The Just Transition Mechanism will be one of the areas under negotiation at the June Climate Meetings in Bonn. Liam Orme and Jameela Joy Reyes review the context for the negotiations and set out some starting points for the Mechanism, showing how it can enable creative approaches for resourcing just transition initiatives by serving as an ongoing venue for identifying common just transition needs and opportunities.
Parties agreed to develop the Just Transition Mechanism (JTM) at the 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30), thereby collectively recognising the value of technical assistance, knowledge-sharing, capacity-building and international cooperation for advancing just transitions to low-carbon, climate-resilient societies. Leveraging this window of opportunity requires responding to a shifting landscape, both of energy transition geopolitics, and of support for just transition initiatives. The ultimate test of the JTM will be its role in resourcing meaningful progress on just transitions in communities that need it most.
The JTM is due to be negotiated further at the intersessional climate negotiations that start in Bonn, Germany, today, and precede the UN Climate Change Conference, COP31, that will take place in November 2026.
What rapid reactions to fossil-fuelled instability tell us about the support countries need on just transition policy
This year energy transition realities have hit home globally, and policymakers have had to make fast policy decisions that are likely to have long-term implications. Recent disruptions caused by the US–Israel war with Iran have exposed the energy system fragility that comes with fossil fuel dependency. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has tracked a surge in emergency policy responses to the crisis: as of June 2026, 55 countries have announced energy conservation measures, 91 have announced direct support for consumers, and 24 have announced structural policy responses.
These responses differ widely. For example, Indonesia has expanded its fuel subsidy budget, in part funded by cuts to government agencies, providing short-term relief but with long-term fiscal consequences and sharp trade-offs. In Ireland, climate policy was rapidly rolled back in response to country-wide motorcade protests where hauliers and farmers joined forces to demand a cap on the price of diesel, putting pressure on the government to postpone planned increases in carbon tax and increasing fossil subsidies.
The Hormuz Crisis has also illustrated the benefits of transitioning away from fossil fuels, and countries that accelerated investment in renewables are reaping the benefits. For example, between 2019 and 2025, Spain doubled its wind and solar capacity, avoiding roughly 13.5 billion euros in gas import costs (five times more than its transmission grid investment in the same period). Following closure of the Strait of Hormuz, electricity prices remained considerably lower in Spain than in more fossil fuel-dependent systems, such as Italy. This highlights the benefits of Spain’s structured moves towards energy independence, including ‘just transition tendering’ linking grid access to job creation and social programmes.
Similar stories of accelerating the transition include Vietnam, which between 2017 and 2021 experienced the fastest annual proportional increase in renewables globally. More broadly, nearly half of the 74 nations of the Climate Vulnerable Forum have already surpassed the United States in solar uptake, reducing their exposure to the current crisis.
What the wide divergence of national responses to the Hormuz Crisis might reveal is the latent demand for a just transition mechanism as a shared policy support facility that can enable context-dependent, yet strategic decision-making when transition policies are under pressure. Transitions do not operate in a vacuum, and transition plans have been considerably shaken by geopolitics. But the war was also started at a time when the energy transition is being increasingly viewed as a means of achieving resilience and sovereignty. The First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels hosted in Santa Marta, Colombia convened a groundswell of participants reiterating the importance of implementing a just transition. For the JTM to help translate this momentum into real progress, it needs to support strategic just transition planning capacity across national, subnational and non-state actors.
Delivering on just transition promises
In recent years, just transition has moved from a niche concern to a widespread feature of national climate ambition. International Labour Organization (ILO)-led mapping of just transition references in the latest cycle of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC 3.0) finds just transition referenced in 79% of these NDC submissions – up from 50% in the previous cycle, with the sharpest increases among lower- and middle-income countries. Employment is referenced in 90% of NDC 3.0s and more than 75% mention social inclusion and equity. More than half of NDCs mention follow-on institutional arrangements in relation to just transition, including mechanisms, instruments and strategies. Given that NDCs are typically forward-looking pledges, this suggests a growing number of just transition initiatives will be implemented over time. In other words: this is not just growing transition rhetoric: it shows important steps towards implementation.
There is sizeable unmet demand for support in implementing national just transition commitments. Research from the NDC Partnership offers indicative evidence of the gap between demand and supply. As of late 2025, just transition-related requests logged with the NDC Partnership were 14 times higher than in 2021, comprising 79% of all requests in the most recent cycle (314 in total). Countries are primarily asking for capacity development and analytical support (rather than direct finance). Fifty-eight per cent of requests sought support for cross-cutting climate initiatives (versus 24% for adaptation and 18% for mitigation) and another 58% were not tied to a specific sector. However, 38% of all requests had received no support and a further 13% had only received partial support. Certain requests were more likely to be unsupported: requests for monitoring, reporting and verification systems went unsupported in 48% of cases and capacity-building requests went unsupported in 39%. Overall, this suggests implementation gaps are as much about knowledge-sharing and coordination support as about funding.
