Reclaiming Climate Justice:
United Call for an Urgent Reform of the UN Climate Talks

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has reached a critical breaking point. Climate negotiations have systematically failed to deliver climate justice and undermined international law, from marginalizing vulnerable States, Indigenous Peoples, and civil society, to allowing the richest countries and the largest historical polluters to avoid legal obligations and accountability.  The massive expansion of COPs has not translated into better and more inclusive decisions, to the contrary: it has further opened the door for the fossil fuel industry and other major emitters , allowing them to continue polluting with impunity and proposing costly illusions to greenwash their image. To add fuel to the fire, climate talks have been hosted in countries with problematic human rights records and significant fossil fuel interests. Global climate governance is increasingly perceived as out of touch, driven by vested interests, and running out of relevance and trust.

With this proposal, Climate Action Network (CAN), the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice (DCJ), the Children and Youth Constituency (YOUNGO), the Women and Gender Constituency (WGC), and +200 organizations come together to say “enough is enough!” The world is on fire, and effective multilateralism is essential to navigate through these crises without leaving anyone behind. This requires an urgent, drastic, and comprehensive change of pace and process within the UNFCCC and complementary action outside of it.

We call on all Parties to the UNFCCC, the COP Presidencies, and the UNFCCC Secretariat and other authoritative voices to come together and respond to our call for a renewed and strengthened climate regime that delivers the action urgently needed and protects the lives of people and communities on the frontlines of the crisis: an urgent, just, and full phase-out of fossil fuels, massively scaled up public finance for just climate solutions, and redress for those already harmed by devastating climate impacts.

Jump to signatories

Restoring Power & Equity

Effective Decision-making

There is a profound power imbalance determining the voices that influence the global response to the climate crisis. Time and again, individual countries stall collective progress to protect short-term national interests, while those most affected by the climate crisis are sidelined. Power dynamics and lack of clarity on process lead to overlooked objections all too often coming from the most climate-vulnerable countries. The Earth is a shared commons and climate decisions should serve the interests of the impacted communities, and not those who profit from inaction.

It is time to stop pretending that a process with 198 countries aiming to solve a global crisis can continue to function on a lowest common-denominator basis. The UNFCCC must take its cue from a variety of other UN spaces such as the UN General Assembly (UNGA), the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA), the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and even the Green Climate Fund (GCF), an operating entity of its own financial mechanism, and move beyond the current model limited to consensus decision-making, which enables obstruction and a race to the bottom. Parties need to embrace the possibility of majority-based decision making to break deadlocks when attempts at securing consensus have failed so as to empower genuine multilateralism, reflect the urgency of the climate crisis, and uphold the principles of equity and intergenerational justice.

Visa Justice

Every year, delegates, especially those from the Global South, face significant obstacles in obtaining visas to attend climate negotiations, even when formally accredited. This is especially true for Germany, the host of the Subsidiary Bodies meetings in June. As the permanent host of the UNFCCC, Germany holds a particular responsibility to facilitate and ease visa restrictions to support all delegates’ right to participate, irrespective of their country of origin. Yet, year after year, discriminatory visa policies deny delegates access to timely visas, effectively silencing those on the frontlines of the climate crisis. This undermines the effectiveness and legitimacy of the entire negotiation process.

Hosts of UNFCCC climate meetings need to put in place special visas with equal and digital application and timely approvals, within a maximum of one week,  for all accredited participants, as was the case for COP28 and COP29. The UNFCCC Secretariat must take up such requirements in host country agreements, including the one it has with Germany. 

Host Country Selection and Power of Presidencies

The world looks on with increasing skepticism as COPs are hosted by major fossil fuel-producing States and even presided over by oil and gas executives. The ill-suitedness of some Presidencies is aggravated by the power that they hold over the process, having the ability to exclude country groups from political processes, or weaponize logistics to suppress dissent. The question of appropriateness of hosts is not limited to COPs: Parties should consider how holding the yearly intersessional negotiations exclusively in the Global North impacts the equitable nature of the process as well as the meaningful participation of many Global South participants, Indigenous Peoples, and grassroots organizations. This is particularly true given visa discrimination, and the increasing crackdown on freedom of speech witnessed in Germany, leaving many to question their ability to safely participate. 

