Transparency Without Results: UN Climate Reports Fail to Show Effective Transfer of
Technology to Developing Countries
By Ningxiner Li, intern of the Health, Intellectual Property and Biodiversity Programme (HIPB) at the South Centre
This report synthesizes the findings of research on the reporting and compliance mechanisms governing transfer of technology obligations of developed country Parties under the United Nations climate change regime. The legal basis for transfer of technology has evolved from foundational principles in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to an enhanced transparency framework (ETF) as part of the Paris Agreement, with defined modalities, procedures and guidelines for the transparency framework for action and support (MPGs). The ETF requires that developed countries submit Biennial Transparency Reports (BTRs) detailing their transfer of technology provided to developing countries. Our review of developed countries’ first BTR submissions reveals significant shortcomings that hinder proper evaluation of compliance with the transfer of technology obligations. The current system allows reporting that meets procedural requirements but fails to deliver clear, comparable, and outcome-oriented data essential for enforcing the legal obligations on transfer of technology and ensuring it serves as a genuine catalyst for global climate actions. This report argues that the ETF, as currently operationalized, prioritizes procedural transparency over substantive effectiveness. The design of the reporting requirements is characterized by discretionary language, fragmented methodologies, and weak linkages between financial and technological support. These features undermine the ability of Parties, review bodies, and the global stocktake to assess whether technology is being delivered in a manner that meaningfully supports developing countries’ climate action. Recommendations are advanced to strengthen reporting requirements, enhance traceability and comparability, and reorient the transparency framework toward measurable outcomes rather than process-based compliance. As the first comprehensive review of the first BTR submissions by developed countries, this report is intended to provide an evidentiary foundation for the 2028 MPGs review.
Addressing the Systemic Risks of Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) to Climate Action
Informal Note, 5 June 2026
By Daniel Uribe Terán, Lead Programme Officer, Sustainable Development and Climate Change Programme, South Centre
The current international investment agreement (IIA) framework, featuring over 2,200 treaties with Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanisms, acts as a structural barrier to the implementation of key aspects of the Paris Agreement. By protecting fossil fuel investments, those treaties create significant financial risks that may induce “regulatory chill,” deterring states from implementing necessary climate mitigation measures. Recent rulings from the International Court of Justice, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and the European Court of Human Rights have affirmed states’ sovereign rights to regulate for climate action, providing new legal tools to challenge the ISDS status quo. However, these judicial developments do not eliminate litigation risks or guarantee favourable outcomes. Consequently, states must pursue systemic reform, including treaty modernisation, the termination of outdated IIAs, the implementation of comprehensive climate carve-outs, and restrictions on forward-looking damages. Addressing these legal barriers at upcoming forums like the 64th sessions of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Subsidiary Bodies (SB 64) is essential to align international investment law with the existential imperative of a low-emission transition.
Charting Green Industrial Futures: Advancing Global South Cooperation for a Just Transition
By Danish
Accelerating green industrialisation is essential for Global South countries to align their national climate action with job creation, economic growth and sustainable development. However, they face persistent barriers in access to finance, clean technologies, and policy space needed to implement green industrial policies. This policy brief argues that these constraints can be effectively addressed by developing countries through expanding their international cooperation in climate, trade and industry. Through the analysis of three institutional mechanisms emerging from the Global South – the Africa Green Industrialisation Initiative (AGII), the International Solar Alliance (ISA), and the Integrated Forum on Climate Change and Trade (IFCCT), the brief highlights some ways for developing countries to shape their own green industrial futures and advance a just transition.
The sixty-fourth sessions of the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice and the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SB64), Belém indicators, plastic treaty and Santa Marta outcomes
Informal Note, 5 June 2026
By Daniel Uribe Terán, Lead Programme Officer, and Touba Esfahani Nejad, Intern, of the Sustainable Development and Climate Change Programme (SDCC) at the South Centre
The Belém Adaptation Indicators agreed at COP30 to make adaptation more measurable. While the measurement of the adaptation efforts is a step forward, it is not sufficient. The indicators can be used for comparison and surveillance. However, the adaptation objective of the Paris Agreement is to enhance adaptive capacity, strengthen resilience and reduce vulnerability of persons and of vulnerable ecosystems that are critical for the maintenance of forest ecosystems and the provision of forest ecosystem services. To achieve these objectives, it is necessary to take effective action to provide finance, technology transfer, debt relief and capacity-building. In SB64, developing countries will have the opportunity to discuss what is the role of reporting while support for implementing adaptation measures are missing.
The First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels: Reclaiming Multilateralism for a Just Transition
Informal Note, 28 April 2026
By Daniel Uribe Terán
The First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels, co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands, serves as a necessary platform for reclaiming multilateralism for a just transition. This paper analyses how the conference addresses the ‘judicialization’ of climate obligations following landmark 2025 advisory opinions from the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR). It highlights critical barriers facing developing countries, specifically the ‘regulatory chill’ caused by Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanisms and the ‘debt-fossil fuel trap’ that binds extractive economies to external risks. It also recognises that integrating the ‘People’s Summit’ outcomes into the official Conference could promote a reparative financial model and strengthen the principle of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC). Ultimately, Santa Marta should provide a blueprint for systemic reform, ensuring that global decarbonisation respects resource sovereignty and human dignity while moving toward a coordinated, legally backed effort for collective survival.
