As oil prices spike due to the Iran war, a new diplomatic process launched in Colombia will support a group of 57 countries – among them large fossil-fuel producers – interested in designing national roadmaps and a new financial architecture to wean their economies off coal, oil and gas, as well as building a trade system that favours clean energy.

The first global conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels wrapped up on Wednesday in the coal-port city of Santa Marta after several days of discussions bringing together ministers, academics, Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples, green groups, trade unions and business representatives.

It offered a space for governments frustrated by last year’s failed attempt at COP30 to develop a global roadmap away from fossil fuels to make progress on how to reduce their reliance on hydrocarbons in a fair and carefully planned way, in line with a commitment made at COP28 in Dubai. Large fossil fuel-producing countries have since blocked concrete advances at the UN talks on putting that into practice.

The Santa Marta outcomes will feed into a voluntary roadmap being crafted by COP30 hosts Brazil based on inputs from countries and civil society.

Santa Marta: Ministers grapple with practicalities of fossil fuel phase-out

At Wednesday’s closing plenary, Colombian environment minister Irene Vélez Torres announced that a second conference will be held early next year in the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu, co-chaired by Ireland, marking the start of a new policy-making process to run alongside the slower-paced climate COPs.

“For the first time, it demonstrates that it is possible to make a different type of environmental democracy,” Vélez Torres said, adding that improvements can be made to the methodology.

Colombia and the Netherlands, which jointly hosted the Santa Marta conference, said three workstreams had been set up to identify concrete ways to reduce fossil fuel dependence and strengthen co-operation between countries.

These workstreams are focused on designing national and regional roadmaps away from fossil fuels including coordinating support for implementation; reforming economic and financial architecture by reducing fossil fuel subsidies, unlocking investment and managing debt constraints; and connecting fossil fuel-producing and consuming nations to reshape the international trade system towards decarbonisation and green commerce.

A summary report of the conference said governments would receive policy support from a new panel of top scientists specialised in the energy transition, which will help countries develop roadmaps and align them with their national climate action plans (NDCs).

During two days of ministerial meetings, France was the first country to announce its own roadmap, which includes targets to end the consumption of coal by 2030, oil by 2045 and fossil gas by 2050 for energy purposes.

Dutch climate minister Stientje van Veldhoven said that, while “nobody is gonna force” governments to implement the anticipated roadmaps, “these countries came together because they want to transition to a different economy”, adding that the conference provides “safe space for dialogue”.

“The fact that we don’t have negotiations here gave us such different dynamics, so the psychology of the Santa Marta conference is something that we will definitely make sure to carry forward,” she told the plenary. Later she said at a press conference that the key was not to negotiate but to “collaborate”.

Call for a fossil fuel treaty

Countries gave mostly positive reactions to the conference proceedings and said the general mood had been uplifting. One government delegate from the Dominican Republic even had to fight back tears in the plenary as she thanked the hosts for inspiring the group of assembled countries.

While supportive of the Santa Marta discussions, oil-rich Nigeria advocated strongly for a “managed, just, orderly and equitable” transition away from fossil fuels, warning against any “sudden closures”. This stance was reflected in the summary report which notes that fossil fuels should “decline in a managed, fair, and politically viable way”.

Ghana, another fossil fuel-producing country, said oil and gas remain deeply tied to government revenues which fund public services. Nonetheless, the West African country urged others to join an initiative to negotiate a global “Fossil Fuel Treaty”, which a group of 18 nations called on the conference to endorse. The effort was not included in the Santa Marta workstreams.

Felix Wertli, Switzerland’s ambassador for the environment, said countries had found potential areas for collaboration around improving electricity grids, energy storage and green investments ahead of this year’s COP31 UN climate summit in Türkiye. “We are confident that this COP could support such a call,” he added.