It is in the interest of the legitimacy of the process to reform the host country selection procedure. Future UNFCCC hosts must demonstrate tangible progress on achieving the objectives and goals and uphold the principles of the UNFCCC and Paris Agreement. Additionally, they must establish robust human rights safeguards to respect and protect human rights, the rights of Indigenous Peoples and future generations, and labor rights. As a bare minimum, COP Presidency teams – like all Party delegations – should be required to be free of corporate lobbyists and executives, and all contracts and consultancies related to COP hosting and Presidency preparations should be made promptly public along with details of meetings that the COP Presidency team holds. In addition, the Secretariat should provide dedicated guidance to Presidencies and host countries on how to realize inclusive, transparent negotiations, and oversight should be guaranteed. 

The UNFCCC Secretariat and Parties must assess if equal participation and safety of delegates can be guaranteed in all climate meetings, and in that context also consider the appropriateness of Germany as a default host of the intersessional negotiations.

Ending the Trade Show and Stopping Corporate Capture

An Accountability Framework: Addressing Conflict of Interest

Climate negotiations will continue to fail to deliver as long as polluting interests are allowed to unduly influence and weaken the critical mandate of the UNFCCC. These interests have been undermining the objective of the UNFCCC since its adoption through lobbying and spreading disinformation at the 1992 Rio Summit and in the years since, using their formidable resources for marketing within the COP venues. Despite the urgency of the crisis and in contrast to an abundance of global precedents to draw from, the UNFCCC has essentially no meaningful measures in place to ensure its policymaking is not undermined by those with private, vested interests, and does not even have an agreed definition of what a “conflict of interest” is, let alone any measures on how to address one. This makes the UNFCCC the exception, not the norm, when it comes to good governance.

Here and now, the UNFCCC must take the long overdue steps to protect its integrity from the polluting interests that are actively undermining the process. Without adequate procedures to ensure accountability, the entire legitimacy of the UNFCCC policymaking remains at risk. To course correct, the UNFCCC must urgently formalize a definition of what constitutes a “conflict of interest” (CoI), drawing on best practice, and immediately establish an Accountability Framework that prevents entities with private, polluting interests from unduly influencing or undermining UNFCCC activities and processes through their engagement as representatives of non-governmental organizations, strengthens the process for admission and accreditation of observers within the UNFCCC and its convenings, and draws on established international precedents, including from other UN bodies. 

An Accountability Framework, among other things, should also exclude fossil fuel and other emission-intensive industry representatives and lobbyists from State Delegations and from COP Presidencies (including the Presidency teams and support staff), following the example of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. 

In addition – and not instead of the above – the UNFCCC must build on the mandatory disclosure requirements institutionalized in 2023, recognizing these measures as the floor, not the ceiling, for transparency. Next steps should include requiring all participants to publicly disclose who is funding their attendance, and requiring disclosure of conflicts of interest to be submitted as part of the registration process, mirroring best practice for many other global institutions.

Better not Bigger COPs 

Climate justice cannot be achieved through bloated conferences that privilege access over impact. Over the years, the UNFCCC conferences have grown out of proportion, and increasingly taken on the character of a global trade fair with an expansive commercialisation of the event space, where countries, corporations, and institutions pay substantial sums to rent office space and pavilions, and rights holders are expected to do so too. These branded spaces serve as platforms for public relations, lobbying, and showcasing technologies, many of which reflect corporate interests rather than science-based mitigation or equity principles.

Corporate partnerships between COP hosts and major corporate actors — especially from the industries most responsible for the climate crisis — further entrench these dynamics by lending corporate actors privileged influence in shaping the agenda. At the same time, many Indigenous Peoples, civil society, especially young people attending without financial support, and Global South delegates struggling with resource constraints are sidelined from meaningful participation, both physically and politically. In addition, size disparities between party delegations increase the inequity in the negotiations. 

