As thousands gather in Belém, Brazil, over the next two weeks, the testimonials of Indigenous Peoples, frontline workers, and affected communities from all over Earth will reverberate loudly at the IV International Meeting of Communities Affected by Dams and Climate Crisis and the Cúpula dos Povos (The Peoples’ Summit). Some of these experiences and demands to abolish systems of extractivism and exploitation will make it into conversations at the 30th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), also known as COP30.
However, members of the COP30 Presidency and wealthy, high-emitting parties and delegates must not merely include Indigenous Peoples, frontline workers, and fenceline communities in conversations and deliberations. These groups’ experiences and demands must be centered and responded to with bold actions that advance a just transition toward collective liberation.
COP30 as a Litmus Test
The Trump administration’s removal of the United States from the UNFCCC Paris Agreement and its decision not to send a U.S. delegation of high-level officials to Belém present an opportunity. This year’s COP likely will expose other wealthy, high-emitting nations that have been hiding behind U.S. climate action obstruction. Thus, this year’s climate negotiations may serve as a litmus test exposing the countries that have been working to block ambitious climate action and policy changes, in the United States’s shadow.
The imperial, corporate tentacles that uphold U.S. energy dominance will still be felt at COP30 in Brazil. The Trump administration has threatened tariffs, sanctions, and levies on countries adopting emissions reduction targets in International Maritime Organization negotiations.
We often call the COP the ‘Conference of the Profiteers’, given the heavy fossil fuel industry presence and the corporate capture of delegates and nations.
We often call the COP the “Conference of the Profiteers,” given the heavy fossil fuel industry presence and the corporate capture of delegates and nations. COP26-29 proved to be fossil fuel industry festivals, with more than 5,000 lobbyists attending these UN climate negotiations to block implementation of the Paris Agreement. The Rainforest Action Network, Indigenous Environmental Network, Oil Change International, and coauthors found that “fossil fuel financing from the world’s 60 largest banks reached nearly $6.9 trillion in the eight years since the adoption of the Paris Agreement, with $705 billion in 2023 alone.” These institutions financed $347 billion in fossil fuel build-out that same year. As petro-states have hosted the three most recent UN global climate negotiations, it is no surprise that when the COP30 President, André Corrêa do Lago, issued an invitation to use the UN climate negotiations as a business “opportunity,” his call sparked strong responses from more than 250 organizations that demanded COP30 “Kick Big Polluters Out!” The Just Transition Alliance (JTA), an organization we represent, is one of the many signatories, and our delegation is on the ground in Belém.
This year’s change of venue to the Brazilian Amazon state of Pará has led frontline groups to approach this November as a crucial moment for changing the course from climate colonialism and collapse. Yet, the parallel meetings of the Peoples’ Summit and COP30 feature a clash of agendas for responding to intensifying climate breakdown and compounding injustices.
Hosting the COP in the Amazon has resulted in destructive development and project proposals in the region. The Brazilian government has cleared tens of thousands of miles of tropical forest to create a four-lane highway to the UN conference, is pushing the false solution of the Tropical Forest Forever Facility, and has even announced fossil fuel exploration in the Amazon. Groups like Movimiento de Afectados por Represas and Movimento dos Atingidos por Barragens have resisted eco-cultural destruction for decades.
Toward a Just Transition
COP30 has been labeled the “Just Transition COP.” This conference, along with the UN Just Transition Work Programme’s ongoing efforts to adopt a decision on a just transition, must create conditions for and deliver a legally binding mechanism. This institutional arrangement would establish a hub within the UNFCCC for knowledge sharing, policy coordination, and the swift implementation of fossil fuel phase-out policies in alignment with just transition principles. It would honor the struggles for decent work and healthy environments for the Indigenous Peoples, frontline workers, and fenceline communities most affected by exploitation and extractivism. The mechanism must provide non-debt-creating, direct funding that allows impacted communities to develop their own pathways for transformation.
The just transition mechanism is broadly supported by distinct constituencies, including Women and Gender, Trade Unions, and two environmental non-governmental organizations: the Campaign to Demand Climate Justice and Climate Action Network International. Institutionalizing support for the creation of this mechanism would signal a significant shift in the UNFCCC—one that prioritizes sovereignty, climate justice, and a just transition.
For months, JTA has participated in planning meetings for the upcoming Peoples’ Summit, which will take place in Belém from November 12 to 16. This reunion is reminiscent of the historic 2010 gathering in Cochabamba, Bolivia, where diverse peoples at the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth developed the People’s Agreement in defense of the planet and against capitalism’s commodification of life-giving systems. Building on this movement and the Bali Principles of Climate Justice, organizers of this year’s People’s Summit have developed six axes of focus, including “Just, Popular, and Inclusive Transition.”