“Groundbreaking” talks

Delegates said Santa Marta had offered a “more relaxed” and inclusive process than UN negotiations. Government officials met face-to-face in hours-long conversations and interacted with representatives of different social sectors, including Indigenous peoples, cities and academics in closed-door breakout sessions.

Panama’s climate envoy, Juan Carlos Monterrey, told Climate Home News that, while he had been sceptical of the process at first, it allowed for discussions to “flow” in a way that COPs do not. “That is groundbreaking – it is a massive change in how we deal with environmental diplomacy,” he said.

EU climate chief Wopke Hoekstra told journalists that the fact that the conference had happened at all just a few months after a tense COP30 was an achievement in itself. UK climate envoy Rachel Kyte also noted that the Santa Marta dialogue “is a proof of point that we can talk maturely about a really difficult issue”.

Comment: Santa Marta marks a new chapter in climate diplomacy

Observers also largely praised the conference. Catherine Abreu, director of the International Climate Politics Hub, called it a “productive space” for discussing the “stickiest issues” in the energy transition. WWF’s Manuel Pulgar Vidal, also a former COP president for Peru, said Santa Marta made “hope swell into momentum”, adding that its urgency must be sustained beyond this one summit.

Patricia Suárez, from the Organization of Indigenous Peoples of the Colombian Amazon (OPIAC), said Indigenous peoples were optimistic that the conference had placed “the urgency of moving away from fossil fuels on the table”. But more concrete measures must follow, she noted, including declaring key rainforest ecosystems as “fossil fuel exclusion zones”.

One area the conference was criticised for overlooking was the health harms caused by fossil fuels through air pollution, extreme heat and other impacts. Jeni Miller, executive director of the Global Climate and Health Alliance, which unites 250 health organisations, said leaders in Santa Marta “did not address the importance of protecting people’s health”, which should be put at the centre of the conversation.

Influencing UN negotiations

Most government officials at the conference recognised the need to grow the “coalition of the willing” cemented in Santa Marta into a larger network that can influence other spaces such as UN climate negotiations – and its organisers reiterated that the door is open for others countries to join.

Dutch minister van Veldhoven told the final plenary that while “we are here with an immense group in Santa Marta, it is still too small” to fully disentangle the world from fossil fuels. Colombia and the Netherlands did not invite some powerful fossil fuel-producing countries like Russia and the US to the gathering because of their “openly extractivist” views, and major players in the clean energy sector like China were also left off the list.

Comment: Six nations at Santa Marta could shape fossil fuel futures

Tuvalu’s climate minister, Maina Vakafua Talia, told Climate Home News that big actors like China should be at the table, saying the criteria for invitations could change for the second fossil fuel phase-out conference his country will organise in April 2027.

“If we are missing out the main players in the discussion, then we are moving in a loop,” he said. “We need to find somehow how we can engage with [them] because there is no point in talking to ourselves.”

Claudio Angelo, head of international politics at Brazilian NGO Observatório do Clima, said countries could decide to keep the ball rolling within the UN climate negotiations by presenting formal agenda items on roadmaps away from fossil fuels at the annual Bonn talks in June which set the scene for COPs.

Tina Stege, climate envoy from the Marshall Islands, argued “there is a strong recognition that what we’re doing here can complement the COP process and needs to inform that process” – a view backed by other Pacific islands.

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Santa Marta summit kick-starts work on key steps for fossil fuel transition

Türkiye’s COP31 presidency has struck a “strategic” partnership with the International Energy Agency (IEA), aiming to speed up the global clean energy transition amid “the biggest energy crisis in history” triggered by the Iran war.

The Paris-based watchdog will work with the host nation of this year’s UN climate summit on areas including energy supply and security, electrification and green industrialisation, Murat Kurum, Türkiye’s climate minister, said at a high-level summit hosted by the IEA on Thursday.

“We all have to act together and make sure that we transform the crisis into an opportunity,” the COP31 president said, adding that the “most critical step” is to accelerate the transition to clean energy.