To restore focus, equity, and efficiency, COPs must be fit-for-purpose and rightsized, prioritizing negotiators, rights-holding constituencies, and those directly contributing to the process. This entails discontinuing the practice of corporate partnerships, in particular fossil fuel-related advertising, and commercial rentals and allocating space based on public interest and equity criteria, including by providing dedicated and free of charge spaces for rights-based constituencies. Considerations should also be made about how putting in place requirements for party delegations could help address some of these challenges. Importantly, any reduction in size should keep in mind geographical balance — in particular Global South participation — and cannot come at the cost of meaningful observer participation: with ever-growing interest in COPs, it cannot be that only observers are limited in numbers. The system and criteria for badge allocation for observers needs to be equitable and predictable, and should be significantly reformed to ensure geographical balance, as well as enhancing meaningful engagement. Such a reform should keep in mind that not all stakeholders are rights holders and not all rights holders are the same — for instance, a differentiated status to reflect the individual and collective rights of Indigenous Peoples is required to ensure their appropriate protection and inclusion — and give consideration to structural engagement of actors.

Moving away from Accountability-Free Blackbox Negotiations

Enhanced Compliance

The escalating climate crisis is evidence that it is not enough for countries to merely submit national plans and report on their actions with no consequences even when those actions fall woefully short of what is needed to achieve the objectives of the UNFCCC and Paris Agreement, and safeguard human rights and the environment.

Countries must adhere to their international obligations, including their commitments under the climate regime, through concrete steps and effective implementation measures in relation to both action and support, and must be held accountable when they do not. Complying with international legal obligations requires Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to be grounded in the best available knowledge, science, and international law, including by committing to limiting warming to 1.5°C in line with equity and the principles of Common But Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities (CBDR-RC), as well as the provision of new and additional public climate finance for mitigation, adaptation, and addressing loss and damage in line with the needs of developing countries. 

The UNFCCC transparency framework should go beyond mere reporting and reviews should result in binding recommendations to align national commitments with the goals of the Paris Agreement, particularly the 1.5°C target. States failing to meet their obligations have and may continue to face legal consequences. Yet the compliance mechanisms of the Paris Agreement remain inadequately weak.  States should not be held accountable only outside the UN climate regime; avenues for addressing non-compliance should be strengthened within the UN climate regime so the focus is not merely on submitting the NDC and other national reports. If a Party struggles or fails to comply with its obligations, then the climate regime should have the option to undertake steps to address that, with differing consequences depending on the specific situation.

An End to the Declaration Mania

Accountability is also essential beyond the formal negotiations and negotiated outcomes, in particular as recent years have seen a plethora of declarations and pledges made at COP by States and the private sector. The Action Agenda generates a stream of announcements that often dominate media coverage around a COP. These are frequently misreported to the public as official COP outcomes, creating a misleading picture of progress. As a result, pressure on formal negotiations is reduced, and the Action Agenda space is weakened as a platform for meaningful action and initiatives.

In addition, while these are made during COPs, and sometimes stem from mandated events, announcements are too often not made in a transparent manner. Despite benefiting from legitimacy related to their launch at the sideline of a UN Conference, they come with no accountability and far too often no plan or intention of delivery. Additionally, while the Action Agenda originally came about as a space through which to exchange best practices, it cannot replace the negotiations nor become their focus. It is concerning to see the increased emphasis on this agenda, and focusing on implementation of the Paris Agreement is not synonymous with advancing the “Action Agenda.”

Monitoring and accountability mechanisms must be put in place to review the implementation of all commitments made over the past years as well as any further declarations that might still be made, for example reporting on their implementation at subsequent COPs in a manner that does not distract from the COP’s agenda. A strong conflict of interest policy as well as a stronger accountability and transparency system is urgently needed, including in the context of the Action Agenda. The Global Climate Action Portal and the criteria of the Race to Zero need to be updated, taking into consideration methodologies to better assess the impacts of non-state actors (especially businesses) on climate proposed by civil society.

Transparency of Decision-making

Access to the negotiations and transparency of decision-making have diminished over the years. While meaningful observer participation has always been limited in the context of UNFCCC negotiations, more recently a wide variety of arguments has been used to effectively exclude observers from accessing negotiations, including through logistics-related arguments such as room sizes. More and more negotiations are held behind closed doors whether through informal-informals or COP presidencies having small meetings with select countries. This practice is a significant barrier to the right to meaningful and effective participation, and allows blocking countries to hold up progress without any form of accountability. Additionally, documents and drafts are often not made available on the official website in a timely manner, including in the context of meetings of constituted bodies and other UNFCCC-related mechanisms. This undermines transparency and equal access for all stakeholders.

