COP30 delivered a breakthrough with the creation of a rights-based Just Transition Mechanism, a long-sought win for workers, communities, and movements across the Global South. Yet governments once again left the core question unanswered: who will pay for the transition. Without new, grant-based public finance and structural reform of the global financial system, the mechanism risks becoming another promise without the resources required to deliver justice.
By: Peninnah Mbabazi, CESR's Program Associate
COP30 concluded in Belém, Brazil with a breakthrough decision and historic step forward: the development of a rights-based, people-centered Just Transition Action Mechanism. This is an important step toward ensuring that any measures to de-fossilize economies uphold human rights, including the rights of workers everywhere.
We join allies in welcoming a mechanism that recognizes the transition must be equitable, must protect human and labor rights, champion gender equality, and uphold the rights of Indigenous Peoples and marginalized communities.
A just and equitable transition is a foundational step toward a Rights-Based Economy that puts people before profit. If well resourced, it creates space for workers’ movements, communities, and civil society to shape the transition pathways they need and deserve. It addresses historical and geopolitical imbalances by shifting the burden of climate action away from those who contributed the least, particularly in the Global South.
Despite this encouraging outcome, COP30 —labeled "the COP of truth" by Brazil’s President Lula da Silva, who urged world leaders to treat the summit as a test of their seriousness— failed to secure commitments from developed countries to meet their climate finance responsibilities.
With the Just Transition Mechanism now established, a financing gap threatens its delivery. Without public finance and reform to the global financial architecture, the mechanism risks becoming a symbolic victory, without the means to deliver justice. A clear roadmap to end fossil fuel dependency, essential for a just transition, also remains unresolved.
The Belém Action Mechanism for Just Transition
At COP28 in Dubai, countries committed for the first time to “transitioning away” from fossil fuels, the main driver of climate change. This shift is critical to meeting the goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement: limiting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
Since then, discussions on implementation have stalled. After sustained pressure from civil society, governments at COP30 agreed to the Belém Action Mechanism (BAM) for Just Transition, aimed at accelerating a just transition grounded in human rights and the principles of equity and non-discrimination. Workers’ unions, feminist movements, and environmental groups pushed for a package that could turn promises into action, within this decade and beyond.
One of the most contested and disappointing outcomes was the Transition Away from Fossil Fuels roadmap. Despite support from over 80 countries, the final COP30 decision text omitted any concrete reference to fossil fuels. This omission leaves the financing and implementation of the transition unclear. CESR and allies continue to assert: there is no just transition without public finance and a fossil fuel phaseout.
Encouragingly, a coalition of the willing, led by Colombia, has begun preparations for a global conference on fossil fuel phaseout, set to take place in Santa Maria in April 2026.
Climate finance still a miss at COP30
The main outcome of COP30, the Belém package, referenced the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) and the Baku to Belém Roadmap, which aim to scale up climate financing to $1.3 trillion and $300 billion by 2035. This was accompanied by a pledge to triple adaptation finance and operationalize the loss and damage fund agreed at COP28. While these targets are positive on paper, they remain distant from the realities of communities already facing the effects of climate breakdown.
The Belém Gender Action Plan, won through years of feminist advocacy, contains no reference to human rights and no commitment to finance. This omission undermines efforts to achieve gender justice as a core pillar of climate justice.
Additionally, the Mutirão package bundled four contentious tracks, mitigation, finance, trade, and adaptation, into a consensus-based agreement. Yet it too made no mention of fossil fuel phaseout.
COP30 also failed to establish binding obligations for grant-based finance or create a mechanism to track progress and catalyze essential reforms. Instead, it launched a two-year work program on climate finance with no formal link to the new NCQG.
Civil society demanded a transformative climate finance framework that delivers new, grant-based, and accessible public funds, not loans that deepen debt. More than 100 organizations also urged COP30 to advance human rights-based climate action, referencing advisory opinions from the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and the International Court of Justice. These opinions affirm that governments must treat loss and damage not as charity but as a binding human rights obligation. Yet no COP30 text reflects this legal clarity.
What next?
COP30 promised to be a COP of truth and justice, but it fell short on delivering rights-based public finance. What it did show, powerfully, is the strength of people’s movements, in the streets and inside the negotiation halls.
Looking ahead, CESR and our allies will continue to demand:
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Grant-based, rights-aligned public finance, not debt-creating instruments, and a pushback against private finance and charity-based narratives.
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Structural reform of the global financial architecture to expand fiscal space for Global South countries, not impose austerity.
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Systemic change: taxing polluters, shifting subsidies, canceling debt, and ensuring meaningful participation in climate decision-making.
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A fossil fuel phaseout shaped by workers, women, Indigenous Peoples, and frontline communities.
The path ahead is steep, but the direction is clear: systemic change for climate justice, driven by the people who’ve led this fight all along.