New York Climate week highlighted great opportunities and challenges for COP30 in a month’s time, and especially for the Just Transition Work Programme - by Michael Clements and Phil Bloomer, Business & Human Rights Resource Centre

There is now a stark contrast in approach and performance between business sectors at each end of the supply chain. On the positive side, renewable energy companies are increasingly making progress on adopting policies that are so needed to support a fast transition through installation of renewable energy projects at scale – but in a way that ensures they are built with communities and workers, and for them. At the other end of the spectrum, too many transition mineral mining companies, and their financial backers, continue to ride roughshod over the rights of communities and workers, believing they can muscle through the resistance to the abuse they generate.

Imagine two convenings in New York.

At one, we launched our 2025 Renewable Energy and Human Rights Benchmark. Unusually, we were able to trumpet the progress made by most renewable energy companies included – even in the face of the strong political and financial headwinds the sector has faced recently. Eletrobras – a major Brazilian utility – spoke from the platform, proud of its progress, and un-defensive about its remaining areas for significant improvement. Mishkakwan James Harper, of the Indigenous Clean Energy Network in Canada, explained that we have to think not only about what is today, but also what could be: in other words, how renewable energy can support a transformative future for all.

Renewable energy companies now need to generalise out from the substantial human rights progress they’ve made to insist their weaknesses on Indigenous Peoples’ rights and stakeholder consultation are addressed – but they also must go beyond business-as-usual approaches and ensure benefits and access to decision-making are better shared with local communities and Indigenous Peoples. A few companies have already embraced that approach. As one renewable energy company executive has said, ‘I’d prefer to gain 80% of the profit with a stable investment environment through sustained community good-will, than 100% of profit squeezed from abuse and sustained conflict with communities.’

At the other convening, mining companies, investors and bankers were focused on financial de-risking and accelerated permitting for transition mineral mines. Notably absent was any serious discussion by these actors of how to de-risk mining for communities and workers facing human rights abuse, by enhancing safeguards and regulatory frameworks. For example, the World Bank announced accelerated support to Argentina through a USD 4 billion package of public and private financing focused on mining and critical minerals to boost the country’s competitiveness, alongside other investments. Yet our Transition Mineral Tracker already reports over 18 allegations of abuse in Argentina by mining companies, ranging from land grabs and violations of Indigenous Peoples’ rights to water pollution and negative impacts on workers’ health. Accelerated mining investment without human rights protections means much higher risk of abuse of frontline communities and workers.

We are watching this play out now, especially as civic space continues to shrink around the world. Our data is clear that the mining sector has long been the most dangerous for human rights defenders working at the intersection of human rights and business. There, they face SLAPP suits, arrests, and worse: physical assault, killings, and disappearances. While eight of the companies included in our Renewable Energy Benchmark have robust policies in place to protect defenders, no mining company today has the same, despite decades of dialogue between civil society and the industry on the topic.

This is the antithesis of the recommendations of the UN Secretary General’s Report published one year ago, which stated: ‘Human rights must be at the core of all mineral value chains’. If a badly-designed energy transition is just superimposed on a highly unequal supply chain, we cannot be surprised when the transition entrenches and worsens that inequality. Inevitably, the costs of this approach get passed down to the most marginalised; while the benefits accrue to the powerful and wealthy. Rising resistance to this model – and to an unjust energy transition – by communities and workers can likewise be no surprise.

The way forward is building mineral supply chains that support shared prosperity and equity, insist on duty of care of governments and companies to protect and respect human rights, and is underpinned by fair negotiations.

Addressing the outsized impacts that minerals extraction is having on human and environmental rights must now be at the heart of international climate negotiations.

This is now a central challenge for discussions at COP30. The disappointment last year at COP29 in Baku highlighted that, with public funds being increasingly used to ‘de-risk’ private investment, this must come with adequate human rights and environmental safeguards for communities and workers. The urgency for multilateral action and new global governance of transition minerals must be front and centre of negotiations at this COP – a pivotal moment to establish a new paradigm that supports, rather than squanders public trust.