Osprey Orielle Lake is founder and executive director of The Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) and a steering committee member of the Fossil Fuel Treaty.
Around the world, women are leading some of the most powerful efforts to stop fossil fuel expansion and implement the just transition the climate crisis demands.
In the Ecuadorian Amazon, Nemonte Nenquimo, an Indigenous Waorani woman, led a successful lawsuit for the Waorani against the Ecuadorian government to protect their territory and the Amazonian rainforest from oil extraction. Ecuador’s courts ruled in favor of the Waorani, setting a legal precedent for Indigenous rights and prompting similar legal fights worldwide.
In the heart of Cancer Alley in the Gulf South of the United States, Sharon Lavigne, founder of Rise St. James, took on fossil fuel polluters and won. After stopping a Formosa petrochemical facility in her parish, she continues to organize communities to stop fossil fuels, bringing awareness to the severe health impacts caused by the industry.
An initial cornerstone for an upcoming government convening on fossil fuel phaseout is the Fossil Fuel Treaty, which was founded by Tzeporah Burman. She won the 2019 Climate Breakthrough Award for her bold Treaty vision, which has now taken center stage in international climate action.
These women are not anomalies, they are part of a broader movement. Women the world over are stopping harmful projects and building regenerative futures. They are defending land, water, climate, and health. They are redefining what leadership looks like in a time of crisis.
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Research has found that countries with higher representation of women in parliament are more likely to ratify environmental treaties. One prominent cross-national study found that CO2 emissions decrease by approximately 11.51 percent in response to a one-unit increase in each countries’ scoring on the Women’s Political Empowerment Index. When women are incorporated into disaster planning or forest management, projects are more resilient and effective.
Yet because of persistent gender inequality, women – particularly Indigenous, Black and Brown women and women in low-income and frontline communities – are often disproportionately harmed by fossil fuel extraction and pollution. At the same time, they are also indispensable leaders of equitable solutions.
Bold, transformative solutions needed
Although the climate crisis may not be in the headlines recently, the crisis is increasing at lightening speed. From 2023 to 2025, the world crossed a dangerous threshold, marking the first three-year global average that exceeded the crucial 1.5°C guardrail, the very limit scientists identified as critical to avoid the worst catastrophic tipping points.
This is not a eulogy for 1.5°C, but an alarm about a narrowing window. The data makes clear that we still have an opportunity to hold long-term warming below that life-affirming threshold. What is required now is not incrementalism and business as usual but bold and transformative solutions from grassroots movements to the halls of government.
At the top of the list in tackling the climate crisis is the urgent need for a global phaseout of fossil fuel extraction and production. Coal, oil, and gas remain the primary driver of the climate crisis, and fossil fuel pollution is responsible for one in five deaths worldwide. The simple but challenging fact is, there is no way forward without a phaseout.
In 2023, at the U.N. Climate Summit in Dubai (COP28), governments agreed for the first time to “transition away from fossil fuels.” The language was historic but nonbinding, and implementation has been severely hindered. Most governments are doubling down and increasing production across coal, gas, and oil. At COP30 in Brazil, while 80 countries called for fossil fuel language in the final outcome text, governments ultimately left without any commitments to a phaseout.
Women’s assembly for fossil fuel phaseout
In response to this stalled progress, Colombia and the Netherlands are convening the First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels, bringing together governments committed to advancing cooperation toward a managed, equitable phaseout. Occurring outside the formal UN climate negotiations, the gathering reflects a growing recognition that progress often requires voluntary alliances of ambitious nations.
The urgency of this moment demands more than policy tweaks. It calls for a restructuring of the systems that fueled the crisis such as economic models that externalize harm, energy systems that prioritize profit over people, and governance structures that marginalize frontline communities. How we navigate this transition will shape the world our children inherit, and evidence shows that women’s leadership is vital to ensure a healthy and equitable outcome.
Colombia aims to launch fossil fuel transition platform at first global conference
As governments, civil society and global advocates prepare for the conference in Colombia, women’s leadership must not be an afterthought. It needs to be central to the agenda, inspired by equity, justice and care.
