COP 30 Presidency’s Open Dialogue with Parties and NGO Constituencies. (Texas Impact Photo)
Texas Impact | Nov. 12, 2025
Non-Governmental Organizations (NG0S) constituencies and parties convened for dialogue Nov. 11, 2025 in Belem, Brazil. They gathered to speak openly about a question posed to them by the COP30 presidency. It read,
“Building on the insights from dialogues held under the JTWP (Just Transition Work Plan), engagements at the pre-COP and other experiences from the ground, what is the role international cooperation needs to play to accelerate and support just transition pathways at national and local levels?”
If you’re unfamiliar with the language of COP the meaning of this question might not seem immediately obvious. For insight, “just transition” refers to the way that a global transition towards a green economy should be fair and equitable to all of the world’s inhabitants. In the interest of ensuring this, COP convened the parties and relevant NGO constituencies to talk through how this could be possible. In the hour allotted we heard not only from representatives of various countries, but also from groups representing the interests of farmers, workers, women, youth, and indigenous peoples. These groups have been identified as particularly vulnerable in the transition to green energy, and as such were given space to voice their experiences, expertise, and concerns.
About halfway through this session the Women and Gender Constituency identified a blind spot in need of attention. The stated:
“We talk about energy transition and the mineral demand involved without ever talking about the estimated two hundred thousand people, human beings, currently living in conditions of modern day slavery in the mining industry alone. So it actually makes sense to discuss this issue under the parameters of question one and question two because while the majority of the world’s mineral resources for the energy transition are located in the global south, we live in a globalized world and our energy systems are global ones, and the majority of these minerals are not remaining in those territories, but are leaving to meet the energy needs and demands and achieve the renewable energy just transition of the global north. And the word ‘leaving’ is maybe too neutral of a word to describe what that process looks like. We are talking about the most egregious human rights abuses; trafficking, child labor, modern=day slavery, not just at extraction– across the supply chain.”
I work as a hospital chaplain in a region of the United States that, while primarily agricultural, once boasted a prolific coal mining industry. Since 1810 over 7,400 coal mining operations have called Illinois their home, though no more than 30 are left. The industry’s legacy here is mixed, including economic booms, busts, and a racially fraught history of labor organizing. Today there are fewer than 30 coal mines left in Illinois, due in no small part to how highly mechanized mining in Illinois has become.
I meet many of the miners from these mines in the hospitals I serve. Many have built comfortable lives for themselves and their families thanks to the gains made by labor organizers who stood up for just and equitable working conditions.
Even so, I bear witness to the way that the electricity we take for granted here has come at the expense of miners' health. COPD, back problems, grief over friends and family lost in the mines, and a host of other conditions plague the workers who have invisibly made the conveniences of our lives available to us. My great-grandfather, a miner himself, died of black lung disease. His story is a common one.
"The sick and injured bodies of the miners I encounter in the hospital represent a moral imperative to reconsider our way of life."
– Hospital Chaplain Nate Wieland
I share the story of coal miners in the hospital because my focus in covering COP30 is on health, and I want to paint a picture from my own context of the way that labor and land relations have tremendous consequences on individual and collective health. The conversations we’re having concerning the importance of transitioning away from fossil fuels towards green energy are incredibly important, but can fly above the reality that our global systems of production, as they stand, rely on the capture and destruction of workers’ bodies in the global south.
The Women and Gender Constituency highlighted for us that as we continue to advocate for a transition to green energy, we need simultaneously to advocate for abolition of slavery, for workers' rights all along the supply chain, and for indigenous communities to have sovereignty over their ancestral lands, including control over the energy they produce.
Alongside advocacy, we also need to reconsider our societal patterns of consumption that demand a level of extraction from the global south never before seen in the course of human history. Through relationship with hospitalized miners who have made our energy in Illinois possible, I’ve been reminded that the demand for limitless energy production to fulfill our endless consumption takes a devastating toll on the bodies of real people. The sick and injured bodies of the miners I encounter in the hospital represent a moral imperative to reconsider our way of life. Extending that imperative globally, I wonder about what we in the global north will need to change in our day to day lives and societally to protect the sacred worth and dignity of workers and indigenous peoples at sites of extraction in the global south.
Nate Wieland is a hospital chaplain in Southern Illinois. A member of Greenville First United Methodist Church, he serves as the Caretakers of God’s Creation Coordinator for the IIllinois Great Rivers Conference of The United Methodist Church.