ECO 10, SB62
Just Transition Memes of Implementation
What has a promising beginning, thrilling plot twists, bad behavior and an electrifying road ahead? No, it’s not a Latin American telenovela or the next Trump press conference. The answer, my friend, is blowing in the JTWP.
What a ride ECO has had! From the early days of bold ideas tentatively being tested among JTWP fellow travelers, to the first steps in Bonn, where Parties finally began engaging with the substance – guided by a brilliantly crafted structure. ECO remembers that pivotal afternoon when concrete outcomes were proposed, and the Belem Action Mechanism took center stage! And yesterday, watching the text shed a few feathers as it weathers the storm of negotiation dynamics. ECO is almost nostalgic.
But this is no time to look back. Over the coming months, ECO will be knocking on doors, showing every country the transformative potential this decision holds. This isn’t just about words on paper; it’s about reshaping lives and living conditions for millions across the planet. And in doing so, reinvigorating the UNFCCC process, refocusing it on delivering on a core commitment: a just transition.
ECO isn’t walking away from Bonn empty-handed. We’re leaving with something to fight for – and in these dark and uncertain times, that means everything.
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Kick polluters out of COP
Something sinister has been happening at international climate change conferences. The Fossil fuel industry had 1,700 delegates at the COP29 and 2,456 at COP28. Both conferences were overseen by Presidents who had worked for oil companies. Burning fossil fuels is the main cause of climate change, but how can we expect leaders to limit fossil fuel use if those who sell fossil fuels are players at the table?
Fossil fuel companies frequently use greenwashing to persuade people they’re taking climate action. In 2018-19, five fossil fuel companies spent $195 million on advertising that suggested they were taking climate action. However, a 2023 Greenpeace report found less than 10% of investments by major fossil fuel companies were on renewable energy.
These companies also spend vast sums of money influencing governments to delay climate action. The annual spending by Shell, BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron and Total on efforts to control, delay or block climate policy totalled $201million. In 2018 Shell’s Chief Climate Change Adviser admitted that the company had influenced the Paris Agreement, including the contentious Article 6, which enables companies to use carbon markets to buy credits for emissions reductions made elsewhere, instead of directly reducing their own emissions.
The hosting of recent COPs in oil-producing countries highlighted the conflict of interest presented by fossil fuel companies at climate talks. This remains a key issue for COP30; host country Brazil has joined the OPEC+ alliance of oil-producing nations, and is the seventh-largest oil producer in the world.
Governments have been negotiating on climate change for thirty years, yet every year emissions have continued to rise. This failure is partly due to the influence of corporations aiming to maintain their profits at the expense of today’s youth and future generations. If climate negotiations are a game of give and take, then the game is rigged. It’s time to kick big polluters out of the COP for good.
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Top tips to get out of a toxic fossil fuel finance relationship
In Bonn, some developed countries seem to be having a bit of a love affair with Article 2.1(c). That’s the one that makes “finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development”. We’re happy to encourage a new romance. But let’s be honest, this prospect has a climate-wrecking, toxic relationship at home, with the majority of flows directed at fossil fuel subsidies and private fossil fuel investments. ECO, like any counsellor, will give this advice to developed countries: if they are serious about courting 2.1c and making things official by COP30, they need to break things off with toxic fossil fuel finance, for good. Only then can a healthy, committed relationship truly flourish.
ECO would like to share some top tips to make the breakup swift, fair and painless.
Tip 1: Keep your distance and don’t reconnect
The Clean Energy Transition Partnership is a great step for many developed countries on international finance, helping signatories to reduce international public finance for fossil fuels by two-thirds. But now, some members are backsliding and quietly watering down their fossil fuel exclusion policies by financing gas plants or planning to ‘revise’ fossil fuel guidelines – and there are rumours of further attempts to weaken the guidelines.
Tip 2: Don’t let them keep taking from you
Fossil fuel companies are making insane profits. It’s time to make those polluters pay and re-direct this finance into a just transition..
Tip 3: Set fair rules and boundaries
In the EU, total fossil fuel subsidies actually saw a sharp rise in recent years, granted during huge energy price rises. Despite a minor decline in 2023 and 2024, too many of these subsidies still remain in place.
The most environmentally and socially harmful production and untargeted subsidies should be phased out immediately. Subsidies based on household income or business vulnerability can be replaced more gradually as part of a just transition approach by direct income support or incentives for decarbonisation, with trade unions, local actors’ and stakeholders’ involvement.
Tip 4: End all contact – delete their number, Instagram, and TikTok
Article 2.1c offers transformational opportunities: to shift finance out of fossil fuels into just transition, adaptation and resilience, and the reform of the international finance system. To achieve this, the world’s largest providers must urgently make a clean break from domestic and international fossil fuel finance. Now, for your own good – break-up and delete their number. Otherwise it will only get messy.
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Police Brutality in Kenya: A Call for Justice and Solidarity
ECO is deeply concerned and would like to raise the alarm on the ongoing violent crackdown on peaceful protesters in Kenya, tragically killing at least 16 people over the past few days.
