The Just Transition action at COP30. Photo by Bianka Csenki
The Just Transition action at COP30. Photo by Bianka Csenki
As COP30 drew to an end in Belém, something unusual was happening in climate justice circles: a glimmer of hope that, with the adoption of a strong Just Transition Work Programme decision at COP30 and the mandate to develop a global just transition mechanism (BAM), the COP could finally deliver for ordinary workers and communities.
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Donate TodayThe COP30 Just Transition Work Programme (JTWP) decision embedded human rights, labour rights, gender, and care at the heart of climate action. For the Women & Gender Constituency (WGC) Just Transition Working Group, it was also a moment to see many hours, weeks, and months of work on the just transition mechanism yield tangible results.
As multilateral processes become increasingly complex and advocacy becomes more urgent, the WGC Just Transition Working Group (JTWG) meets the moment in a different way. Feminists carve out time for collective learning and capacity building through group teach-ins; UN submissions are built, discussed, debated, and written collectively; younger feminists are mentored through complex UNFCCC processes and encouraged to bring their ideas; and the group shares an understanding that everyone has the capacity for expertise and that the more democratised our knowledge, the more sustainable our movements are. In 2025, the JTWG showed how these feminist ways of working can translate into real outcomes for climate justice.
To understand exactly how feminists were crucial in shaping the BAM proposal, we first need to understand the context we were working in at the start of 2025. COP29 in Baku ended without progress on the Just Transition Work Programme, with negotiations ending without an agreement or decision. This lack of progress on just transition at COP29 meant that a strong outcome on Just Transition at COP30 seemed even less likely. Leadership and political imagination were clearly needed, and civil society and trade unions stepped up.
Starting in January 2025, the feminists in the Women & Gender Constituency Just Transition Working Group spent months mapping, researching, brainstorming, designing, critiquing, and redesigning to produce the first-ever prototype of a global just transition mechanism — what would later become the cross-constituency proposal to establish the Belém Action Mechanism for a Global Just Transition, or BAM.
An early WGC design of the just transition mechanism structure (February 2025)
A year of intense cross-movement political work and collective strategy between trade unions, feminists, environmental groups, youth movements, and Indigenous Peoples took this proposal from aspiration to reality. A determined and broad coalition meant that the cross-movement call for the BAM captured the attention of the world and led to the BAM being taken up as the main demand of the G77 (the largest negotiation bloc representing global South countries) in the Just Transition Work Programme negotiations and, ultimately, to the decision at COP30 that created the mandate for the development of a global just transition mechanism. This decision is being described as the strongest rights-based outcome in the history of UN climate negotiations.
Sinéad Magner at the Just Transition Action at COP30. Photo by PowershiftAfrica.
There are lessons to be learned here. Civil society comes to the climate negotiations to do much more than observe. We bring ideas, vision, strategy, and technical expertise to show that, with multilateralism in crisis, the climate negotiations can deliver for ordinary people and communities on the ground. By taking time to build the capacities of young feminist advocates, creating spaces where they can do their best work, and trusting in their abilities to lead, we can deliver for climate justice in ways we never thought possible.
As 2026 gets off to a busy start, the WGC Just Transition Working Group continues and deepens its technical work to bring this COP decision to life. This will involve operationalising its principles on care, labour rights, human rights, gender equality, and more to create a mechanism that delivers urgently needed climate justice to the people, communities, and countries that need it most.
