrenched positions.
This mobilisation builds on an online assembly held in May, which brought together more than 1,000 participants from across the globe. Workers and community leaders shared powerful stories of resistance, reinvention, and leadership in the face of the climate crisis.
Challenging global economic rules
Italian workers from the GKN automotive factory described how they turned a mass layoff into a cooperative of 100 workers focused on building low-carbon transport technologies. “We weren’t just fighting job loss,” said GKN worker Dario Salvetti. “We were asking: What should this factory build for society?”
Members of India’s Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) explained how informal women workers contribute up to a month’s income into collective climate resilience funds to protect their communities from floods and droughts. Mansi Shah explained, “Last year, when the temperatures crossed 40 degrees and it became unbearable to work in the field, it was the payout from SEWA’s parametric heat insurance that helped with sustaining families and provided two square meals per day.”
Speakers also challenged the global economic rules that block fair transitions. Feminist and Indigenous economists offered alternative models rooted in care, reciprocity and community self-determination.
Youth, disability rights advocates and children’s representatives joined the call, insisting that realising their rights is not peripheral but essential to truly transformative climate action.
Five demands on the table
As communities demand real change, these and other grassroots organisations are advocating for the Just Transition agenda as a pathway to turn that demand into actionable policy – anchored in finance, inclusive governance and international cooperation.
Emboldened by the spirit of the global online assembly, a collective of groups active in the UN climate process (UNFCCC) has put forward five concrete proposals, with the hope that they will be reflected in the draft decision on Just Transition emerging from Bonn:
- Protect the core values of Just Transition: Ensure that Just Transition is aligned with the Paris Agreement and rooted in human rights, labour rights, inclusion, social dialogue and public participation, and international cooperation.
- Make Just Transition financeable: Recognise Just Transition policies as eligible for climate finance, acknowledging their critical role in enabling higher ambition.
- Integrate Just Transition into national planning: Embed Just Transition strategies into Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), national adaptation plans and long-term development strategies.
- Institutionalise participation and co-creation at the national level: Establish formal spaces for consultation and co-design of Just Transition pathways – bringing in workers, communities and civil society.
- Launch the Belém Action Mechanism (BAM) for a Global Just Transition: A multilateral initiative to accelerate and support country efforts to transition, making funding and technical support more accessible, taking action to remove barriers to the transition, such as trade or debt, and build a global peer network for shared learning and collaboration.
“Communities and workers aren’t waiting for permission,” said Gina Cortés, a Colombian feminist and a member of the Women and Gender Constituency at the UN talks. “What we need is for governments to stop ignoring the people who sustain the world with their work when moving ahead with climate plans – the international process can move us closer to getting things done better and accelerate a movement that is gaining pace on the ground.”
Eyes on Belém
These proposals are intended to shape the road to the COP30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil – a milestone moment for advancing the UNFCCC’s Just Transition Work Programme.
“The UN process didn’t invent the concept of Just Transition,” said Tasneem Essop from Climate Action Network. “But it has the opportunity to contribute to its realisation and help scale it – if it listens to the people.”
After Baku setback, activists call for ‘just transition’ to be front and centre at COP30
At a time when nationalism and climate action delay are gaining ground, campaigners see Just Transition as a rare point of convergence.
“It’s more than a policy space,” said Lidy Nacpil, from the Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD). “It’s a way to connect our struggles – to show that climate justice isn’t just possible, it’s already happening.”
Whether that message reaches negotiators remains to be seen. But for those gathering in Bonn this week, Just Transition Rising is only getting started.
The post Workers and grassroots groups push Just Transition agenda at Bonn climate talks appeared first on Climate Home News.
Workers and grassroots groups push Just Transition agenda at Bonn climate talks
An Lambrechts is a biodiversity politics expert at Greenpeace International with extensive experience in biodiversity-related multilateral negotiations. She is the head of the Greenpeace delegation at the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) COP17 happening in Yerevan, Armenia.
In 2022, COP15 delivered the landmark Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. With COP17 starting in Yerevan, we are now halfway to the deadline, and according to the first Global Review of progress, countries are not on track to meet the biodiversity targets, and implementation must accelerate fast.
One of the main findings of the Global Review is that funding falls far short of the scale needed to halt and reverse nature loss. But the crisis facing the world’s biodiversity is not an absolute scarcity of capital – it is a profound public policy distortion.
