Cross-constituency groups that support a UNFCCC mechanism for establishing a just transition hold a demonstration at COP30 in Belém, Brazil, Nov. 17, 2025. Photo credit: Lara Aumann

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

November 21, 2025 – During the past two weeks, the Just Transition Alliance (JTA) delegation has been actively observing negotiations and co-organizing and speaking at side events at COP30. Parallel to the UNFCCC negotiations, we witnessed and participated in the powerful launch of the International Movement of People Affected by Dams and the Climate Crisis that built up to the Peoples’ Summit. This global convergence featured grassroots movement and community-generated visions and perspectives on just transition and demonstrated the central role of frontline communities, fenceline workers, Indigenous Peoples, and Afro-descendants in advancing these transformations. In contrast to these inclusive, people-centered discussions and the processes and practices that made them possible, UNFCCC negotiations tend to exhibit exclusive processes and narrow notions of just transition. 

Today’s decision by the Just Transition Work Programme (JTWP) to create a mechanism both responds to the demands of many Indigenous Peoples, frontline workers, and the most impacted communities, while lacking the processes, principles, and fundamental components necessary for ensuring a just transition. Informed by our involvement with fellow constituencies of impacted groups that have been demanding a just transition mechanism, the JTA has three responses to this latest JTWP development: 

• We welcome the creation of a just transition mechanism to build an institutional home for just transition. 
• Yet, parties must strengthen the decision to address issues of critical minerals and achieve a fossil fuel phaseout through a just transition. Language on “informal workers” and the “informal sector” should be changed to “informal economy workers” and “informal economies” to reflect the dignity and humanity of frontline workers. Parties need to reaffirm that false solutions are at odds with a just transition. Moreover, language on agroecology must be added to support locally sovereign food systems.  
• If the just transition mechanism is to advance a just transition, it must ensure transnational and inclusive participation of affected groups by reducing burdens for non-state and Global South state participation, providing direct, non-debt creating funding, and enabling knowledge exchange, policy coordination, and inclusive decision-making processes. 

The context in which the JTWP negotiations take place does not align with just transition principles. At this year’s COP, we have witnessed an unacceptable, record-breaking number of fossil fuel and false solutions lobbyists, including advocates of carbon capture and storage and carbon markets. The fight for a just transition did not start at this COP and it will not end in Belém. There can be no just transition without the most affected groups deciding pathways forward, based on their needs, indispensable knowledges, and visions for systems change. Only with these groups’ central involvement in decision making will the success of this mechanism be fully realized. 

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Media Contacts:

Fernando Tormos-Aponte, Policy Lead and COP30 delegate, fernando@jtalliance.org

Lara Aumann, Coordinator and COP30 delegate, lara@jtalliance.org

Nona Chai, Coordinator and COP30 delegate, nona@jtalliance.org   

Catalina de Onís, Communications and Training Associate, catalina@jtalliance.org