Sixty-fourth Sessions of the Subsidiary Bodies (SB64)

Primary goal for this session is to lay the technical and political groundwork for major global climate decisions ahead of COP31 UN Climate Change Conference taking place in Antalya, Türkiye in November.

Major Negotiation Themes Fossil Fuel Transition

Notes:

The panel discussed the urgent need for formal recognition of Afro-descendant peoples as a specific constituency within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Participants highlighted the disproportionate impact of climate change on Black communities globally, the value of local and ancestral knowledge in adaptation, and the systemic exclusion of Afro-descendant voices from international climate negotiations.

Global Afro Descendants Movement and Constituency Goals

Advocates for the formal recognition of Afro-descendant peoples as a recognized constituency, similar to youth, indigenous peoples, and trade unions.
– Connects environmental justice activists across the African and Black diaspora to highlight shared struggles.
Promotes the “1.5 is Suicide for Africa” campaign initiated after the Paris Agreement.
Rejects symbolic representation in favor of meaningful inclusion in decision-making processes.

Local Empowerment in Antigua and Barbuda

Marine Ecosystems Protected Areas Trust.

Local communities in the Caribbean islands meet global climate targets despite being invisible at the policy level.
Community actions address climate change, chemical waste pollution, land degradation, and biodiversity.
Governments often fail to put forward issues affecting local people in global spaces.
Only two representatives from the entire Caribbean attended the current global meeting.
Afro-descendant communities in Colombia successfully prevent desertification through traditional nature conservation.

Climate Justice and False Solutions in the Gulf South

Gulf South, Mississippi, and stewards education environmental, and health organizations.

Afro-descendants were recognized in UNFCCC negotiation text for the first time last year after 30 years of discussion.

Demands climate reparations and full accountability rather than charity or handouts.
Opposes carbon trading, carbon pricing, and “false energy alternatives” like large-scale wood bioenergy.
Identifies wood pellet manufacturing as a human rights violation that causes sickness and death in the Deep South.
Criticizes UNFCCC loopholes that allow parties to claim emission reduction credits while ignoring actual manufacturing emissions.
Eglin survived Hurricane Katrina and lives near a failing coal plant and a major oil spill site.

Displacement and Solidarity Economies

“Archive the Diaspora” project to address the double burden faced by Black African diaspora youth.

Speaker lived for 18 years under UNHCR refugee status in South Africa before moving to Canada.
Cape Town faced a “Day Zero” water scarcity event in 2018 due to climate-driven droughts and apartheid-era urban planning.
“Stokvels” (also known as “Susus”) serve as informal solidarity economies that sustain families during crises.
Racist zoning in Canada forces Afro-descendant communities into food deserts near highways and industrial zones.
– Calls for a total ban on fossil fuel lobbyists within UNFCCC and COP processes.

Racial Inequality and Urban Adaptation in Brazil

Instituto de Referência Negra Peregum in Brazil.

Brazil holds the second-largest Black population in the world, comprising nearly 60% of its citizens.
Approximately 80% of the Afro-Brazilian population lives in urban contexts.
Black communities are the primary victims of floods, hunger, and methane emissions from open-air dumpsites.
Government adaptation projects often lead to “climate gentrification,” pushing Black residents out of improved areas into poor infrastructure zones.
Language barriers isolate Brazil, the only Portuguese-speaking country in Latin America, from international debates.
Only two Black Brazilian organizations were able to attend the Bonn meetings due to high costs and badge bureaucracy.

Systemic Barriers and Demands

Identifies the capital in capitalism as the literal bodies and labor of African ancestors.

Demands a transition that is technological, epistemic, and territorial.
Rejects “sacrificial zones” where Afro-descendant lives are compromised for global energy needs.
Emphasizes that local mutual aid efforts by Black women often provide the most effective climate solutions.

Action Items

Sign the resolution and letter supporting Afro-descendant constituency status on the Global Afro Descendants website.
Advocate for the formal inclusion of Afro-descendant peoples in all future UNFCCC negotiation texts.
Build global partnerships and collaborations to increase the visibility of local Afro-descendant climate actions.
Hold governments accountable to the Escazú Agreement and existing environmental regulations.
Pressure the UNFCCC to ban fossil fuel lobbyists and interests from climate governance processes.

12 June 2026

Bonn, Germany

Civil society organizations, Indigenous Peoples, and climate justice groups gathered today at the UN climate negotiations SB64 to raise urgent concerns over blue economy initiatives and the growing push for marine geoengineering. Framed as climate solutions, these approaches are false solutions and dangerous distractions that deepen extractivism, enable destructive development models, and divert attention from real and just solutions to the climate crisis.

Click here to read more.

Speech delivered by: Inger Andersen

For: UNEP Executive Director Briefing to Member States in NYC – Bringing the world together to tackle global environmental challenges: UN Environment Assembly outcomes, 2026 milestones and the latest UNEP science

My thanks for the opportunity to brief you on how UNEP is supporting Member States to tackle global environmental challenges through science, data and policy support in complex times.

And these times are indeed complex. We are seeing shifting alignments. Rapid advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other technologies. Growing trade and investment frictions. Growing competition for critical resources – hydrocarbons, minerals, land and water – all with significant environmental and social implications. A rise in disasters and conflicts, which are increasing already intense pressures on the environment and human well-being. The war in the Middle East makes this painfully clear.

Amid this background, our resolve to address the world’s environmental crises must grow stronger. Because environmental damage and associated economic disruption ripple across borders and contribute to forced migration, displacement, food shortages and more. You can be assured that UNEP’s resolve is stronger than ever. As the United Nations’ leading global authority on the environment, the organization is at the heart of action we must collectively take.

Faith groups raise voice for justice at UN Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting

In June in Bonn, Germany, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change convened its intercessional meeting between the yearly Conference of the Parties. These meetings are to keep the process going to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and to construct mechanisms for climate finance. Click here to learn more.

he Just Transition Alliance, United Steelworkers Local 675, Indigenous Environmental Network, and La Via Campesina met in Bonn, Germany, to advance the Just Transition Work Program within the UNFCCC framework. The panel emphasized the necessity of centering Indigenous peoples, small-scale farmers, and frontline workers as rights holders rather than beneficiaries. Key outcomes included a demand for the full operationalization of the Belém Antalya Mechanism (BAM) by 2027 and a rejection of market-based solutions and debt-heavy finance.

Indigenous Rights and Self-Determination
Tom Goldtooth defined Indigenous peoples as rights holders and guardians of Mother Earth.

Asserted that climate justice requires the right to self-determination and free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC).
Called for the phase-out of colonialism, capitalism, and extractive fossil fuel economies.
Demanded an end to the militarization of Indigenous territories.
Highlighted paragraph 12.i of the UAE Just Transition work program regarding the rights of Indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation.
Emphasized that FPIC includes the right to deny consent to any project or policy.
Defined territory and nature as the foundation of life and culture rather than a resource.
Advocated for the recognition of subsurface rights and collective ownership of lands.