ECO 3, COP30
What a BAMtastic Day
What a BAMtastic Day ECO had. An actual dialogue on just transition between civil society and Parties, where it was clear that everyone wants international cooperation to accelerate and support the implementation of just transition, dancing “la BAMBAM” with hundreds of activists, a Contact Group where 134 countries officially called for the establishment of a Global Mechanism for Just Transition – a proposal that mirrors many of the core elements civil society and trade unions have been advancing through the Belém Action Mechanism (BAM).
It could have been a perfect day. Unfortunately, ECO also heard a number of countries “confused” saying one thing first – and then immediately contradicting themselves. Some snippets: “just transition is so important”, “it’s imperative that through the JTWP we achieve the ambitious outcome that workers deserve”, “people from all over the world want a solution”, “we need to accelerate action”. Yet in the next breath, they asked only to carry on with the same formats, but perhaps with an extra toolbox, a mapping exercise and – of course – yet more dialogues. The proposals were so underwhelming that even thunderstorms erupted to signal to some of these delegates that the workers and communities of the world won’t accept yet another chit-chat as an answer.
Some of the concerns have left ECO with questions:
- “The mechanism will duplicate work” – Someone even counted 50 existing just transition initiatives and expressed determination not to get a 51st. But how effective, just or coordinated are these initiatives?
- “The establishment of the mechanism will take too long”. But will more dialogues and toolkits place social dialogue and justice at the centre of climate action more quickly?
Endlessly mapping gaps while not working to create solutions is just timewasting. All Parties say they care about just transition. A majority had the courage to put something bold on the table. Time for the rest of the Parties to put a mechanism where their mouths are.
When Spin Doctors Run the Climate Summit
Just when you thought the UN climate talks couldn’t possibly outdo themselves in irony, along comes the announcement that Edelman, one of the world’s top PR firms and a loyal washing-machine for health harming fossil fuel giants like Shell, has been hired to handle communications for COP30. Yes, the very process meant to address climate change is being advised by a company paid handsomely by the same companies that profit from polluting the air, water and soil that our lives depend on, as well as being the leading driver of climate change and all its hazards to health.
With roughly 5% of Edelman’s revenue still coming from fossil fuel clients, this isn’t just a case of mixed messages but a full-blown communications paradox. Who better to “shape the narrative” about ending fossil fuels than the experts who’ve spent decades greenwashing them?
It would almost be funny, if it weren’t about the future of the planet and the health of its people.
And the irony deepens: information integrity is, for the first time, an official theme of COP30. The Brazilian presidency has rightly called for combating disinformation as a cornerstone of effective climate action. Yet, in the same breath, the summit’s communications strategy is entrusted to one of the world’s most prolific enablers of fossil fuel disinformation. You couldn’t script it better… but Edelman probably could.
At stake isn’t just optics, it’s credibility. When the storytellers at the world’s premier climate summit are entangled with industrial vectors of disease, the line between public interest and private influence gets dangerously blurry. The UNFCCC still lacks clear conflict of interest safeguards, and this decision is Exhibit A for why those are urgently needed.
If COPs are serious about truth, trust, and transparency, perhaps they could start by hiring communicators who don’t also work for the arsonists. This is just one of many steps that need to be taken to end big polluters’ stranglehold on climate action, including ending sponsorship and passing protection measures via an Accountability Framework. Until then, the world’s biggest climate meeting risks being less like a call for action and more like a well-oiled PR campaign for the world’s biggest polluters’ jamboree.
Ode / Owed to The Forests
It’s abundantly clear at this Amazon COP
Forest loss, degradation have quickly to stop
Protection, restoring are what are the key
And need to be forefront in the MWP
Indigenous Peoples’ rights are a must:
Any forests outcome has to be just
It must elevate ecosystem integrity
Tree cover’s no gauge of health and resiliency
Implementation can’t be the domain of a few;
We need every country to see this thing through.
Transparency, standards should be harmonised,
Accountability’s meaning at last standardized.
Beware false solutions! Don’t succumb to their threat.
Like the illusory promise of dodgy offsets.
Bioenergy, too – What a sham! What a hoax!
Sending our best climate allies to be burned up in smoke.