The global economy currently spends roughly $30 destroying nature for every single dollar invested in its protection. According to a report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, a staggering $2.4 trillion is spent in public subsidies for fossil fuels, agriculture and water use, while global investment in biodiversity conservation and restoration stands at a mere $220 billion.
Countries urged to ramp up “insufficient” nature policies at COP17
Yet, discussions about how to close the biodiversity finance gap continue to claim that salvation lies in mobilising private capital, scaling offsets and “derisking” investments in nature. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of both the nature of ecological stewardship and of the global financial architecture.
Biodiversity conservation is not a speculative investment portfolio – it is the foundation of human survival. The health of our planet is a non-monetisable, non-excludable public good. Expecting profit-seeking private capital to protect nature perpetuates the structural drivers of ecosystem destruction in the first place.
But if private market mechanisms cannot save biodiversity, where will the necessary public resources come from?
Money going to the wrong places
The answer lies in recovering the vast public wealth currently drained by cross-border tax abuse, financial secrecy and corporate impunity. Finance and environment ministers meeting in Yerevan must give a strong political signal that, to avert ecological breakdown, countries need to take swift action to reform global tax rules, eliminate harmful public subsidies and cancel unsustainable sovereign debts for the public revenues to end up where they belong.
Extractive sectors such as industrial agriculture, fishing, timber and mining continue business-as-usual, often heavily subsidised by public treasuries, while voluntary carbon and biodiversity offset markets pose a serious risk to nature conservation. Offset schemes have delivered only a negligible fraction of the funding needed to preserve ecosystems, allowing industries to continue with their destructive business-as-usual practices.
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In advanced economies, public funding often actively undermines biodiversity. In Europe, over €5.3 billion in public subsidies is funnelled annually into intensive forest biomass harvesting under renewable energy directives, degrading primary forest ecosystems and undermining long-term climate resilience. Pleading with private investors to fill a “finance gap” while pouring billions into ecological destruction is an exercise in futility.
Developing countries struggle with debt burden
For developing countries, reliance on private finance is further compounded by a crushing sovereign debt crisis. In 2024, public debt in developing economies reached record levels, with net interest payments alone absorbing $921 billion. A record 61 developing countries now spend more than 10% of government revenue on foreign debt service, with many climate-vulnerable nations spending twice as much servicing external debt as they receive in climate and biodiversity finance combined.
This burden acts as a structural driver of ecosystem destruction. Under pressure from external creditors and international financial institutions to avoid default and secure foreign exchange, governments are routinely forced into austerity measures and pushed to expand raw commodity exports into pristine biomes.
Comment: World Bank and IMF should lead the financial system in responding to the climate crisis
The current negotiations for a United Nations Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation (UNFCITC) also offer a way forward. An estimated $492 billion in tax revenue is lost every year to offshore tax havens. Multinational corporations account for around $348 billion of this total by shifting profits away from the countries where real economic extraction and environmental degradation occur.
In the mining sector alone, developing nations lose tens of billions annually to corporate tax dodging. Furthermore, international financial secrecy shields environmental criminals, with illicit financial flows from illegal logging draining between $51 billion and $152 billion annually.
At COP17, leaders must seize the opportunity to build a bridge between the two conventions and enhance cooperation. Governments must put the world on a firm path to securing predictable, sufficient, sovereign public finance for biodiversity conservation. It’s the only path to a restorative, rights-based future for people and the planet.
The post Protecting nature is a public duty, not a Wall Street profit opportunity appeared first on Climate Home News.
Protecting nature is a public duty, not a Wall Street profit opportunity
Climate Change
Greenpeace delivers 47 metre-long petition with half a million signatures to Woodside HQ following major gas protest
Greenpeace delivers 47 metre-long petition with half a million signatures to Woodside HQ following major gas protest
PERTH, Monday 19 October 2026 — Dozens of Perth community members delivered a giant petition, signed by almost half a million people, to Woodside’s corporate headquarters this morning, calling on the government to save Scott Reef from Woodside’s reckless Browse gas proposal.
Dressed in sea creature costumes and hats, supporters carried one of Australia’s biggest environmental petitions to Woodside’s headquarters, and a local choir performed a ‘Scott Reef’ rendition of Angie McMahon’s iconic cover of ‘Reckless’ by Australian Crawl.
On the sidelines of the Perth Global Citizen Now event, it comes following a two day-long protest at Woodside’s Scarborough gas platform that saw activists scale and occupy the Floating Production Unit calling to “Stop Woodside’s Dirty Gas” and “Save Scott Reef”. The activists were taken from the platform by police helicopter on Sunday afternoon.