Importantly, the distribution of support also challenges conventional assumptions about the direction of just transition knowledge flows. The leading providers of support through the NDC Partnership are the UN Development Programme (UNDP), Germany (including its development agency GIZ), and developing country governments, each responding to approximately 11% of requests. These are followed by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) at 6.7%, Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) at 5.4%, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) at 3.8%, UNICEF (the UN agency for children) at 2.8%, and the ILO at 2.5%.
The level of support from developing country governments is significant: it reflects an increasingly varied landscape of just transition expertise, and points to growing potential for South–South and South–North exchange. The JTM, positioned within the UNFCCC but connected to a broad system of initiatives, will be uniquely placed to formalise and support this varied exchange.
Critical capacity: building supportive scaffolding
As part of the COP30 Just Transition Work Programme (JTWP) decision, the UNFCCC secretariat is mapping relevant instruments, initiatives and processes under the Convention, the Paris Agreement and the UN system supporting the implementation of the JTWP. This will help identify areas where the JTM could avoid duplicating existing initiatives; it could also offer insight into why such a high share of just transition requests are going unaddressed. This is a necessary starting point but it will only capture a subset of relevant initiatives; broader mapping is essential to capture the wider ecosystem of supportive scaffolding for just transitions.
For example, multilateral development bank (MDB) technical assistance and financing programmes represent a significant additional source of support for just transition initiatives. Building on their commitment to aligning with the Paris Agreement, MDBs have announced common principles for their just transition support, and are implementing a wide range of institution-specific initiatives and approaches to the just transition. In some cases, MDBs have provided broad support for countries embedding just transition provisions within their national policies and long-term development strategies (e.g. the African Development Bank in Uganda). However, their technical advisory support is usually accessed in the course of preparing or implementing a package of lending. Acknowledging the key role of MDBs in the supportive scaffolding for national just transitions, and extending the mapping to include MDBs, can identify the range of options countries face for receiving support, as well as their associated opportunities and trade-offs.
These gaps point to a critical role for the JTM: serving as a coordination mechanism between various stakeholders and existing initiatives. Playing this role requires improving access to and uptake of existing knowledge resources. Knowledge resources from various UN- and non-UN-affiliated sources (e.g. the JTP Knowledge Hub and South to South Just Transitions initiatives) provide valuable support for just transition planning and implementation. These efforts should be neither duplicated nor disregarded. However, these resources remain fragmented across institutions and networks, unevenly accessible, and largely available in English only. Further, they are not always clearly connected to the goals and principles of the Paris Agreement.
The result is a dispersed knowledge landscape that can make it difficult for Parties to identify relevant resources, learn from experience in other contexts, and access information tailored to their specific needs. Rather than duplicating these resources, the JTM should help broker knowledge-sharing, including by ensuring knowledge products are translated into many languages and connected to the UNFCCC process.
This scaffolding is doubly important given the increasing scarcity of grant-based bilateral aid. Delivering core functions of the JTM – including capacity-building, knowledge-sharing and technical assistance – requires resources from somewhere; ultimately, these functions should enable real just transition progress for communities, which also requires mobilising resources. Dedicated funding tied to the JTM can directly support the delivery of these functions, which were agreed at COP30. Without dedicated funding for the JTM, additional institutional capacity is essential to build scaffolding between emerging just transition projects and sources of public, multilateral, private and philanthropic finance. Leveraging the forum provided by the UNFCCC provides a venue for countries to identify common needs and interests. This scaffolding helps leverage institutions and initiatives beyond the negotiating process to support implementation.
Lessons from comparable UNFCCC mechanisms point to the risks of getting this design wrong. The example of the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM), for instance, points to the risk of fragmentation in institutional arrangements, delays in operationalisation, and uneven accessibility of support if questions of governance and coordination are not clearly defined at the outset. Participation is also a key concern. Embedding meaningful participation by social partners and groups most impacted by the transition is essential in ensuring that the JTM delivers on its core functions within a coherent and well-coordinated institutional structure, cognisant of the principles of equity and ‘common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities’ (CBDR-RC). These highlight the importance of a coordinated and accessible approach to the design and efficient operationalisation of the JTM.
The JTM is in a unique position
We have sought here to establish a set of starting points for the JTM, summarised as follows. Just transition commitments are outpacing available support. That gap is likely to widen as energy system disruptions compound, transition momentum builds, and just transition concerns expand across different sectors, regions and communities. Just transitions are under-resourced. The current range of avenues for capacity-building, technical assistance and knowledge-sharing on just transitions is varied but fragmented, and not sufficient to close that gap. Mapping the landscape of existing initiatives is valuable, but on its own does not establish critical scaffolding to coordinate between them and deliver joint value. Without scaffolding for support, just transition commitments may remain fragmented and diffuse.
Words matter, but actions need an infrastructure of support. To manage a transition away from fossil fuels in a manner that is equitable and politically sustainable, high-level commitments are important, but scaffolding that integrates international collaboration, knowledge exchange and implementation support is what could enable progress. The JTM is uniquely positioned to serve as a hub where these elements converge, linking technical expertise with high-level political processes, grounding ambition in practical yet context-sensitive implementation pathways, while learning lessons from other UNFCCC mechanisms.