November 6, 2025
COP30: Why workers need to be at the centre of this year’s climate summit
As Brazil prepares to host COP30, trade unions on the ground are calling for this year's climate summit to put the needs of workers and communities at the centre. Maeve Galvin, a programme director at FORGE, outlines why this is so vitally important.
This article was originally published by edie.
Despite subnational plans, trade unions continue to highlight Brazil’s absence of a national just transition strategy to support workers facing climate-related struggles alongside issues such as poverty wages and precarity in the midst of the green transition.
They warn that the lack of inclusion of workers in energy and climate transition processes and decision-making risks deepening long-standing inequalities and sidelining affected communities.
FORGE is a collaborative of philanthropic donors working to address some of the world’s most pressing issues, including the climate crisis, corporate accountability and labour rights. Our Democracy at Work Fund supports grassroots organisations to lead reforms that are grounded in the rights and power of communities and workers.
In the lead-up to COP30, we are supporting CUT Brazil and other unions such as the National Confederation of Rural Wage Earners (CONTAR) in calling for workers’ rights to be at the centre of this year’s conference.
Brazilian workers on the front line of the climate crisis
Brazil’s labour movement has long been confronting the realities of the climate crisis on the ground. When historic flooding struck Rio Grande do Sul in 2024, paralysing 63% of the state’s industries, unions acted immediately. For example, CUT Brazil opened shelters, distributed aid, and pushed for stronger legal protections for workers who lost their livelihoods.
The disaster underscored how climate shocks directly threaten jobs, livelihoods and safety and how organized labour has become a critical responder.
Alongside major emergencies, the climate crisis is also increasingly driving everyday struggles for already-vulnerable populations of workers, such as the estimated four million Brazilian rural workers working under the sun, rain, heat, cold, dust, and other elements. Conditions for workers in Brazil’s vast coffee, sugarcane, and fruit sectors are especially harsh. Problems stem from excessive heat, often worsened by Personal Protective Equipment that is not adapted to current climate conditions as well as freezing conditions in regions such as Rio Grande do Sul, where grapes and apples are grown. 60% of agricultural workers work informally and lack rights and social protections.
Unions such as our partner, CONTAR, which represents four million rural workers, have been advocating for public policies that reduce the effects of climate change on rural wage earners. In the absence of legal protections for workers stemming from a national just transition policy, they have been working to try to embed greater protections for workers in collective bargaining agreements.
Their efforts highlight the need for access to cold water in hot conditions, prohibition of work during rain, extreme heat or cold, and longer rest breaks during work hours in agreements. However, in the absence of regulation, resistance among employers can prove difficult to overcome. For example, CONTAR managed to successfully negotiate for fresh water to be supplied in many cases after extensive negotiations, but the demand for cold water has been more difficult to secure, as employers claim it would be too costly.
The clean energy transition highlights challenges
CUT has been advocating for a just transition that goes beyond merely replacing energy sources, involving a structural transformation that integrates social, environmental and economic dimensions.
With Brazil’s renewable energy sector expanding rapidly, unions are already confronting challenges connected to this emerging sector – precarious employment, unsafe conditions, and anti-union practices within the clean energy industries themselves. For example, Rio Grande do Norte, one of the national leaders in wind and solar energy generation, has seen conflicts with rural workers and local communities due to poor working conditions on wind and solar farms in addition to the exclusion of local communities from projects that impact them.
Unions have been warning that decent work and fair wages must not be sacrificed in the name of green growth. They call for climate financing to ensure quality jobs, protect workers transitioning from high-emission industries, and strengthen social protections.
Co-designing solutions with workers is the only way forward
Brazil’s current government under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has taken some steps in the right direction, including decreasing deforestation, launching the Ecological Transformation Plan and the resumption of political dialogue spaces with the labour movement after a shutdown of engagement under previous governments. But significant challenges remain.
It is essential that workers and impacted communities are co-designers of climate solutions in order to ensure that the extractive, top-down approach that created the climate crisis is not perpetuated in addressing it. Brazil’s clean energy transition has highlighted the flaws in transition strategies that fail to centre workers at the heart of the process.
Brazil’s green transition must be a worker-centred transition. To ensure this, policy development should include labour rights protections and upskilling for workers, ensuring that no one is left behind.
Workers and their representatives must also play a key role in decision-making and policy development around all elements of the green transition. This requires genuine social dialogue with workers and their independent, democratically elected representatives to develop context-specific solutions and ensure that labour rights are embedded in new and emerging industries, such as the renewable energy sector.
Climate financing is also vital in order to fund decent, quality jobs in sectors that promote climate change mitigation, support workers in high-emission sectors transitioning to low-carbon alternatives, and enchance adaptation and resilience measures. These should include safe and healthy working environments, compensation for loss of livelihoods and funding for social protection.
A COP for workers?
Unlike recent COPs, COP30 is expected to restore the spirit of public mobilisation, with marches and actions led by Brazilian social movements across the country.
COP30 is a crossroads moment that will determine whether Brazil’s climate leadership becomes inclusive and redistributive. It is vital that all delegates attending COP30 place these considerations front and centre. Belém must be remembered as the “Just Transition COP”- a moment when workers were finally brought to the heart of the climate agenda.