The extremely strong typhoons and floods that the Filipino workers and people experienced in recent months show that the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30), currently being held in Belem, Brazil, needs to come up with decisive actions to uphold a pro-worker and pro-people change towards an economy that protects the world’s environment.

Typhoon Tino (international name: Kalmaegi) and Super Typhoon Uwan (international name: Fung-Wong) both dumped rain levels that are unprecedented, again showing that climate change is real. Tino left more than 269 people dead and around USD 359 million in damage, while Uwan left more than 27 people dead and around USD 50 million in damage.

Implementation of the Paris Agreement, signed in 2015 and overseen by COP30, is more urgent than ever. Countries, especially the most developed ones, should ramp up the global process of reducing burning fossils fuels and other causes of greenhouse gas emissions, and of ensuring adaptation, loss and damage and mitigation in relation to climate change.

Like other underdeveloped countries, the Philippines does not contribute a big share of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, but it is one of the most vulnerable to the devastating effects of climate change. The Philippine government should join the governments and peoples of the world in demanding that developed countries fulfill their pledges to stop climate change.

At the same time, the Philippine government has allowed large-scale deforestation and mining and logging operations that have destroyed the country’s environment and made the Filipino workers and people more vulnerable to climate change disasters. It should stand up to big foreign and local corporations responsible for the destruction of the country’s environment and stop their operations.

The transition from a carbon-based economy should be just and must uphold the interests of the workers and the poor and must involve them in the entire process. We support the biggest grouping of workers’ organizations in the world, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) in calling for a just transition, for climate action that upholds human and labor rights.

We also support the ITUC, Brazil’s progressive president Lula da Silva, and other international actors in calling for the creation of the Belem Action Mechanism (BAM) that will coordinate actions for a just transition. Workers must be placed at the center of climate negotiations, together with women and children, and workers’ rights and democracy should be seen as inseparable from climate justice.

We support the Philippine labor movement in raising workers’ consciousness about typhoons and other climate change disasters towards understanding climate change and its systemic root causes in an economy anchored on greed for profits to the detriment of both labor and human rights and the environment. We vow to heighten solidarity with workers’ struggles for climate justice.