Demanding a Voice at the UN Climate Conference

man in suit posing in front of banner: "United Nations Climate Change Conference"

JTA’s new Policy Organizer Fernando at the Bonn Intersessional.  Photo credit: Fernando Tormos-Aponte

The Just Transition Alliance attended the recent climate talks in Bonn to continue pushing for a just transition and working with our movement partners to block false solutions to addressing climate change.  As we move away from harmful fossil fuels, we must also safeguard the rights and livelihoods of affected communities and workers. We raise our voices to remind government officials that there cannot be a just transition if affected communities and workers are not part of the decision-making process.

Why We Must Reject False Solutions

The dominant approach to addressing climate change is to trade carbon emissions in markets. There is ample evidence demonstrating the failure to curb climate change through carbon markets that put a price on carbon. A carbon offset is a practice where entities claim credit for emissions reductions that they did not directly achieve. Carbon offset programs have numerous issues, including allowing emitters to continue emissions, claiming credit for projects that would have proceeded without offsetting (a practice known as additionality), operating without transparency, and failing to meet commitments. Offsets have displaced Indigenous Peoples, failed to secure Indigenous Peoples’ consent for these projects, and exposed local communities to state-sponsored violence, among many other disastrous consequences. Despite this evidence, powerful countries and corporations continue to promote market-based approaches as common sense policies, a win-win of sorts. Yet, there is nothing sensical about policies that allow polluters to continue business as usual so long as they pay the price. This approach does not stop climate change. This is why we say: we will not be deceived by these false solutions. Given these failures, insisting on market-based approaches and continuing to promote them puts lives and our planet at risk.

Countries now recognize that the damage from climate change is done, and there is much more to come. Climate justice organizing has pushed polluters to pay up. However, even efforts to pay for loss and damage risk becoming another profiteering opportunity through loans that plunge nations least responsible for climate change into even more debt. History has shown us that debt is a way to control people and that market-based approaches have failed. We join the chorus of voices calling to end these false solutions.

Just Transitions Are The Real Solutions

Against these market-based approaches, labor and environmental justice groups have been proposing a just transition away from fossil fuels and extractive economies. Just transition rests on three pillars: process, principle, and practice. The principle is that thriving and healthy economies and environments can coexist. The process of transitioning away from fossil-fuel dependence should not come at the expense of their health, environment, jobs, or economic assets, and must compensate for any losses. The practice of just transition must include workers and communities in decision-making and follow their leadership in developing policy solutions.

While countries engaged in negotiations have recognized that we need a just transition, there is little action to show for it. Just Transition at the UNFCCC has been reduced to dialogues that largely exclude those affected by climate change. Movements can barely get a word in during these negotiations. When they do, they tend to do so to call for action. The pace of action, however, does not seem commensurate with the urgency that people need to address the climate emergency. During the 2024 UNFCCC Intersessional in Bonn (SB60), countries could not even agree to put a placeholder on their decision text to call for a plan to pursue a just transition. Delaying meaningful progress on a just transition while fast-charging false solutions is a longstanding practice at the UNFCCC. This practice creates inequalities in the negotiations and makes it harder for climate justice groups to hold the line against harmful policies. Meanwhile, achieving the Paris Agreement’s 1.5 temperature goal seems less feasible as time passes and countries are still divided on how to keep track of progress.

What Is To Be Done?

We will continue to build solidarity and strengthen our resolve to move powerful actors to action. We stand stronger when we build unity across labor and affected communities. Standing together means affirming that labor and affected communities must be at the center of processes deciding how we phase out fossil fuels and transition to a regenerative economy. Real solutions to climate change continue to emerge and bloom locally. Keeping fossil fuels in the ground is a real solution to climate change.

At the UN, we seek to uplift the efforts of those fighting for real solutions and stop the harm stemming from false solutions. We rise to make it clear in those negotiating spaces that countries cannot claim to support just transitions if they remain invested in market-based solutions like carbon offsets. They cannot claim to need more “stakeholder engagement” to act when we are there, bearing witness to their inaction, with our communities’ voices silenced.

The Just Transition Alliance joins our sister organizations in Bonn to hold the line and prevent the harm that false solutions enabled by these negotiations can cause to our communities. We show up to let it be known that transitions cannot be created without us, the communities, and the workers to whom governments need to be accountable. We lift our voices to clarify that just transitions look differently across communities, and in the words of José Bravo, “There is no cookie-cutter approach to a just transition. A just transition can be different from one community to another, but what needs to be on the table, or else it’s not a just transition, are workers and affected communities. If they’re not on the table, it is not a just transition.” We sustain our presence in UNFCCC negotiations to demand that just transitions are not only forward-looking but also take responsibility for the legacies of harm against affected communities. This means that countries paying for the loss and damages caused by their emissions must pay up to address current and historical harms.

We will continue our fight to push for explicit commitments to achieving a just transition. Workers and communities will continue innovating real solutions to climate change and fighting for a just transition. Yet, governments and corporations must assume responsibility for the harm they have caused. They must step up and fund the just transition. The just transition must also account for the losses and damages already impacting those at the frontlines of climate change. We will continue to bring attention to the irony of talks that cite the need for greater non-state stakeholder participation as a reason to slow down progress toward a just transition while denying the participation of observers. We will fight the erasure of climate justice groups who must cope with the challenges of attending climate talks where countries claim that more participation is needed to move forward while obstructing meaningful participation.