That is why the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network is convening global women leaders to advance strategies, proposals, and projects at the public Women’s Assembly for a Just Fossil Fuel Phaseout to be held virtually on March 31 to call for transformative action in Colombia. All are welcome.
A livable future depends on bold action now, and on women leading the way at this critical moment.
The post Why women’s leadership is central to unlocking the global phaseout of fossil fuels appeared first on Climate Home News.
Why women’s leadership is central to unlocking the global phaseout of fossil fuels
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Climate Change
Revealed: Scientists tell Colombia fossil-fuel transition summit to ‘halt new expansion’
Countries attending a first-of-its-kind fossil-fuel summit have been asked to consider “action recommendations” such as “halting all new fossil-fuel expansion” and “reject[ing] gas as a bridging fuel”, according to a preliminary scientific report seen by Carbon Brief.
Around 50 nations will gather in Santa Marta, Colombia from 24-29 April to debate ways to “transition away” from fossil fuels, in the face of worsening climate change and sky-high oil prices.
The talks come after a large group of nations campaigned for, but ultimately failed, to get all countries to formally agree to a “roadmap” away from fossil fuels at the COP30 climate summit in Brazil in November.
The nations gathering in Santa Marta for the summit co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands, call themselves the “coalition of the willing”.
Ahead of country officials arriving in Santa Marta, a global group of academics will gather in the city this week to present and discuss the latest scientific evidence on fossil-fuel phaseout, which will then inform debate among policymakers.
A preliminary scientific “synthesis report” circulated to governments attending the talks and seen by Carbon Brief offers 12 “action insights” for countries to consider, along with a wide range of “action recommendations”.
These recommendations range from “phase out subsidies on fossil-fuel production and consumption” to “kick-start a forum to develop a legal framework to ban fossil-fuel advertisements”.
‘Rapid’ assessment
The preliminary scientific report seen by Carbon Brief – titled, “Action insights for the Santa Marta process” – is the result of some rapid work by an “ad-hoc” group of around 24 scientists.
It is designed to present governments attending the talks with concrete and actionable recommendations for transitioning away from fossil fuels.
The preliminary version, which includes recommendations such as “halting all new fossil fuel expansion”, has already been circulated to governments, with a view that this could help them to prepare for the talks in advance.
It will be further debated and refined by scientists attending the academic segment of the Santa Marta talks, before a final version is made public towards the end of April, Carbon Brief understands.
The process to produce the report began shortly after the conclusion of the COP30 climate summit in Brazil in November, explains its lead author, Dr Friedrich Bohn, a research scientist and co-founder of the Earth Resilience Institute in Germany. He tells Carbon Brief:
“When [Brazil] announced there would be a Santa Marta conference led by Colombia and the Netherlands, I was sitting listening with a small group of scientists. We thought: ‘This is great news, but it should be supported by scientific expertise.’”
One of the members of Bohn’s group had a pre-existing relationship with the Colombian government, allowing a dialogue to quickly be established, he continues:
“In the beginning, the idea was to just write a peer-reviewed paper. But, because of this close connection to the Colombian government and some feedback from them, the synthesis paper evolved.”
The report came out of a “very rapidly evolved process” that relied on the “goodwill” and “enthusiasm” of the academics involved, adds coordinating author Prof Frank Jotzo, a professor of climate change economics at Australian National University. (Jotzo is a former Carbon Brief contributing editor.) He tells Carbon Brief:
“It’s an attempt to get broad coverage on relevant topics from researchers with good expertise and reputation.”
The group of 24 scientists involved spent around two months compiling the “action insights” for the report, drawing on their expertise and the latest available research, says Jotzo.
Given the rapid nature of the report, it does not aim to be “completist”, has not been externally reviewed and did not follow a stringent process for author selection comparable to that used by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, he adds.
The contributors to the report currently skew to the global north and include more men than women, adds Bohn.
‘Direct guidance’
In a departure from IPCC reports, the preliminary Santa Marta synthesis report offers “very direct guidance to action”, says Jotzo.
