After COP28 lastly acknowledged the necessity to transition away from fossil fuels, Santa Marta tried to show that promise into one thing extra concrete. Journalist Seden Anlar explores whether or not its phaseout momentum can survive the highway to COP31 and the boards the place fossil-fuelled energy nonetheless shapes the principles.
Credit Eelco Böhtlingk | Unsplash, Public Area.
For greater than three a long time, UN local weather summits have circled across the similar very apparent drawback.
Science has mentioned it. Island states have mentioned it. Local weather activists have mentioned it on banners, in chants, in press conferences and, finally, in exhaustion.
Fossil fuels are driving the local weather disaster.
And but contained in the negotiating rooms, coal, oil and gasoline have usually been handled just like the elephant within the room: the factor everybody is aware of, however not everyone seems to be prepared to say too clearly. Particularly over the previous few Conferences of Events (COPs), governments have spoken at size about emissions, temperature limits, ambition, finance, internet zero and protecting 1.5°C alive – whereas the battle over fossil fuels itself was usually lowered to verbs, commas and the distinction between ‘section down’ and ‘section out’.
That modified, no less than on paper, at COP28 in Dubai, when governments agreed for the primary time to ’transition away from fossil fuels’ in vitality techniques. However the wording nonetheless left nearly every thing unresolved: no timeline, no roadmap, no mechanism and sufficient ambiguity for false options to be dressed up as treatments.
After a long time of local weather diplomacy, the world had lastly moved from ‘fossil fuels are the issue’ to ‘fossil fuels ought to finally go’. The tougher query was easy methods to flip that sentence right into a deliberate, financed and honest transition.
Santa Marta’s smaller room
That’s the reason representatives from 57 nations, alongside scientists, civil society teams and different stakeholders, got here collectively in Santa Marta, Colombia in April 2026, and mentioned, in impact: sufficient pretending that imprecise COP language can deal with this.
So the convention was not one other COP, nor was it designed to provide a common settlement with each main polluter, producer and blocker within the room. Maybe that was the purpose. The co-hosts invited a choose group of nations they believed had been prepared to interact, leaving out others, together with the US, Russia, India and China.
That made the room smaller, however the dialog extra direct. Santa Marta didn’t want consensus from each nation as consensus is usually the place fossil gasoline language goes to be softened, delayed or quietly buried. As a substitute of combating over whether or not fossil fuels might be named in any respect, contributors might speak about roadmaps, subsidies, debt, commerce, manufacturing, demand discount and the monetary techniques that maintain nations tied to coal, oil and gasoline.
The format was totally different too. Scientists met earlier than the ministerial classes. A Folks’s Meeting introduced Indigenous peoples, Afro-descendant communities, farmers, commerce union representatives, girls’s rights activists, kids and different civil society teams into the method. Ministers, envoys and stakeholders additionally joined breakout classes on deliberate fossil gasoline decline and monetary gaps. For a course of normally dominated by cautious language, closed rooms, procedural ambushes, protest crackdowns and science handled as background noise, Santa Marta did issues in another way.
The consequence was not a binding fossil gasoline phaseout settlement. No nation left legally required to finish fossil gasoline manufacturing. There was no international finish date for coal, oil or gasoline.
However Santa Marta did start to construct a few of the equipment a deliberate transition would require: a Science Panel for the International Vitality Transition, workstreams on transition roadmaps, macroeconomic dependence and fossil gasoline–free commerce techniques, and a second summit in Tuvalu in 2027, to be co-hosted by Eire.
Extra importantly, it moved the fossil gasoline debate someplace extra concrete. If governments had been severe about transitioning away from fossil fuels, then the query was now not whether or not they might conform to say so. It was what would really make that transition doable: finance, governance and planning.
Finance, as a result of nations can’t merely be instructed to go away sources within the floor whereas changing public revenues, defending employees and constructing clear options on their very own. Governance, as a result of supporters of the Fossil Gasoline Treaty argue that phaseout wants a authorized framework, not scattered nationwide pledges and voluntary guarantees. And planning, as a result of ‘transitioning away’ means little except it turns into timelines, sectors, fuel-by-fuel targets and insurance policies governments can really be judged in opposition to.
France turned one instance of that. It used Santa Marta to place a roadmap on the desk – an attention-grabbing transfer after the EU did not safe the stronger fossil gasoline roadmap language it had pushed for within the COP course of. France’s plan goals to chop the fossil gasoline share of ultimate vitality consumption from round 60% in 2023 to 40% by 2030 and 30% by 2035, on the best way to carbon neutrality in 2050. It additionally units fuel-by-fuel targets: phasing out coal by 2030, oil by 2045 and gasoline by 2050.
In that sense, France’s roadmap did one of many issues Santa Marta was making an attempt to do. It moved past one other sentence about ‘transitioning away’ and put ahead a nationwide pathway with dates, sectors and supply questions hooked up.