Urgent steps must be taken to bring the levels of transparency of UNFCCC negotiations in line with State obligations regarding access to information and public participation in environmental decision-making, including under legal instruments such as the Aarhus Convention and the Escazú Agreement. In doing so, Parties can take cues from other UN processes such as the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS), where all materials are publicly available in a timely manner, negotiations happen in official sessions, and all changes proposed are tracked throughout the negotiations. Other examples are UNEA and the Basel, Rotterdam, and Stockholm Conventions, where proposals by countries are tracked in draft texts, and made available through an official portal accessible to accredited observers.  

Reversing the Proliferation of Processes

Three decades of negotiations have created a monster: mandated events, workshops, and mechanisms are continually created, yet fail to deliver meaningful action. The process has become untenable and impossible to follow for small delegations, Indigenous Peoples, and members of civil society. Rather than spurring real-life action, it has become a talk shop that reproduces itself. It is time to refocus. 

The agenda should be focused on progressing actual and effective climate action and concrete negotiation outcomes aimed at implementation, scaling-up of action and resourcing, and actual policy making. Additionally, a mainstreaming effort of meetings of constituted bodies, operating entities, and other UNFCCC-related mechanisms should be made, to centralize them in time and place, in particular those related to similar topics.

Respecting and Protecting Human Rights

Safe, Secure, and Accessible COPs for Everyone

Effective exercise of fundamental freedoms and the right to participate is essential to effective and legitimate decision-making affecting the entire planet and is a legal obligation. Examples of how these rights have been infringed upon in the context of COP host countries are plenty, from activists being detained and denied entry to Poland in the context of COP24 to surveillance being used as a form of harassment and intimidation against climate activists in the context of COP27. In addition, a critical part of meaningful and equitable participation is ensuring that negotiations are inclusive and accessible for all. A lack of appropriate policies is currently leading to the effective exclusion of many.

All hosts of UNFCCC sessions must commit to respecting and protecting the human rights of all participants, including the full enjoyment of the rights to peaceful assembly, freedom of expression, access to information, and meaningful participation — including in the lead up to the sessions. This includes putting in place specific provisions in Host Country Agreements that guarantee such rights and protection against retaliation, among other safeguards, and ensure that COP venues are gender-responsive and accessible for all, including persons with disabilities and children. 

Financial support, translation, and interpretation are crucial components to improve the participation of people and communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis in the negotiations that determine their future. Enhancing the participation of participants from the Global South entails addressing systemic barriers such as visa discrimination, lack of funding, and high accommodation prices. In addition, dedicated measures such as the provision of sign language interpretation and captioning, and guaranteeing effective accessibility of venues must be put in place to ensure the effective participation of persons with disabilities, who are disproportionately affected by the climate crisis and whose perspectives are essential to effective climate responses.

Protecting and upholding human rights and the rights of Indigenous Peoples within the negotiations is a critical (and bare minimum) requirement for achieving effective climate actions. This should, of course, also extend to the implementation of climate policy and the decisions undertaken at the UNFCCC.

The UNFCCC should set clear requirements for publishing the drafts of Host Country Agreements before they are signed to enable receiving feedback from stakeholders, and making the final version available in an easily accessible manner to the public by the UNFCCC and the host country as soon as it is signed.

Open Civic Space in the UNFCCC

In recent years, rights holders speaking up and organizing actions in the context of UNFCCC meetings have encountered increasing challenges, as has been highlighted by the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders. Such limitations are related to protest content and expression, including on naming countries and corporations, having to pre-share slogans and photographs for approval, restrictions to designated locations and relatively short time duration, and size of protest. As civic space is shrinking globally, it is all the more unacceptable to see such a trend in an UN context.

