The industry sector is where a just transition is won or lost in practice. In August 2026 Resource Justice Network and partners worked on submissions for the 6th dialogue under the UNFCCC Just Transition Work Programme (JTWP), sharing proposals on “Holistic approaches to nationally determined just transition pathways for the industry sector: technology, innovation and equitable value chains.”
An industrial pathway that leaves Global South producers exporting raw minerals and importing finished technology, or pushes fossil-fuel-dependent economies towards disorderly collapse, is neither just nor durable. A pathway also won’t be “nationally determined” if the technology, standards, finance and legal exposure sit elsewhere, and hosting communities are excluded from designing it.
We ask Parties to read industry-sector pathways through three lenses:
- Equitable value chains – producer countries retain the technological and economic value of the resources they supply, not just the extraction burden.
- Post-oil industry – fossil-fuel-dependent countries get a credible, funded route to diversify, reconvert and decommission, with protection for workers and communities.
- Structural reforms – technology transfer, trade and investment rules, and finance conditions are treated as barriers to be mapped, evidenced and routed to the institutions that can act, not left as context.
Our core asks: The 6th dialogue should not close with a further statement of “shared understanding”. It should generate outputs capable of feeding the mutliple ongoing just transition processes (including COP31, the Just Transition Mechanism, the Belém Technology Implementation Programme and the next Global Stocktake).
Above all, the dialogue must produce a list of the industrial technology classes for which access or innovation barriers are identified, the binding barrier for each, and the institution to which each has been routed, with a reporting-back obligation. This is the deliverable by which the dialogue should be judged.
We also need strong particpation provisions for civil society, Indigenous Peoples, workers and affected communities in the design and governance of just transition processes, as well as the recognition that workers’ and community rights obligations apply to the new industrial projects of the transition.
Read the following submissions to learn more:
- Joint Submission of Resource Justice Network’s members: PWYP Indonesia; Bantay Kita Inc. – Philippines; PowerShift Africa ; ZELO ; SARWatch; Engenera (Mexico); CartoCrítica, A.C. (Mexico); CEUS Chile (Chile), Fundación Terram (Chile), Derecho, Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (DAR, Peru)
- Joint Submission of members of the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice (ENGO-DCJ): Resource Justice Network, Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD), World Animal Protection, Just Transition Alliance, and Third World Network
- Submission of the Asia Pacific Transition Mineral Accountability Working Group including, Resource Justice Network (Global); Samata (India); Publish What You Pay (PWYP – Indonesia); Core Transparency/PWYP-Timor-Leste (CGT/PWYP-TL); Goa Foundation (India); Centre for Human Rights and Development (Mongolia); Echo Public Association (Kazakhstan); Bantay Kita Inc. (The Philippines); Civil Expertise (Kazakhstan); Justice in Mining Network (India); International Accountability Project
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