Highlight 51/2025: What Is the Role of the ILO in Promoting a Just Transition at COP30?
Abdulrahman Kafoud, 30 December 2025
The concept of a just transition refers to ensuring that the move toward low-carbon, climate-resilient economies is carried out in a fair and inclusive manner, safeguarding workers’ rights, decent jobs, and social equity. The International Labour Organization (ILO) introduced this framework via its Guidelines for a Just Transition towards Environmentally Sustainable Economies and Societies for All (2015). Since then, the ILO has played a pivotal role in integrating labour and social-justice concerns into climate governance, aligned with the Paris Agreement (2015), which acknowledges “the imperatives of a just transition of the workforce.”
While the 2025 COP30 in Belém, Brazil, is hosted by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and national authorities, the ILO’s role is to ensure that climate ambition is delivered without sacrificing social justice. The ILO acts as a supportive policy actor rather than a formal negotiating party in the UNFCCC environment. Its legitimacy stems from its unique tripartite governance—governments, employers, and workers—enabling it to guide countries in embedding decent-work, social-protection, and skills-development dimensions into climate action. The organisation’s Green Jobs Initiative and the Climate Action for Jobs Initiative provide tools that countries can leverage to align their climate policies with labour and social outcomes.
At COP30, the ILO is well placed to assist Latin American countries—many of which face high levels of informal employment and dependency on extractive sectors—to translate just-transition commitments into national frameworks. Nonetheless, transitioning theory into practice presents significant challenges. The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) reports that the region remains vulnerable to job losses from fossil-fuel phase-out, while green-economy alternatives and social-protection systems remain under-developed. The ILO’s role at COP30 thus centres on advocating integrated strategies—linking labour-market reform, green-skills training, and climate-finance mechanisms—to assure climate action enhances rather than undermines human security. The ILO also emphasises the inclusion of women, youth, and indigenous communities, aligning with the broader UNFCCC Just Transition Work Programme established at COP27 and adopted at COP28.
Some critics argue that despite its normative strength, the ILO’s implementation capacity remains constrained. Unlike the UNFCCC or the Green Climate Fund (GCF), the ILO cannot allocate significant finance or enforce compliance. Yet its moral and technical leadership remains vital: the JTWP reflects the ILO’s principles, embedding fair labour transitions into global climate governance. At COP30 the organisation will emphasise concrete deliverables—such as measurable social indicators, labour-market frameworks, and financing instruments targeted at the Global South.
Recent scholarship has raised questions about the practical reach of the ILO’s just-transition framework, particularly in developing and resource-dependent economies. Studies by Giupponi et al. (2023), de Ruyter (2024), and the joint GCF–IEU/ILO Realist Review (2023) highlight recurring limitations in implementation. Critics point to an over-emphasis on training and green-jobs programmes, with insufficient attention to the structural transformation of carbon-intensive sectors. Moreover, the ILO’s limited funding and execution capacity restricts the scaling of national just-transition plans. Some analysts warn that the concept risks becoming largely rhetorical—valued for its inclusivity discourse but lacking measurable socio-economic outcomes. These critiques underline the broader governance challenge of translating normative ideals into enforceable and context-sensitive policy frameworks, especially in economies marked by informality and fiscal constraints.
In sum, the ILO’s role in promoting a just transition at COP30 signals the intersection of climate governance and human rights. Mitigation and adaptation efforts must not compromise the right to decent work nor the right to a healthy environment. Although the ILO is not the primary decision-maker at COP30, its supportive and normative function ensures that global climate policy evolves not just toward net-zero emissions, but toward equitable and inclusive societies.
Abdulrahman Kafoud, Highlight 51/2025: What Is the Role of the ILO in Promoting a Just Transition at COP30?, 30 December 2025, available at www.meig.ch
The views expressed in the MEIG Highlights are personal to the authors and neither reflect the positions of the MEIG Programme nor those of the University of Geneva.