Lastly, and forgive us if this sounds like a moan:
You can’t deliver each Rio Convention on its own,
There are vital synergies that just make good sense –
It will save us trillions, cut down on expense.
So this issue needs long-term negotiating space
And SBSTA Item 15 is surely just the place
To help ensure a safer planet is our fate
And support the Rio Exec Secretaries to cooperate.
They can help keep climate change and nature in the loop
By strengthening the mandate of the Joint Liaison Group,
And ultimately implementation is the key
So please align your NBSAP with your NDC.
All of this will advance on the first GST
Helping us to achieve paragraph thirty-three.
And we need grants-based finance before all is lost
Show us the money, it’s well worth the cost.
Use care as you put forests’ fate down in text;
Your words will dictate much of what will come next.
Remember this truth in deciding what will be wrought:
We here have poetic license; writing our forests’ future does not.
The courts have spoken. Governments, 1.5C is a legal redline.
Earlier this year, the International Court of Justice – the world’s highest court – delivered its unanimous decision: keeping warming below 1.5°C is not just a target, but the baseline that must be hard-wired across all negotiation streams. It is the line between survival and catastrophe for many communities; a matter of life and death. Every State must use all means at its disposal to stop climate harms (and stay away from false solutions). We can’t be serious about 1.5°C while still investing in oil, gas, and coal; that’s like saying you’re on a diet while holding a doughnut in both hands. The 1.5°C limit is based on science, and it is the law; it isn’t a good vibe that you can manifest.
Recent reports detail glaring gaps in NDCs, emissions reduction, finance, and the world’s capacity to adapt, which open the possibility for a disastrous overshoot, leading to devastating harms. This sobering reality requires us to urgently course-correct, and the ICJ ruling provides us with a tool to do just that. All negotiation streams must be guided by the legal and moral imperative to stay below 1.5°C to ensure compliance with international law, particularly in two crucial areas – finance and NDCs.
Because 1.5°C is confirmed as the legal redline, climate finance must be delivered at a scale that enables the world, particularly developing countries, to meet this target. So what does this mean? The NCQG must be operationalised under the ICJ’s guidance: provision of public finance for adaptation, loss and damage, and mitigation must be drastically scaled up to ensure developed countries meet their legal obligations. Even with NDCs, countries don’t enjoy unlimited discretion, but must ensure that their NDCs are in line with countries’ fair shares to align with the 1.5°C limit, and NDC submissions that miss this must be revised (Hint: for those developed countries that did submit, you aren’t on track). This is the yardstick that COP30 must adopt to bridge the ambition, implementation, and accountability gap.
Being the first COP following the rulings from the Inter-American Court and the ICJ, ECO expects states to show up with renewed commitment to comply. Courts have validated and reaffirmed the arguments Global Majority States, Indigenous Peoples, civil society, and youth worldwide have been making for decades.
Fossil-fuel subsidies? Bare-minimum commitments? Internationally wrongful acts? States can no longer wiggle out of legal redlines, so let’s not let them. The starting point for negotiations must be International Law and science.
Truth isn’t a talking point. It’s a verdict. And the ICJ has already delivered the ruling. States must act and deliver. The only question left is whether leaders will live up to it. ECO will be watching.
People’s Summit
The vibrant, important and timely People’s Summit kicks off today, which is exciting news. Coinciding with COP30, the Summit has over 1,000 organizations taking part. The University of Pará (UFPA) is the place to be from November 12-16, if you’re not stuck in a negotiation room, of course, as diverse networks, social movements, indigenous organizations, quilombolas, riverine communities, youth, women, and other members of civil society will gather.
A Boat Parade for Climate is top of the bill today. The Barqueata da Cúpula dos Povos pelo Clima will be a historic event for the peoples of the Amazon and the world. By filling the rivers of Belém with voices, colors, and messages of resistance and hope, this collective gesture reaffirms the importance of the Amazon in global discussions on climate justice, the defense of life, and the sovereignty of peoples.
Loss and Damage Hide and Seek
Recent devastating impacts of Hurricane Melissa across the Caribbean, Typhoon Kamaegi and Super Typhoon Fung-wong in the Philippines in the days leading up to COP30, are stark reminders of the need for urgent and adequate loss and damage finance.