Crucial to this work are the Principles of Environmental Justice, the Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing, and the Indigenous Just Transition Principles. The latter includes Indigenous sovereignty, Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC), the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), Landback (including the return of land to Indigenous stewards), and the ethical use of Indigenous Traditional Knowledge. A just transition must be guided by Indigenous Peoples, who hold inherent collective rights, as well as frontline workers and communities that include petrochemical and refinery workers, waste pickers, peasants, quilombola and other Afro-descendant communities, fisherpeople, and agricultural workers.
A just transition requires fighting harmful agribusiness. La Via Campesina and the Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development highlight how small-scale farmers, peasants, and agricultural workers produce the majority of the world’s food, while they often experience the effects of climate injustice and environmental collapse most acutely, yet contribute the least to these crises. Food sovereignty is essential to a just transition as it centers agricultural workers and works to dismantle corporate food regimes. However it may be challenged, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) must be upheld at Belém this week.
Calling Out False Solutions at COP30
According to JTA executive director and veteran environmental justice organizer José T. Bravo, “False solutionists and corporate villains will be in Belém in great numbers. It’s time to listen to workers and communities on the path forward towards a just transition for all.” Predictably, the actors pushing false solutions have been busy developing and advocating for more greenwashed scams at the UN climate talks, from a carbon removal pavilion to a new “green” facility that should concern us all.
While affordability concerns and the eviction of local peoples in Belém for short-term rentals for conference-goers made headlines in the lead-up to COP30, another controversial project has surfaced: the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF). During the November 6, 2025, Leader’s Summit, the TFFF received an official launch declaration and, as of this writing, has been endorsed by more than 50 countries. JTA, along with other civil society groups, strongly opposes this neoliberal scheme, which the Campaign to Demand Climate Justice renamed “The Fake Forest Fund.”
The TFFF epitomizes the false solutions that allow the Global North and corporate polluters to delay payments toward a loss and damage fund for a just transition, while perpetuating climate and energy injustices, with a greenwashed veneer. The facility’s structure of granting loans—with interest—to Global South countries with tropical forests further entrenches Indigenous Peoples and affected communities in a colonial, debtor relationship that denies their sovereignty and self-determination. The World Bank will have a leading role in overseeing the TFFF and will prioritize wealthy countries, corporate polluters, and investors—with nothing assured to Global South countries but debt. This neoliberal capitalist scheme exploits the Global South to further benefit rich elites, through privatization and extraction, while fueling the climate colonialism that created today’s climate injustices.
At this year’s COP, in addition to the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) initiative, which also provides financial incentives to the Global North, there will be advocacy for carbon markets, carbon offsets, nature-based solutions, and climate-smart agriculture—all of which must be rejected. In addition to opposing the TFFF, JTA aligns with the Indigenous Environmental Network’s critique of “climate finance,” which puts climate “solutions” in the hands of financial institutions and reentrenches oppressive power relationships through economic “development”. Rather than funding extractivism and dangerous “technofixes,” the financiers of climate colonialism and their polluting partners must pay for their environmental crimes.
Fund the Frontlines, Make Polluters Pay
Real solutions—and the funds to support them—do exist. A September 2025 report by Oil Change International found that defunding war, taxing the wealthy, practicing debt justice, enforcing fair corporate tax payments, and making polluters pay will generate ample funds to finance a just transition.
Redirecting government subsidies to the fossil fuel industry can also fund the just transition mechanism. In 2024, corporate welfare in the form of subsidies exceeded $1 trillion. Meanwhile, the just transition is appallingly underfunded. An early November 2025 report by ActionAid, a development and climate non-profit, found that only three percent of international funds dedicated to reducing greenhouse gas emissions are allocated to the most affected communities and their just transition needs.
COP30 must create a formalized mechanism to ensure multisectoral, multivocal pathways toward a just transition. Grassroots organizing by communities on the ground in Belém will be essential for generating the pressure to make these transformations possible.
Nona Chai is a Program Coordinator at the Just Transition Alliance and a University of Pittsburgh Mobilization and Political Economy Summer 2025 Research Fellow. They examine extractive systems and industries and regional regenerative economic alternatives.
Lara Aumann is the Administrative Coordinator at the Just Transition Alliance. She is passionate about contributing to and learning from the environmental, economic, and climate justice movements.
Fernando Tormos-Aponte is a Puerto Rican scholar-activist who leads policy for the Just Transition Alliance. He is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh, specializing in environmental and racial justice, intersectional solidarity, identity politics, social policy, and transnational politics.
Catalina de Onís dedicates her writing, teaching, and organizing to multimodal projects and collaborations committed to just worldmaking. She is the Communications and Training Associate at the Just Transition Alliance.