By Bunmi Yekini
Less than 3% of global climate finance is targeted at ensuring workers, women and frontline communities are protected during the shift to a low-carbon economy, ActionAid said in a report on Monday, urging governments to agree a coordinated just transition plan at COP30 in Brazil next week.
ActionAid analysed funding flows from the Green Climate Fund and the Climate Investment Funds and found only 2.8% of spending supports just transition initiatives, while just one in 50 projects “adequately” involve and assist affected communities.
“The world urgently needs action to prevent climate breakdown, but it should be the polluters, not the workers and communities, who pay the price,” said Arthur Larok, Secretary General of ActionAid International. “Our new report shows just transition approaches are jaw-droppingly underfunded, and people’s needs are at the bottom of the priority list. Something’s got to give.”
The group said moving away from fossil fuels and industrial agriculture must go hand-in-hand with protecting jobs, rights and livelihoods and ensuring affordable access to food and energy, particularly in the Global South.
“No-one should have to choose between a secure job and a safe planet,” said Teresa Anderson, report author and Global Lead on Climate Justice at ActionAid. “Without just transition approaches, climate action risks unintended harm, backlash, and ever-more delay.”
The report highlights cases where communities have suffered harm linked to industrial agriculture and fossil fuel expansion. In Maranhão, in Brazil’s legal Amazon region, a community of babassu coconut gatherers facing pressure from agribusiness interests has experienced pesticide spraying, intimidation and deforestation.
“They want to push us out to grow corn, soya or cattle,” said one coconut breaker, who declined to be named for safety reasons. “They just want to grab this land.”
ActionAid Brazil said industrial agriculture is accelerating forest and land degradation across the Amazon and Cerrado.
“The Amazon forest acts as the lungs of planet earth, while the Cerrado serves as its veins,” said Jessica Siviero, Climate Justice Specialist at ActionAid Brazil. “It’s time for the world to move away from harmful industrial agriculture, and towards agroecological approaches that feed people and cool the planet. Just transition approaches need to be applied to agriculture as well.”
With COP30 opening on Nov. 10 in Belém, the organisation is calling for a global mechanism to coordinate just transition efforts, share knowledge and support implementation.
“COP30 needs to deliver on a global plan for just transition to support and reassure those on the frontlines, and to unleash the action our planet so urgently needs,” Anderson said.