This November, the global trade union movement attended and participated in the 29th United Nations Climate Change Conference, or Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC (more commonly known as COP29) in Baku, Azerbaijan. As unions, we came with an important agenda: to ensure that workers, especially those who are currently feeling the brunt of the climate crisis, are actively included in and co-shapers of international climate negotiations. At this moment all workers are affected by the climate crisis, from those in formal and informal jobs, to workers across all sectors, from care to transport, to construction and agriculture. Workers in the Global South are particularly vulnerable to seeing their lives and livelihoods severely threatened by hotter temperatures, rising sea levels, an increasing number of extreme weather events and crop failure, for example.

The solutions are on the table: ambitious climate mitigation, adaptation and loss and damage policies, backed up with appropriate climate finance.

This also includes urgently needed just transition policies and measures to protect, promote and implement labour rights, provide social dialogue with social partners, universal social protection programmes, and skills development to enable workers and their organisations to manage the transition to carbon-neutral economies.

However, despite the evident urgency, COP29 was an astonishing failure in several critical areas, including securing adequate climate finance, effectively implementing last year’s Just Transition Work Programme, and ensuring a fair and equitable process. First, the decision to mobilise US$300 billion climate finance by 2035 falls way short of the trillions that are needed for the low carbon development of the Global South. Countries failed to come to an agreement on implementing just transition policies, something they decided on only last year at COP28. And finally, there was no commitment to step-up the urgently needed transition away from fossil fuels, which was also agreed upon for the first time last year. The global trade union movement has had to step up mobilising together with all social movements to fight back against the fossil fuel-linked vested interests evident in this year’s negotiations. Moving forward, all eyes are on COP30 in the northern, Amazonian city of Belém in Brazil next year to deliver a just transition for workers. It is an opportunity that the world cannot afford to miss.

A dangerous shortfall on climate finance

One of the major negotiation points at COP29 centred on coming to a ‘new collective quantified goal’ (NCQG) on climate finance. Under the Paris Agreement, governments promised to set a new climate finance target by 2025 to ensure that the most vulnerable nations would get the help they need to tackle the climate crisis. But countries have been working with the US$100 billion goal from COP15 which was held in Copenhagen in 2009. The main responsibility of parties in Baku was to scale up climate finance to at least US$1.3 trillion. However, the final quantum of US$300 billion a year by 2035 that has been agreed on falls dangerously short of what is needed; the third report of the Independent High-Level Expert Group on Climate Finance estimates that between US$6.3 to US$6.7 trillion needs to be invested in climate action every year by 2030. Equally troubling is the failure of the governments of developed nations to commit to core public finance – finance that ensures developing countries can access the resources they need to adapt to the impacts of climate change. This includes implementing mitigation and adaptation policies without forcing low-income countries to plunge even further into debt distress. The utter irresponsibility of developed countries to refuse the climate finance needed cannot be overstated.

However, the NCQG decision did recognise the importance of “continued efforts to support just transitions across all sectors and thematic areas...”. This is a small but important window of opportunity for governments to engage with unions on the use of climate finance for just transition policies. It gives a mandate to trade unions to demand a place at the table when discussions are held on the use of climate finance. This should be done in the context of the new national climate plans that are due in 2025: the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), the National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) and the Long-Term, Low-Emission Development Strategies (LT-LEDS).

The failure to move forward on just transition

The global trade union movement had high hopes for Baku to build on the decision of COP28 in Dubai on the Just Transition Work Programme (JTWP). After fierce discussions in Dubai on the scope of the work programme, governments settled on a comprehensive list that includes both the international cooperation and climate finance dimensions together with a focus on labour as defined in the Paris Agreement which speaks about decent work and quality jobs. For the first time ever in international climate negotiations, ‘labour rights’ were explicitly mentioned, which is a huge victory for trade unions. The labour movement considers both dimensions to be intrinsically linked: you cannot have a just transition in the Global South without the right to development, poverty eradication, industrialisation and fair international trade, all of which needs to be supported with appropriate climate finance. At the same time, a just transition means protecting workers, ensuring their rights and livelihoods, and guaranteeing their representative organisations a seat at the table to implement plans through social dialogue with social partners.

Regrettably, in Baku, we saw that neither the Global North nor the Global South gave priority to the implementation of the JTWP decision of COP28. Workers and their legitimate just transition demands were held hostage by cynical negotiation tactics by both groups.

First, the Global North refused to put a credible figure of climate finance on the table until the very last day of the COP. Second, the G77 and China blocked progress on the implementation of the JTWP, using it as a lever to put pressure on the NCQG discussion to raise climate finance. Added to this vicious cocktail was the lack of any guidance, interest or strategy by the COP29 Presidency to deliver on just transition. The Presidency even chose not to have a ‘just transition day’, preferring to speak about human capital and human development, which excludes labour rights. As a result of the negotiation tactics of the developed and developing countries at COP, there has been no progress on the implementation of the JTWP.

Illustrative of this lack of commitment by governments to engage on genuine just transition discussions was the High-Level Ministerial meeting that took place during COP29. While many governments spoke up on just transition, complete with ample references to the International Labour Organization (ILO) and labour rights, at the end of the meeting, workers and other observer organisations were denied the opportunity to speak on a topic which fundamentally and wholly affects them.

Also, the continued refusal by governments to understand and implement the concept of fundamental labour rights, to which all are bound due to agreements at the ILO, makes progress on just transition at the UNFCCC very hard. This includes the basic distinction between social dialogue (which takes place in a tripartite context with trade unions, employers and governments) and stakeholder consultation (with all affected groups); this is a crucial distinction for the labour movement that continues to escape climate negotiators.