This is an appalling violation of human rights and a direct attack on the fundamental freedoms of expression, assembly, and dignity. Both the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the Kenyan Constitution guarantee these rights. The use of lethal force against unarmed civilians is unacceptable under any circumstances.
A Call for Immediate Action
Civil society stands in full solidarity with the people of Kenya. We strongly condemn the state’s violent response and demand:
- An immediate end to police brutality and the repression of peaceful protests.
- Independent investigations into the killings and injuries, ensuring justice for the victims.
- Respect for the right to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression in Kenya and across the continent.
We call on regional and international human rights bodies, including the African Union, the United Nations, and allied civil society groups, to hold the Kenyan government accountable and intervene before more lives are lost.
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YOUNGO’s Message to Parties
ECO is happy to share this part of our publication with the Children and Youth Constituency (YOUNGO) to help amplify their voice. This article reflects the views of the YOUNGO.
We, the Children and Youth Constituency of the UNFCCC (YOUNGO), are deeply concerned about the insufficient climate action and the limited meaningful engagement of children and youth within climate governance.
To change the course of action and to accomplish our shared objectives, we urge the Parties to the UNFCCC to join us in a collaborative effort to:
- Keep the 1.5ºC guardrail alive by urgently delivering and acting upon ambitious NDCs and climate action plans aligned with the Global Stocktake outcome and in line with the latest scientific guidance.
- Place intergenerational justice, gender-transformative approaches, Indigenous Peoples’ Rights, and Human Rights at the core of climate governance.
- Enact the rapid, just, and equitable phase-out of fossil fuels, targeting the global energy system in UNFCCC negotiations and the critical adoption of activities for a just transition.
- Incorporate the participation of children and youth as agents of change as well as considerations of intergenerational equity throughout all decision-making, including but not limited to the development and implementation of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and National Adaptation Plans (NAPs).
As children and youth, we urge Parties and stakeholders to turn words into action for a just, equitable and fair future for all!
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And yet we are hopeful!
It might seem logical that adaptation negotiations would be the first to land an outcome, as it’s about identifying and reducing climate risks, outlining implementation – and saving lives. However, this rational expectation hasn’t been the reality.
At the last day of the SBs talks where slow progress in adaptation negotiation tracks and the amount of work still ahead is disheartening. Sadly, once again the urgency of adaptation support and action is struggling to graduate from process to a draft outcome.
ECO is bewildered by the glacial pace of progress across multiple tracks. The work still ahead is not just daunting, it is downright mind-boggling. Meanwhile, the urgency of adaptation action and the finance to do so seems to be facing into the distance.
Over these past two weeks, ECO has sat through, stared at, and sighed at marathon sessions in the adaptation meeting rooms where delays, procedural squabbles, and timeline paralysis have become the main acts in this slow-moving circus. And we see reluctance to have any text referring to adaptation finance and Means of Implementation (MoI) once again intensifying divisions in the negotiation rooms.
As we leave Bonn, ECO is hopeful that by the end of 2025, parties will deliver an ambitious outcome on adaptation. One that will operationalise the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) with fit-for-purpose, inclusive and robust indicators backed by a strong commitment to close the gap on adaptation finance to make the National Adaptation Plans actionable. This will send a meaningful signal to people that addressing their vulnerability is a political priority.
So, dear negotiators, ECO humbly asks: please remember why you are here: to deliver for communities on the frontlines. Support for adaptation isn’t charity, it’s an obligation. It’s not a luxury, it’s a matter of justice.
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Watch out for BIO-traps
Anything “bio” is good, right? We want to protect and restore biodiversity. But the concept of “bioeconomy” has many parallel realities, some of which are very scary indeed.
The Brazilian Government is no stranger to the bioeconomy, with a National Bioeconomy Strategy and having launched a G20 platform on this theme. Now, living in its own Bioeconomy universe, Brazil thinks the rest of the world can follow its model. Thus the Presidency is promoting “bioeconomy” as a key feature of COP30 in the Action Agenda objectives, and possibly even to land in the formal UN negotiations.
Caution is advised here. “Bioeconomy” is too wide a concept, and may be misused by sectors that have no interest in safeguarding biodiversity. We are looking at you, Big Ag and Big Biomass. There are no multilaterally agreed definitions or safeguards on what “bioeconomy” even means. Thus “bioeconomy” is likely to be applied in very different ways, depending on the different context, realities and regulatory frameworks.
In some contexts, “social bioeconomy” might have justice, communities’ interests and ecosystems at the heart of the agenda. But there are alternate realities too. ECO fears that “bioeconomy” can and will be interpreted as an open door for forms of bioenergy with harmful and regressive practices. More risks include land grabs for carbon credits, deforestation, proliferation of monoculture plantations, enhancing conditions for wildfire, sucking up water supplies, conflicting with food production, increasing hunger, and other contentious agendas, including risky biotechnologies, agriculture carbon offsets and biodiversity offset credits. Even the fossil fuel industry’s dubious claims that adding logged trees to its coal fired power stations to supposedly “abate” emissions and render fossil fuels green, might be tagged as contributing to the “bioeconomy” in the absence of any internationally-agreed definitions or exclusions.
