MORE than 1,000 organisations on Monday called for a people-centred transition at the Cop30 climate summit in Belem at the gateway to the Amazon River.

In the biggest co-ordinated appeal to turn promises into real change the activists from 106 countries — from trade unions, indigenous leaders, feminist and youth movements, Afro-descendants, peasant groups, environmental groups, disability networks and community organisations — demanded that governments stop treating climate action as a numbers game.

In an open letter, the activists called for a just transition that centres the people who live with the consequences of the climate emergency.

A decade after the Paris Agreement pledged to secure a just transition, the promise of the accord remains unfulfilled, and it’s not without consequences.

The groups say climate action has stalled, inequality has deepened and communities have been left behind.

International Trade Union Confederation general secretary Luc Triangle said: “Workers and their union are calling governments at Cop30 to act on climate change in a way that protects people and delivers prosperity.

“Promises to create good, green jobs must be kept.”

He said: “We need governments to take the increasing climate impact on workers and their families seriously.”

Climate Action Network International director Tasneem Essopsaid: “Enough of broken promises.

“From workers to indigenous peoples, people everywhere are uniting because they’re done being left behind.”

“Let Belem be remembered as the place where fairness and justice became non-negotiable.”

Campaigner Leon Sealey-Huggins said: “From debt and trade injustice to corporate capture, the same systems driving the climate crisis still hold back real change.

“At Cop30, governments must agree on a Belem Action Mechanism that confronts these inequalities and builds national spaces where people — not profit — shape the path of transition.”

The Action Mechanism aims to create a system that supports people-centred transitions at local and national levels, where workers and communities are in charge of decisions that affect their lives and livelihoods.

Global Policy director Mwanahamisi Singano said: “After 30 years of negotiations, we lack implementation that recognises and centres the care that sustains all life. Feminists call on governments to step forward and act in response to the urgency of our times at Cop30.”

Board member of Klimadelegation, Carmen Wabnitz, warned that “if Belem is to be the implementation Cop, then just transition cannot remain mere principles, but be turned into reality through a Belem Action Mechanism that delivers justice for those living the transition every day.”