The IEA’s executive director, Fatih Birol, said the agency is closely watching how governments are reacting to what he described as “the biggest energy crisis in history” and whether those national responses will push climate-heating emissions up or down.

The Paris gathering came hot on the heels of the first global conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels in Colombia, where many governments pointed to fossil fuel volatility as a risk for energy security and economic growth, and used it as an argument to move away from oil and gas towards renewables.

Clean cooking and waste emissions in focus

Though details of how the partnership will operate in practice remain limited, Kurum said one of its most important pillars will be finding solutions to expand clean cooking in developing countries, which the COP31 president promised to bring “to the centre of the global agenda”.

The IEA has been leading global discussions on helping the 2.3 billion people across the world – mainly in the Global South – using highly-polluting fuels like charcoal, firewood and waste switch to cleaner and more efficient cooking solutions to reduce emissions and damaging health impacts.

The agency is organising a summit to improve clean cooking access for Africans this July, alongside the Kenyan, US and Norwegian governments. Clean cooking solutions set to be promoted include fossil gas, alongside electric and solar-powered stoves.

Kurum also added that the IEA will carry out special research on the impact of waste recycling on climate change, which will inform the COP31 presidency’s agenda on cutting emissions from garbage, one of Türkiye’s priorities which is spearheaded by the president’s wife.

COP28 chief missing

The IEA convened representatives from over 50 governments, together with business leaders, on Thursday for the first in a series of dialogues aimed at advancing energy discussions ahead of the UN climate summit in November, where Australia will lead the negotiations.

They were joined by previous COP presidents, including veteran French diplomat Laurent Fabius, one of the key architects of the Paris Agreement, and Britain’s COP26 chief, Alok Sharma.

Sultan Al Jaber, the UAE’s COP28 president, was “very sorry” for not being able to join the meeting, Birol said. As the UAE announced its exit from the OPEC oil cartel this week, Al Jaber, who heads up the Emirati oil company Adnoc, said the firm’s ambition was “to deliver more…across oil, gas, chemicals, and low carbon and renewable energy”.

‘Bleaker’ outlook

Sharma said the current trajectory of global greenhouse gas emissions is “much bleaker” than what it looked like when he presided over negotiations in Glasgow in 2021.

At that time, the IEA calculated that if all new commitments made at the summit were met, global warming could be limited to 1.8C above pre-industrialised levels, offering an optimistic outlook. Today, the UN says the world has already failed to hold warming to 1.5C and is on course for a rise of 2.6-3.1C.

Santa Marta marks a new chapter in climate diplomacy

Sharma said he didn’t “want to be the skunk at the party”, but pointed out that little money is yet flowing to decarbonise hard-to-abate industries and to support clean energy development anywhere outside China, Europe and the US. “If you want to transition away from fossil fuels, you need to provide the finance,” he added.

New finance mechanism promised

Echoing his remarks, COP21 president Fabius said “not easy” subjects like finance will need to be tackled at this year’s climate summit if countries want to make progress on putting into practice what’s been agreed at previous talks.

“Without financial, concrete steps there’s no implementation and it’s all talk,” he added.

COP31’s Kurum promised the presidency would “follow up” on the UN climate finance goal negotiated at COP29, when rich countries agreed to provide at least $300 billion annually by 2035 to developing nations to help them lower emissions and adapt to a warming world.

“We are working on a new mechanism to match the right projects with the right financing and make access to financing as easy as possible,” Kurum said.

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Türkiye’s COP31 presidency and IEA join forces on clean energy push

Indigenous leaders from across the Amazon have warned that stopping the expansion of oil drilling into their territories will be a crucial test for a growing international coalition committed to transitioning away from fossil fuels.

As 60 countries discussed at a landmark conference in Santa Marta, Colombia, pathways to end the world’s reliance on fossil fuels, Indigenous groups said the process risks losing credibility if governments continue opening new oil frontiers in the Amazon.