However the actual check was by no means solely going to be whether or not nations might current roadmaps in Santa Marta. It was whether or not that direct fossil gasoline dialog might journey past Santa Marta into boards nonetheless formed by main emitters, fossil gasoline producers and fossil gasoline–dependent economies.
That query emerged nearly instantly. And it emerged, awkwardly, by way of France.
France’s phaseout paradox
In Santa Marta, France had offered fossil gasoline phaseout as one thing that might be deliberate: a matter of dates, sectors, supply and nationwide technique. However beneath its 2026 G7 presidency, it made a really totally different calculation.
On the G7 surroundings ministers’ assembly in Paris, France selected to not put local weather change instantly on the formal agenda as a way to keep away from a confrontation with the US.
That contradiction goes to the guts of the issue Santa Marta was supposed to deal with. France had framed phaseout in phrases governments normally like – vitality safety, financial resilience, sovereignty and industrial coverage. However when local weather itself turned politically inconvenient, even that language had its limits.
Santa Marta confirmed that fossil fuels might be mentioned instantly when the room is constructed for that function. The G7 confirmed how shortly that directness can collapse when the dialog strikes again into boards the place the richest and most fossil-fuelled economies nonetheless get to resolve what can and can’t be mentioned.
Bonn then confirmed one thing comparable contained in the formal United Nations Framework Conference on Local weather Change (UNFCCC) course of: the fossil gasoline query had entered the room, however the battle over whether or not it might be named, ruled and translated into roadmaps was nonetheless very a lot alive.
Bonn once more
The Bonn Local weather Change Convention, generally known as SB64, was the primary main UNFCCC negotiating second after Santa Marta and earlier than COP31, which proved tough nearly instantly. The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), the EU and the UK pushed to maintain the transition away from fossil fuels seen, whereas the Arab Group, Like-Minded Creating Nations and Russia resisted singling out coal, oil and gasoline. The acquainted fault line was nonetheless there: climate-vulnerable states and nations pushing for a clearer fossil gasoline phaseout needed fossil fuels named instantly; fossil gasoline producers and fossil gasoline–dependent blocs most popular broader language about emissions, finance and nationwide circumstances.
One focus of that battle was the fossil gasoline roadmap launched by Brazil’s COP30 presidency after final yr’s summit in Belém. The roadmap just isn’t a negotiated UN settlement, however a presidency-led course of meant to maintain the transition away from fossil fuels on the desk. A number of European and island states argued in Bonn that it mustn’t grow to be a one-off report, whereas civil society teams pushed for it to grow to be an actual device for accountability, finance and simply transition – not one other doc that politely acknowledges the issue earlier than disappearing into the COP archive.
Bonn didn’t resolve the battle. Nevertheless it did carry the Santa Marta query into the UNFCCC bloodstream. Subsequent within the UNFCCC course of, at COP31, that query will sit inside a broader debate over what implementation really means.
{The electrical} COP-out
The summit will happen in Antalya, Türkiye, in November, with an uncommon association: Türkiye will host, whereas Australia’s Chris Bowen will lead the formal negotiations. COP31 is already being pitched as a COP of implementation, with an agenda constructed round electrification, buildings, waste, methane discount, resilient cities and local weather finance, together with a voluntary proposed purpose to lift the share of ultimate vitality demand met by electrical energy to 35% by 2035.
That electrification goal is necessary. If extra vehicles, houses, heating techniques and industrial processes run on electrical energy – and if that electrical energy more and more comes from renewables – fossil gasoline demand can fall. It is among the clearest methods to make the transition tangible.
However chopping demand for fossil fuels just isn’t the identical as planning their decline.
That’s the hole Santa Marta tried to show. A rustic can help electrification whereas nonetheless increasing coal, oil and gasoline manufacturing. A summit can speak about clear vitality deployment whereas avoiding the tougher questions of when fossil gasoline manufacturing stops rising, how decline is managed and who pays for it.
Australia is an efficient instance of that contradiction. Bowen has argued that Australia should put together for a world by which fossil gasoline exports grow to be tougher, and shift towards exporting clear vitality merchandise as an alternative. However Australia stays one of many world’s main coal and gasoline exporters. In response to Local weather Council, since 2022 its authorities has accepted greater than 30 new, expanded or prolonged fossil gasoline developments.
That’s the place the importance of Santa Marta both issues or fades. If its roadmap push retains transferring into the formal course of, COP31 might grow to be greater than a clear vitality summit. It might grow to be a spot the place implementation begins to imply not solely scaling up options, however managing the decline of fossil fuels themselves.
If not, fossil gasoline phaseout dangers remaining what it has so usually been in local weather diplomacy: acknowledged in precept, resisted in language and delayed in follow.
The views and opinions on this article don’t essentially mirror these of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung European Union | International Dialogue.
Extra articles in Spanish on the Santa Convention might be discovered right here: Conferencia para la transición más allá de los combustibles fósiles | Heinrich Böll Stiftung | Bogotá, Colombia