David Ritter, CEO at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “Less than a day after two Greenpeace Australia Pacific activists were arrested for their peaceful protest at Woodside’s Scarborough gas platform to save Scott Reef, we are here again with another message to Woodside: half a million of us do not want your dirty gas at Scott Reef.
“Community pressure on Woodside is rising. Today we are here to show Woodside that they can’t ignore half a million people who want Scott Reef protected, not turned into an industrialised gas zone.
“Woodside can’t be trusted with our oceans. Woodside’s plans to drill up to 57 toxic wells at Scott Reef, Australia’s largest oceanic reef, putting endangered pygmy blue whales at risk, and jeopardising a nesting ground for unique green sea turtles.
“We Australians love our oceans and this is an opportunity for our governments to do the right thing, to reject Woodside’s reckless drilling plans, and save Scott Reef.”
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Media contact
Kate O’Callaghan on +61 406 231 892 or Emma Sangalli on +61 431 513 465
Climate Change
Greenpeace Australia Pacific activists in police custody after two-day protest against Woodside’s Browse gas project at Scott Reef
PERTH, Sunday 18 October 2026 — Two Greenpeace Australia Pacific activists are in police custody after occupying a gas platform at Woodside’s Scarborough gas project, in peaceful protest of the fossil fuel corporation’s plans to drill for oil and gas at Scott Reef.
NEW footage and photos of the peaceful protest available here and on Instagram
The activists used specialised climbing equipment to scale and attach themselves to a Floating Production Unit (FPU), a key piece of gas processing infrastructure at the Scarborough gas field over 200km off the coast of Exmouth, at around 05:45am AWST on Saturday and proceeded to occupy the platform for two days, displaying banners reading “Stop Woodside’s Dirty Gas. Save Scott Reef.”
Special police forces landed a helicopter on the FPU at around 11:30am AWST. The activists safely removed themselves from their equipment before being taken into police custody around 1:00pm AWST. At the time of writing, no charges have been laid.
David Ritter, CEO at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “It takes guts and conviction to do what our activists have done, peacefully protesting Woodside’s reckless gas plans at Scott Reef.
“Woodside’s plans to drill up to 57 toxic wells at Scott Reef are outrageous. If allowed to go ahead Woodside would turn Scott Reef, Australia’s largest oceanic reef, home to nesting green sea turtles and elusive pygmy blue whales, into an industrial gas zone. Around half a million people have called on our governments to stop Woodside and to save Scott Reef.
“Our activists are highly trained and experienced in these activities. West Australia has a proud history of peaceful, democratic protest at sea, to protect our oceans from environmental threats. From whaling in Albany in the seventies, to Woodside’s threat to Scott Reef today, there’s more than fifty years of history, of Greenpeace taking action off WA’s coast to protect the places we love.
“Peaceful protest has long been part of what has given us so many of the things that are great about Australia and is part of the fabric of our democracy and our national identity.”
“The right to peaceful protest is fundamental to a healthy democracy. From Australia to the Arctic and the Amazon, Greenpeace has been peacefully protesting for more than 50 years to expose the biggest environmental threats around the world. We will not be silenced by corporations like Woodside who actively try to stop everyday people from speaking out against their reckless plans.
“Woodside’s reckless proposal to drill at Scott Reef is an unacceptable risk to Scott Reef and to the climate, which our government should emphatically reject.”
Speaking from the Rainbow Warrior, Captain of the Rainbow Warrior Hettie Geenen, said:
“It felt powerful watching from the Rainbow Warrior as these brave activists scaled Woodside’s enormous and imposing gas infrastructure, which has no place at Scott Reef. We are all out here because we feel an urge to act, in the face of Woodside’s grave threat to Scott Reef and to our climate. Now we ask for the Australian government to act too, and reject Woodside’s reckless Browse project.
“Just before this peaceful protest, the Rainbow Warrior sailed to Scott Reef, where our whole crew got to witness the magic of an untouched, healthy reef ecosystem full of marine life. It was my second time visiting Scott Reef with the Rainbow Warrior. When you see Scott Reef up close and witness its magic first hand, it is impossible not to feel driven to try and protect it.”
The activists sailed to Scarborough on the Rainbow Warrior, Greenpeace’s flagship vessel, which is in the region campaigning to protect Australia’s oceans, including Scott Reef.
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Media contact
Greenpeace Australia Pacific media team in Perth on +61 406 231 892 or +61 407 581 404 or email media.au@greenpeace.org
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