JTWP | 21 June

Thank you co-chairs. My name is Caroline Brouillette and I am speaking on behalf of the Climate Action Network and Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice, the two ENGO constituencies.

Civil Society has been asking for operational decisions on Just Transition since the beginning of the work programme, and would like to make a case for five operational decisions: 

  • Our version of an institutional arrangement for JT, A Global Just Transition Mechanism
  • Principles on Just Transition that would underpin this mechanism
  • Guidance for national participatory institutions on Just Transition.
  • A call for the Financial mechanism to expand provision of and access to funding for JT
  • Explicitly reference  to dimensions of the transition that must be covered by the work programme to ensure those happen in a just way, such as but not limited to:
  • fossil fuel phase-out
  • food systems transformation
  • ecosystem protection and restoration, 
  • renewable energy deployment
  • Fair supply chains in transition minerals, 
  • Adaptation and climate resilience
  • and industry and /transport alignment with climate goals

We welcome the support by many parties already for the launch of a Global Just Transition mechanism. From our perspective, the mechanism would accelerate progress and cooperation through 3 key functions, (very well explained by South Africa):  coordination,  knowledge sharing  and implementation.

We are hearing Parties signaling the risk of an institutional arrangement such as our call for Belem Action Mechanism for JT, adding to fragmentation or duplication.  Outside of this space, Just Transition is being  disconnected from the goals of the Paris agreement, and  many voices are absent  in steering Just Transition work moving forward. If Parties want all efforts on just transition to be directed towards achieving the objectives of the PA, in a way that secures justice for workers, communities and countries, it belongs to the UNFCCC to facilitate, accelerate and contribute to the coordination of efforts through the Global Mechanism. 

The idea that political messages alone will satisfy workers and communities,  is disappointing.  We do expect Parties that reflect on how their own communities will feel, in the moment in which we are living now, with inequalities and climate impacts rising and serious concerns on climate policies impacts on working people, that the only thing this process can do is send a message for others to follow.

We will submit a more detailed version of this statement in full to the Secretariat for distribution to parties. Thank you very much.