The report lists 12 “action insights”, each with three “action recommendations”. (The list was cut down from a shortlist of about 40-50 insights, Carbon Brief understands.)
One of the most striking in the draft is “action insight 5”, which says:
“Take immediate measures to prevent future emissions. Ban new fossil infrastructure, mandate deep methane cuts, accelerate electrification and inscribe fossil-fuel phase-down targets in NDCs [nationally determined contributions] and clean-energy pathways support to low and middle income countries (LMICs).”
The accompanying three “action recommendations” include “halting all new fossil-fuel extraction and infrastructure projects ahead of a final investment decision”, “implementing deep, legally binding methane cuts in the energy sector” and “inscrib[ing] targets for fossil-fuel phase down, electrification and green exports in NDCs”.
(The draft report includes multiple references to “phasing out” and “phasing down” fossil fuels, rather than the “transition away from fossil fuels” language that was, ultimately, agreed by countries at the COP28 UN climate talks in Dubai in 2023.)
Another action insight says “public support for climate action is broadly underestimated and undermined by interest groups, but it can be strengthened by debunking greenwashing narratives”.
One recommendation for this insight is that nations “reject natural gas as a bridging technology and CCS [carbon capture and storage] techniques as scalable compensation”.
In a letter introducing the report to governments and civil society, the scientists note that making direct recommendations is a “challenge for our community”, but added:
“However, in the spirit of a constructive collaboration between science and policymaking, we allowed ourselves to identify some potential courses of action that our community would recommend for each particular issue – and we invite you to weigh these against your own circumstances and pick up whatever seems most useful for you and your colleagues.”
The prescriptiveness of the recommendations – something strictly prohibited in IPCC reports – was an explicit request from the Colombian government, Bohn says:
“The idea of actionable recommendations was introduced by the Colombian government.
“There was some discussion within the team about this. It’s a tricky area when you leave science and move to consultation. Therefore, we agreed, in the end, to call them ‘actionable recommendations’ and to make them as precise as possible, from the scientific perspective.”
Jotzo, a veteran of the IPCC process, tells Carbon Brief that it was “very liberating” to work on a report with a “free-form process”:
“The bulk of policy-related research is very readily deployed to recommendations pointing out what countries could do. The IPCC process, for example, just doesn’t allow that. As far as the summary for policymakers in the IPCC is concerned, it will usually be governments that filter out anything that could be interpreted as a specific recommendation.”
He adds that the hope is that some of the action insights might be reflected in the high-level segment of the Santa Marta conference:
“No one is under any illusions that governments will walk away from the Santa Marta conference and will have made a decision to implement recommendations one, seven and nine – or something like that. But it is a chance to insert directly applicable action points into national and plurilateral policy agendas.”
Colombia calling
The preliminary report will be further debated and refined by scientists attending the “pre-academic segment” of the Santa Marta talks.
This is taking place from 24-26 April, ahead of the “high-level segment” involving ministers and other policymakers from 28-29 April.
The pre-academic segment will also separately see the launch of a new advisory panel on fossil-fuel transition and a scientifically led roadmap for how Colombia can transition away from fossil fuels, Carbon Brief understands.
The high-level segment is expected to be attended by representatives from around 50 countries, including COP31 host Turkey and major oil-and-gas producers such as the UK, Canada, Australia, Brazil and Norway.
Countries expected to attend account for one-third of global fossil-fuel demand and one-fifth of global production, according to the Colombian government.
At the end of the conference, countries are due to release a report featuring a “menu of solutions” for transitioning away from fossil fuels, according to Colombia’s environment minister Irene Vélez Torres.
This report is in turn set to inform a global “roadmap” on transitioning away from fossil fuels being developed by the Brazilian COP30 presidency, which is due to be presented at COP31 in Turkey this November.
The Brazilian COP30 presidency offered to bring forward a “voluntary” fossil-fuel transition “roadmap” outside of the official COP process, after countries failed to formally agree to one during negotiations in Belém.
The post Revealed: Scientists tell Colombia fossil-fuel transition summit to ‘halt new expansion’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Revealed: Scientists tell Colombia fossil-fuel transition summit to ‘halt new expansion’
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