The South Centre carries out multiple activities to support developing countries with policy-oriented research, inputs and advice for negotiations and capacity building. The Report summarizes the South Centre’s activities in 2025 and highlights the contexts in which they were conducted as well as the objectives that were pursued with their implementation.
Sovereignty and self-determination over natural resources in times of conflicts, climate change and (neo)colonialism
Side-Event to the 61st Session of the Human Rights Council
Co-organized by the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Development (Special Procedures, United Nations Human Rights Council) and South Centre
10 March 2026, 12-1pm
Concordia 1, Building A, Palais des Nations, Geneva
As we navigate the 61st session of the Human Rights Council, the South Centre and the Special Rapporteur on the right to development are convening a critical discussion on the intersection of resource sovereignty, conflict, and (neo)colonialism.
In an era defined by climate instability and geopolitical shifts, the right to self-determination over natural resources has never been more relevant. We are honoured to host a distinguished panel of ambassadors and experts to explore these challenges.
Promoting a Symbiotic Relationship Between Trade Policy and Climate Action
By Vahini Naidu
This paper is based on remarks delivered in the lead up to COP30. It outlines how African countries are working to align trade, climate action, and development priorities through early transparency on climate-related trade measures, technology transfer, and the protection of policy space for green industrialisation. It also highlights the growing focus on critical minerals, the rise of unilateral climate-related trade measures, and the need to bring scattered initiatives into a coherent multilateral framework that supports fair and sustainable outcomes.
The Role of Advisory Opinions in Shaping International Climate Change Law
By Daniel Uribe Terán
This policy brief analyses how advisory opinions (AOs) from the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) are fundamentally reshaping international climate law. These AOs are crystallising States’ climate commitments, transforming them from voluntary political pledges into binding legal obligations grounded in customary international law and human rights. This judicial shift establishes stringent, science-based due diligence standards, confirms State responsibility for harm, and provides a powerful legal foundation for accountability and reparation.
Leveraging the ICJ Opinion to Secure a Just Climate Future for the South during COP30
By Daniel Uribe Terán
The 30th Conference of the Parties (COP30) in Belém converges with the recent International Court of Justice (ICJ) Advisory Opinion on Climate Change, creating a critical inflexion point for global climate action. This policy brief analyses how the ICJ Opinion has the potential to reframe climate commitments, transforming them from political aspirations into legally binding obligations. The Opinion establishes objective standards for ‘due diligence’, integrates the CBDR-RC principle as a legal criterion for ambition, and inextricably links climate action with human rights. The ICJ Opinion confirms that a breach of these obligations triggers a duty of ‘full reparation.’ This policy brief recommends a strategy for developing countries to leverage this new legal framework at COP30.
Submission on the Work Programme of the High-Level Champions and the Marrakech Partnership (CHLC/MP) 2025 and the Global Climate Action Agenda
South Centre
August 2025
Voluntary action is no longer enough. The South Centre submission to the UNFCCC calls for transforming the climate agenda to ensure true inclusivity, tackle harmful lobbying, and create accountability mechanisms and policy gaps.
Reflections on Global Development in Times of Crisis: Arguments in Favour of an Alternate Development Paradigm
By K. Seeta Prabhu
The multiple interlinked and interacting crises that the world faces today is of unprecedented range and magnitude, halting progress and causing even a reversal in crucial Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) relating to well-being. The current situation of an unequal, unstable and unsustainable world that is fragile and leaves people vulnerable on multiple counts, is due to the policy decisions taken by national governments since the post second World War period that gave priority to economic growth and neglected both intra and inter-generational distributional issues. Economic growth was considered the end instead of the means it was meant to be and ‘being well-off’ was equated with ‘well- being’. The tendency to adopt a ‘Business as Usual’ approach is not an option as empirical analysis indicates that such an approach would lead to global warming that is 3–5 degrees Celsius above pre–industrial levels, which threatens the very existence of the planet. Earlier attempts at reorienting the current development paradigm towards equity and sustainability have not been successful, as exemplified by vaccine distribution during the Covid-19 pandemic, and the limited success of concepts such as inclusive growth and green growth. Often, the elements infusing equity have been add-ons to an inequitable growth process and are more in the nature of token gestures rather than serious efforts at change.
The combined human development and Lifestyle for Environment (LiFE) approach that is proposed in this paper is promising as it has the ethical values of equity and sustainability at its core, propagates the notion of the ‘common good’ and thereby fosters responsible consumption and production. It is also people-centric and builds on indigenous knowledge and agency. The ushering in of this transformational development paradigm will require the forging of a new social contract between the State and Society. Additionally, the developed countries must recognise their responsibility towards the environment and extend support and cooperation to developing countries in the pursuit of a common agenda of attaining a more equal and sustainable world. Increased flow of financial resources to developing countries as well as devising new financing mechanisms enhancing the equity and efficiency dimensions of financing for human development so as to accelerate progress on the SDGs will also be of paramount importance.