Their central demand was the establishment of fossil fuel “exclusion zones” across Indigenous territories and biodiverse areas of the rainforest, permanently barring new oil and gas expansion in one of the world’s most critical ecosystems. Indigenous representatives proposed establishing protected “Life Zones”, which they said would provide legal safeguards against governments and companies seeking to expand extraction into their lands.

But Indigenous delegates left the conference frustrated as the final synthesis report drafted by co-chairs Colombia and the Netherlands failed to include the proposal.

In a statement at the end of the conference, Patricia Suárez, from the Organization of Indigenous Peoples of the Colombian Amazon (OPIAC), said formally declaring Indigenous territories – especially those inhabited by peoples in voluntary isolation – as exclusion zones for extractive industries was “an urgent measure”.

“If the heart of the conference does not begin there, it risks remaining a set of good intentions that fails to respond to either science or our Indigenous knowledge systems,” she added.

Pushing for a new oil frontier

Campaigners say the pressure on the Amazon is intensifying just as scientists warn the rainforest is nearing irreversible collapse. Around 20% of all newly identified global oil reserves between 2022 and 2024 were discovered in the Amazon basin, fuelling renewed interest from governments and companies seeking to develop the region as the world’s next major oil frontier.

Ecuador has moved ahead with the auction of new oil blocks in the rainforest, while the country’s right-wing president Daniel Noboa has promoted the region as a “new oil-producing horizon” and backed efforts to expand fracking with support from Chinese companies.

In Santa Marta, a coalition of seven Indigenous nations from Ecuador issued a declaration condemning the government, which did not participate in the conference.

“While the world talks about energy transition, our government is pushing for more oil in the Amazon,” said Marcelo Mayancha, president of the Shiwiar nation. “Throughout history, we have always defended our land. That is our home. We will forever defend our territory.”

Indigenous groups also warned that Peru – another South American nation absent from the conference – plans to auction new oil blocks in the Yavarí-Tapiche Territorial Corridor, a highly sensitive region along the Brazilian border that contains the world’s largest known concentration of Indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation.

COP30 host under scrutiny

Indigenous leaders also criticised Brazil, arguing that despite its international climate leadership, the country is simultaneously advancing major new oil projects in the Amazon region.

Luene Karipuna, delegate from Brazil’s coalition of Amazon peoples (COIAB), said the oil push threatens the stability of the rainforest. Not far from her home, in the northern state of Amapá, state-run oil giant Petrobras is currently exploring for new offshore oil reserves off the mouth of the Amazon river.

Brazil participated in the Santa Marta conference and was among the countries that first pushed for discussions on transitioning away from fossil fuels at COP negotiations. Yet the country is also planning one of the largest expansions in oil production in the world, according to last year’s Production Gap report.

Veteran Brazilian climate scientist Carlos Nobre told Climate Home that the country’s participation at the Santa Marta conference contrasted with its oil and gas production targets. “It does not make any sense for Brazil to continue with any new oil exploration,” he said, and noted that science is clear that no new fossil fuels should be developed to avoid crossing dangerous climate tipping points.

He added that the Brazilian government faces pressures from economic sectors, since Petrobras is one of the countries top exporting companies. “They look only at the economic value of exporting fossil fuels. Brazil has to change.”

The COP30 host also promised to draft a voluntary proposal for a global roadmap away from fossil fuels, which is expected to be published before this year’s COP31 summit.

“In Brazil, that advance has caused so many problems because it overlaps with Indigenous territories. Companies tell us there won’t be an impact, but we see an impact,” Karipuna said. “We feel the Brazilian government has auctioned our land without dialogue.”

For Karipuna and other Indigenous leaders, establishing exclusion zones across the Amazon is no longer just a regional demand, but a prerequisite to prevent the collapse of the rainforest.

“That’s the first step for an energy transition that places Indigenous peoples at the centre,” she added.

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