Why green industrialisation can no longer sit outside climate talks

Multilateral institutions are shaping their language around green industrialisation and green industrial policy.

The Industrial Development Report 2026, United Nations Industrial Development Organization’s flagship report, stresses the renewed centrality of industrialisation in development thinking. It repeatedly links future industrialisation to the energy transition and environmental efficiency, suggesting that ‘green’ is not a qualifier but a defining characteristic. Its emphasis on capability gaps, regional differentiation and long-term structural transformation reflects an understanding of green industrialisation as a systemic, multi-decade process.

The G20, too, is referencing “sustainable industrial policy”, stressing the need for value addition and supply-chain development, particularly around critical minerals and clean technologies.

A G20-linked policy brief authored by institutions including Institute for Economic Justice, International Trade Administration Commission of South Africa, University of Oxford, School of Oriental and African Studies, and Industry, Infrastructures, and Innovation for Strategic Transformation or i3T focuses on the constraints that industrial policy is facing globally.

Trade rules, investment agreements, intellectual property regimes and financial architecture are identified as barriers that shape who can pursue green industrial strategies and who cannot. The message here, too, is that global rules have not caught up with the urgency of transformation being demanded, especially for developing countries.

Thus, there appears to be a degree of convergence in these discussions—from calls to remove international constraints on industrial policy to efforts to map the potential for building clean-technology manufacturing capabilities or make high-level declarations on green industrialisation. A few commonalities across forums are telling. Green industrialisation is being highlighted as:

• necessary for decarbonisation,

• central to development and employment,

• dependent on policy space and coordination, and

• already shaping global competition and supply chains.

The Belem Declaration on Global Green Industrialisation, adopted at 30th Conference of Parties (COP30) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), was yet another avenue where green industrialisation is explicitly elevated as a necessary condition for meeting Paris goals. The declaration links climate outcomes to industrial supply chains, while also stressing that green industrialisation must avoid deepening inequalities. It calls for a multilateral effort to advance the green industrialisation agenda.