The global labour movement expects the incoming Brazilian Presidency of COP30 to put these issues straight. Progress is urgently needed on all dimensions of just transition.

We have to scale up the delivery of finance and the implementation of labour and community-focused policies. The intersessional meeting in June 2025 in Bonn is the first important step. The third dialogue of the JTWP can be on the important issue of adaptation, but it should be focused on implementation and outcomes. This means a strong connection with the NDCs, NAPs and LT-LEDS. In Bonn, a decision on just transition needs to be prepared that can land at COP30.

In Baku, the labour movement closely monitored the outcomes of other negotiation points as well.

Decision on market mechanisms (Article 6): Parties have been negotiating the modalities for setting up carbon markets under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement for many years. The aim is to ensure that activities hereunder effectively deliver on overall mitigation in global emissions and comply with agreed-upon environmental safeguards, and monitoring and reporting provisions. The use of carbon markets is highly contested due to the important questions that remain on the actual contribution to reducing emissions and the lacking human and labour rights safeguards. In order to reach the objectives of the Paris Agreement, countries should implement emission reductions instead of organising offsets. Many of these projects have proven negative environmental and social impacts. Nevertheless, parties agreed at COP29 to go ahead with carbon trading, even without firm social safeguards. The agreement on Article 6.4 refers to human rights, but there is no provision that emission trading should implement and respect fundamental labour rights.

Adaptation: For many years, developing countries have stressed that the climate negotiations are too focused on mitigation, without sufficiently taking into account their needs to urgently adapt to climate impacts. Work on the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) concluded with woefully insufficient progress on the topic. The negotiations focused especially on the definition of adaptation indicators. They agreed that these indicators should “capture information pertaining to, inter alia, social inclusion, Indigenous Peoples, participatory processes, human rights, gender equality, migrants, children and young people, and persons with disabilities”. However, a specific reference to workers or labour rights was left out of the text. Discussions on guidance for NAPs could not be finalised at COP29 and will continue at the intersessional meetings in Bonn. In the draft text there is no reference to workers nor labour rights, only to social dialogue (which was still in brackets).

Mitigation: The Mitigation Ambition and Implementation Work Programme (MWP) was established in 2021 to scale up mitigation ambition and implementation. Discussions on this item in Baku, considered progress, opportunities, and barriers in implementing the work programme. After intense negotiations focusing on safeguarding the Global Stocktake agreement of COP28 on the transition away from fossil fuels, there were only procedural conclusions indicating that the work has to continue. There was no mention of human rights, labour rights or workers. This is a missed opportunity considering the clear link with the JTWP.

Gender Action Plan and the Lima Work Programme on Gender: After two weeks of difficult negotiations and the watering down of gender-inclusive language, the Lima Work Programme on Gender (LWPG) was extended for 10 years at COP29. Key debates revolved around language on human rights and diversity, means of implementation, and the future of the work programme. The agreement on the LWPG requests the intersessional meetings in June 2025 to initiate the development of a new Gender Action Plan (GAP), with a view to recommending a draft decision for consideration by COP30. The decision recognises that gender-responsive implementation and means of implementation can enable governments to raise ambition through advancing gender equality and just transition of the workforce, including the creation of decent work and quality jobs in accordance with nationally defined development priorities. This is a positive outcome on which the labour movement can build.

Global Stocktake (GST): In Baku, parties were unable to find consensus on any of the three matters relating to the GST (implementation of outcomes, procedural and logistical elements, and the report on the annual GST dialogue). A key point of contention regarding the dialogue was its scope and if it should address issues relating to finance. All matters relating to the GST were pushed to the next session in June 2025, with elements relating to procedural and logistical aspects of the GST process forwarded on the basis of an informal note. So far, this informal note only mentions workers in brackets.

Biennial Transparency Reports (BTR): Countries communicate Biennial Transparency Reports under the Enhanced Transparency Framework (ETF) every two years. A point of discussion is how technical and financial support by developed countries is helping developing countries meet their transparency commitments. The first official submissions are due by 31 December 2024, which made Baku an important opportunity to encourage robust reporting. The COP has yet to provide stronger guidance on transparency reporting that considers the protection of labour rights.

In conclusion, the outcome of Baku was dismal: no decision on the JTWP, a weak agreement on climate finance, and no meaningful high-level commitments on the necessity for ambitious NDCs. This is a huge disappointment for the labour movement. In other decisions, we also saw that workers have been deliberately excluded from texts. This is no accident. Workers are consistently denied a voice in shaping the conversations that directly affect them, both within the UN framework and broader decision-making processes, as they are not structurally consulted or included. Many countries fail to include specialists in their negotiation teams who can address the impact of the climate crisis and climate policies on workers. Additionally, there is a near-complete lack of knowledge of climate related commitments that countries are bound to under the ILO, including the respect for and implementation of fundamental labour rights. As a result, critical opportunities are missed to account for the labour impact and to recognise the essential role of organised workers and their unions in creating ambitious and equitable climate policies.

This COP29 has undermined the fairness and transparency of the negotiation process itself by sidelining those most affected and eroding trust in the very system meant to ensure justice. With the critical deadline for NDCs 3.0 approaching, trade union efforts will be geared towards holding governments accountable to deliver ambitious, worker-focused action that the climate crisis demands both in the final stages leading up to the deadline and at COP30 in Belém. All parties need to understand that there can be no effective climate action without protecting current and future workers.