Today, ten years after the Paris Agreement was signed on December 12, 2015, and less than one month after COP30 in Belém, Brasil, described by President Lula as the ‘COP of truth’, it is time to reflect on where we stand, what has been achieved, and how effective the mechanisms for monitoring the 1.5°C threshold have truly been.
As over 190 countries – with the notable exception of the US – convened in Belém, to discuss the pathways toward low-emission futures, we must reflect not only on how we transition, but for whom and at what cost. Transforming energy and transport systems is a central pillar of climate action. Yet civil society, with workers, feminists, Indigenous communities, and frontline movements, have long warned that shifting from fossil fuels to new technologies cannot replicate the same extractive and dominating structures that have harmed people and the planet for decades.
As already announced, the United States will withdraw from the Paris Agreement in January 2026. Many countries have expanded the use of so-called “transition minerals” to supply their inhabitants with costly vehicles, including the electric ones—while disregarding the severe social, environmental, and human-rights impacts associated with both fossil fuel extraction and transitional mineral mining.
As expressed in Argentine by a women environmental and human-rights defender and mother: “I am not going to Elon Musk’s home to take his child’s life, while he takes my son’s through the extraction of lithium used to build and sell luxury electric cars.”
By 2050, according to World Bank studies, demand for raw minerals such as lithium, cobalt, and nickel is expected to increase by 500%. These so-called “critical minerals,” essential for low-emission transport and energy technologies, are overwhelmingly extracted from the Global South. This mining boom is already linked to indigenous rights violations, exploitative and toxic working conditions, human trafficking, forced labour, and child labour. Without structural change and human rights safeguard, the shift to renewable energies and electric mobility risks reproducing former exploitation patterns of racialised sacrifice zones, when it doesn’t produce wars behind the eyes of all.
Against this backdrop, cambiaMO, advocating for a just transition with a gender transformative approach within the Women and Gender Constituency, has already demonstrated how people-centred, walkable and accessible mobility systems can answer COP30’s call for a just transition. The city-level innovations show that climate action grounded in care, well-being and ethically regulated critical mineral demand is not only possible, but already a need across all urban settlements.
Just Transition & the Belem Gender Action Plan
The decision taken in Belém to mandate the establishment of a Just Transition Mechanism – Belem Action Mechanism (BAM)- is a key step forward and reflects the consistent pressure of Civil societies organizations with workers, feminists, Indigenous peoples, people with disabilities and climate justice organizations, who have insisted that just transitions must be just for all and not just a transition. While the mechanism itself is still to be designed, the mandate acknowledges the need for inclusive governance, social dialogue, and the participation of workers, Indigenous Peoples, communities, and those most affected by the transition, including through respect for Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC). Respect is exactly what this Argentinian woman environmental defender seeks to protect her son’s life. Implementing a process of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) would require businesses to confront the real consequences of extractive activities and acknowledge their social and human costs. Such a process would also provide essential safeguards and protection tools for environmental defenders, fostering greater accountability and awareness. In this context, the Belém Gender Action Plan, in addition to providing, with its 27 activities, multiple pathways for strong implementation, including at the nationial level. also marked a shift by recognising Indigenous and local women as “agents of change” rather than solely as vulnerable populations. The plan calls for stronger safety and protection for women environnemental defenders.
Combating climate disinformation through Action Climate Empowerment (ACE) and International Cooperation
COP30 is a preparatory COP for Action Climate Empowerment negotiation item. The current ACE Action Plan will finalize its activities during the COP31 with a large number of activities at international regional and national levels that should be completed. A new Action Plan with its thematic priority areas of policy coherence, coordinated action, tools and support, monitoring and evaluation reporting, has the aim to address gaps and challenges in implementing the six ACE elements (e.g. education, public awareness, training, public participation, public access to the information and international cooperation) to create opportunities to accelerate that implementation. All ACE elements are related to climate disinformation that is a strategic threat that undermines public trust, delays urgent action, and weakens democratic debate. COP30, branded as “the COP of truth,” responded by launching the Declaration on Information Integrity on Climate Change—the first global commitment to counter denialism and greenwashing. The declaration calls for promoting accurate, evidence-based information, safeguarding environmental journalists, defenders, scientists, researchers and other public voices, ensuring transparency of public data, and holding Big Tech accountable for platform practices that amplify misinformation. It also emphasizes building resilient media ecosystems and integrating these principles into the Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE) agenda to strengthen education, public awareness, and participation.
To operationalize this, ACE focal points and decision-makers should embed information integrity into national strategies by advancing media literacy, creating inclusive spaces for dialogue, and training educators and community leaders to identify and counter disinformation. Governments must adopt legal frameworks to protect information integrity, guarantee open access to climate data, and fund research, while engaging tech platforms in transparency and accountability measures. Mobilizing resources through the UNESCO-administered Global Fund and fostering international cooperation will be critical to empower societies with both ancestral and science-based knowledge and accelerate climate action.
Global Stocktake (GST) – NDC Linkages and the Global Mutirão Belém Package
Despite the COP Presidency’s emphasis on marking the tenth anniversary of the Paris Agreement, the outcome text emerging from the Global Stocktake negotiations falls short of establishing a participatory, effective, and justice-oriented process for monitoring progress toward limiting temperature rise to 1.5°C. Although there is widespread recognition that non-Party stakeholders (NPS) are indispensable drivers of climate ambition and implementation, the decision fails to meaningfully operationalize their engagement. The process missed a critical opportunity to harness the political momentum needed to embed transformative, community-led, and gender-responsive approaches at the core of the second—and decisive—Global Stocktake 2 – GST2- cycle that will be closed by COP33. Before this date, a far stronger framework is urgently required to ensure that future GST processes genuinely integrate the knowledge, priorities, and locally grounded, justice-based innovations of frontline communities.
The weakening of participation and gender-responsive language, as well as of the transition away from fossil fuels compared with the past COP28 cover decision represents a backward step at a moment when global ambition demands the opposite. Because Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) are informed by the GST, any dilution inclusiveness upstream will translate into less equitable, less effective national climate commitments downstream. Ensuring that GST 2 embeds systematic participation of grassroots and frontlines communities, is essential for ensuring that NDCs reflect lived realities, community-driven solutions, and gender-just climate actions.
Non-Party stakeholders, especially grassroots and local communities, are fundamental to the implementation of the Paris Agreement. The recognition of their role was stressed in the Mutirão decision of the COP30; however, vigilance is needed regarding which business and financial actors are invited to shape processes and outcomes. Inclusion must prioritise those whose rights, territories, and livelihoods are most affected by climate impacts. The coupling of Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change – IPCC- science with equity principles is particularly important here, signaling that climate action must be both evidence-based and justice-aligned.
Climate diplomacy: a last bastion of Multilateralism?
Despite slow and uneven progress, the Paris Agreement remains a powerful tool for international cooperation on climate change action. While outside of the COP30 rooms of negotiations, millions of people are watching multilateralism falling apart, COP30 multilateralism has achieved concrete results with the Belem Gender Action Plan that names multidimensional factors shaping climate injustice, recognizes women environmental defenders, and strengthens national level coherence and the mandate for the Belém Action Mechanism for a just transition. However, solidarity is lagging: developed countries pledged $300 billion annually by 2035 to support the Global South, far short of the $1.3 trillion experts say is needed. At COP30 in Belém, states reaffirmed financial commitments but offered no major breakthroughs. Trust is disappearing as decisions fail to reflect people’s needs.
Bottom- up and grassroots participation with a clear gender transformative approach in all climate change negotiation processes, brings not only more credibility and equity, but also greater climate ambition — which is what we expected from this “COP of the Truth.”