The UNFCCC Secretariat should not introduce any further restrictions in updated guidelines for advocacy actions, but rather expand rights, to guarantee the full respect of the freedom of expression and of peaceful protest for all participants wishing to peacefully express views on human rights crises, be it related to the extraction of fossil fuels, the domestic context of the host country, or atrocities happening across the globe. This includes putting in place an independent focal point for alleged breaches of human rights and reprisals with a clear mandate recognized by the UN climate secretariat and the host country to collect information, take preventive and corrective action, and facilitate redress. To enable meaningful participation, the availability of physical space for rights-based constituencies should not be left at the discretion of the host, but should be an established practice.

Aligning and Strengthening International Climate Governance

Additional Legal Pathways for Fossil Fuel Phase-Out

More than thirty years after signing the UNFCCC, Parties continue to fail to address the leading cause of the climate crisis: the production and use of fossil fuels – the terms fossil fuels and coal, oil, and gas are even painfully absent from the Paris Agreement. The UNFCCC climate regime does not represent the entire universe of State responsibilities for acting on climate change nor does it displace existing legal obligations, as reiterated in international courts’ advisory proceedings. It is but one piece of the international regime, which is under continuous development.  With an escalating climate crisis, it is critical to ensure the necessary public finance to fulfill the goals of the Paris Agreement, and to pursue additional avenues to facilitate the fast, fair, full, and funded fossil fuel phase-out needed.

The Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty (FFNPT) is one such avenue to explicitly focus — from its inception — on fossil fuel production and phasing out fossil fuels through a just transition to a fossil-free, renewable, and regenerative future. The FFNPT can provide mutual reinforcement to facilitate the urgent and just transition needed. By regulating fossil fuels, the treaty will contribute significantly to the international climate regime and the fulfillment of the goals of the UNFCCC and Paris Agreement, as well as broader international goals centred around health, development, peace and security, gender, justice, and more. Another important additional pathway underway is the Global Plastics Treaty, where countries should learn from mistakes made in the UNFCCC, and seek to address the full lifecycle of plastics, including their production, which is inextricably linked with fossil fuels. . 

Centralizing Policy Coherence and International Law  

The UNFCCC is one of three international environmental agreements or “Rio Conventions,” that came into being at the 1992 Earth Summit. The CBD, the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), and the UNFCCC are sister conventions designed to protect life on Earth, and for far too long they have acted in siloes.

For more effective climate action, Parties should look to enhance synergies on the implementation of these three conventions, especially on cross-cutting themes. Doing so will help further the objectives of them all, for example by stopping the expansion of oil and gas. Additionally, it should not be possible for Parties to the UNFCCC to ignore relevant decisions from other Rio Conventions when taking their own; they should rather explicitly guide Parties when negotiating and implementing UNFCCC decisions. Relevant examples are the existing moratorium on geoengineering, the importance of ensuring the full protection of environmental human rights defenders recognized by the CBD, and the need to respect Indigenous knowledge systems.

As a space that is dedicated to addressing the climate crisis and where countries sit with equal voice, the UNFCCC also has an important role to play in promoting policy coherence to enable more effective climate action and eliminate barriers. The UNFCCC should provide clear signals and recommendations in which other multilateral fora could and should align with the objectives of the Convention, for example in relation to finance flows. This also includes addressing trade barriers to effective climate action, such as Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), which allow foreign investors to sue governments and seek financial compensation over policy changes that impact their profits. To be effective, the multilateral climate regime must overcome these structural legal barriers.    

Amidst the lack of progress under the UNFCCC and other contributing factors, countries across regions have turned to international courts to seek legal advice. Last year, in 2024, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) issued a first groundbreaking climate advisory opinion and this year, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) will issue advisory opinions on State responsibilities related to climate change. This is a critical opportunity for change. Parties to the UNFCCC should build upon these international courts’ rulings and guarantee that any decision adopted under the UN Climate Agreements upholds international legal obligations.

The time is now for the UNFCCC to become the climate regime it should have been for the past decades: one centered around international law and obligations to prevent dangerous climate change. And one that delivers what it was intended to: climate justice for all.

Signatories

UNFCCC Constituencies

Climate Action Network (CAN)

Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice (DCJ)

Youth and Children Constituency (YOUNGO)

Women and Gender Constituency (WGC)