The biosphere is finite. It’s critical for life itself: the air we breathe, the food we eat and the water we drink, storing and sequestering carbon and nurturing biodiversity. Plundering it while claiming that this is sustainable is the dystopian prospect we all face if bioeconomy falls into the universe where Big Ag and Big Biomass reign supreme.
It’s hard to keep track of all these different parallel bio-verses. But in this reality Brazil has often spoken against adopting undefined elements in text. In this spirit, let’s slow down and restrain ourselves from rushing to adopt an undefined bioeconomy. COP30’s text must not provide a portal to the many different and potentially dangerous Bioeconomy universes.
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1.5°C isn’t a Vibe… It’s a deadline!
The Global Stocktake (GST) isn’t supposed to be just another bureaucratic checklist. It is a turning point, a global moment to show political will, climate leadership, and maybe,a shred of common sense.
To its credit, the GST decision spelled it out clearly: “We need to transition away from fossil fuels, triple renewable energy by 2030, double energy efficiency annually towards 2030, and phase out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies”. That’s the closest option for staying under 1.5°C.
But there is a problem: we’re still waiting for countries to submit updated national climate plans (NDCs) that actually reflect the roadmap for the transition away from fossil fuels. Many NDC submissions are late. And most of the ones submitted so far are detached from the scale and urgency of the crisis.
And while we are waiting, 70%, of planned oil and gas expansion by 2035 is coming from just four Global North countries: the United States, Canada, Norway, and Australia. While the world is on fire, they’re busy pouring gasoline on it . Meanwhile, the rest of their developed country buddies are politely pretending not to notice.
Much of this expansion is justified with magical thinking and technofantasies. Billions in public funds are being poured into proven-to-fail technology schemes worldwide. And that’s not even mentioning carbon offsets, credits and the commodification of nature creeping in everywhere or the sci-fi geoengineering plots to dim the sun or brighten clouds, funded by entities desperate for any way to keep burning fossil fuels. It’s not a transition plan – It’s a delay and distraction tactic dressed up as techno-innovation, misdirecting critical funds that could power a genuine, just transition. Let’s be clear: this isn’t just about hypocrisy, it’s about consequences. Billions of lives will be affected. The 1.5°C target is not some trendy goal to “aim for if convenient”. it’s the line between disruption and devastation.
The G7 and G20 love to talk about “net zero” and “green initiatives.” Instead of doing something like ending fossil fuel subsidies, committing to binding phaseout timelines, tax the polluters and PUBLICLY fund the very transitions they keep recommending to the rest of the world.
We need action with teeth, urgency, and a dash of moral clarity. Leadership doesn’t mean hosting another climate summit with fancy pastries and recycled talking points. It means calling out the bad actors, even when they’re your trade partners, and stopping the expansion of the very thing that’s burning the planet and condemning its people to an unlivable future.
Because the truth is: if developed countries, with all their historical responsibility, money, and technology, can’t lead, then who will? And if not now, when?
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Where’s the Ambition? MWP Fails to Address the Gap in Bonn
After last year’s toxic negotiations, ECO hoped for a safe space for the Mitigation Work Programme where stakeholders could engage in meaningful discussions on cutting emissions. Instead, we’ve seen little progress.
Take, for example, the substantive discussions on forests at the 5th Global Dialogue during Climate Week in Panama. Why haven’t these critical conversations been brought into the MWP here in Bonn? Instead of accelerating mitigation, talks here feel more like a Virtual Work Program.
But ECO’s vision of a “safe space” goes beyond negotiation rooms, it’s about securing a safe future for humanity and ecosystems. For Earth to remain livable, negotiators must focus on tangible ways to slash emissions.
With COP30 set to take place in the Amazon – a rainforest ravaged by deforestation and degradation – there’s no better time to center Indigenous rights, protect forests, and integrate them into mitigation strategies. The MWP must produce concrete recommendations to close the ambition and implementation gaps, in a nationally determined but globally accountable manner. And yes, developed nations must step up with the necessary financial support.
Looking ahead, ECO welcomes the 6th Global Dialogue on waste and circular economy as an opportunity to confront the Global North’s overconsumption. We also urge the MWP to finally address NDCs (an acronym shockingly absent in a program meant to drive 2030 implementation). The MWP was designed to complement the Global Stocktake, and since NDCs are key to implementing it, the connection between these processes cannot be ignored, no matter how much some may wish to avoid it.
Disappointingly, Bonn’s MWP discussions have sidestepped the ambition and implementation gaps entirely. In this critical year for NDCs, ECO calls on all countries – and the incoming COP30 Presidency – to refocus. Parties must confront these gaps head-on and respond with urgency at COP30 in Belém.
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