So, ECO was happy to hear the COP30 President say that loss and damage is a priority during the launch of the start-up phase of the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD). But we can’t help but wonder if this is a game of hide and seek?
Loss and damage was not a major theme in the 10 letters that the President shared ahead of COP. When mentioned, it was to show solidarity with the devastating losses faced by communities, and rightly so. But there was no indication of what the Presidency plans to do at COP30 to repair loss and damage.
ECO wonders if the Presidency lost the clear guidance given by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on what to do with loss and damage. Reparations are due, and Parties need to deliver.
The launch of the Fund’s start-up phase is an important step as L&D finance is long overdue. However, the Fund remains critically underfunded. We are talking hundreds of billions, not millions. Global North parties must urgently increase their commitments to Fill The Fund. In case any doubt on obligations remains, the ICJ climate ruling is clear: States have a duty to provide resources at the scale to repair loss and damage, and based on CBDR-RC.
Money is important, and so is the way it is spent. The Fund needs guidance from COP to put it on the right track so that it prioritises community access and human rights, and includes key modalities for rapid response not included in the start-up phase of the Fund. The Board seems to have lost its way in the maze of the Governing Instrument, and the COP can help. That also means steering the mobilsation of resources back to its correct source via public, grant-based finance, and not down the suggested path of dangerous diversions to private finance and loans.
The WIM is also there to help. As they review the UNFCCC loss and damage landscape, Parties must prioritise scaled-up finance and alignment with legal obligations.
And, finally, to make sure we don’t have to play this game of hide and seek again, ECO recommends the establishment of L&D as a standing agenda item from COP31 onwards, to have a clear place to discuss the reality of the era of loss and damage, and how the world responds to it.
How to navigate the labyrinth and reach a just and effective Fund:
Empty Seats, Empty Promises: U.S. States Must Bring Real Climate Leadership to Belém
As COP30 opens in the Amazon, the Trump administration’s empty delegation chairs speak volumes. Washington has abandoned the globe, yet several U.S. subnational leaders have arrived: Governors Gavin Newsom (California) and Michelle Lujan Grisham (New Mexico) are joining more than 100 elected leaders on the ground in Belem. Their presence may send an important and timely message from U.S. subnational leadership, but ECO and global governments are not fooled easily – we too read news of what happens in the U.S.
If these U.S. leaders want to be seen as true climate champions, their action back home must match their rhetoric on the world stage. Newsom, it is true has a history of standing up to Big Oil in his home state, and has been outspoken in resisting Trump’s attacks on peoples basic human rights in the U.S. And yet, we note with sadness that he has also has reversed course on many of his own climate commitments: expanding oil-drilling permits, fast-tracking polluting projects, and championing dangerous climate distraction like hydrogen, carbon capture, and biofuels that extend the lifeline of fossil fuels. His administration even explored public bailouts for refineries rather than ensuring Big Oil pays for the damage it causes.
Governor Lujan Grisham continues to approve new oil and gas development while communities in the Permian Basin —the world’s largest carbon bomb —face worsening smog, methane leaks, and water contamination. At the same time, both governors tout “climate leadership” abroad.
The Belém Action Mechanism (BAM) offers them a chance to prove that leadership means something. BAM is a proposed UNFCCC mechanism to coordinate Just Transition efforts, channel non-debt-inducing finance, and ensure that workers and communities — not corporations — define the path forward. Supporting BAM means committing to the same principles at home, ending fossil-fuel expansion, investing in care, housing, and clean mobility, and putting justice at the center of economic planning.
So here’s the test for these supposed climate champions: Will they use Belém to back BAM and a global Just Transition, or just collect photos in the Amazon while approving new oil wells back home?
Real climate leadership isn’t about boarding a plane for Brazil; it starts with what you permit, fund, and fight for when you return.
WE STAND IN SOLIDARITY WITH ALL PEOPLES SUFFERING FROM GENOCIDE, WARS, OCCUPATION, AND GOVERNMENT VIOLENCE THROUGH CLIMATE CHANGE.
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Download file: http://ECO-12-November-2025.pdf