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'Only the Beginning': Santa Marta Summit Heralded as New Dawn in Fight to End Fossil Fuel Era
“Amid a tense geopolitical context and worsening climate extremes, Santa Marta helped spark a feeling of renewed energy, but delegates must now follow through to deliver action, not just words," said a senior climate adviser at Greenpeace.
Apr 30, 2026
Environmental activists are hopeful after a six-day climate summit in Colombia resulted in a coalition of more than 50 countries agreeing to start developing plans to move away from planet-heating fossil fuels. But they say action must now follow talk.
In marked contrast to the annual United Nations climate summits, which have been routinely overrun by oil and gas industry lobbyists and concluded with agreements that largely ignore the imperative to divest from fossil fuels, Shiva Gounden, the head of Greenpeace's delegation this week in Santa Marta, said the conference that concluded Wednesday "was a breath of fresh air, a real sign that the wind is finally shifting."
The 59 nations that attended the First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels did not ultimately end with a binding agreement to transition away from fossil fuels within a specific timeframe, which activists say is urgently necessary as global heating rapidly approaches 1.5°C above preindustrial levels.
Many of the world's biggest polluters—including the United States, China, and India, as well as petrostates like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates—were also absent.
However, the summit did end with attendees, nearly half of whom are fossil fuel producers and who represent more than half of global gross domestic product, agreeing to form tangible "frameworks" for how they plan to transition away from a fossil-fueled model of capitalism that Colombian President Gustavo Petro decried as "suicidal."
Perhaps the single biggest breakthrough at the conference was France's unveiling of a national roadmap to phase out fossil fuels in the coming decades. It became the first developed nation to lay out such a plan, with the goals of removing coal from its national grid by 2027, phasing out oil by 2045, and fossil gas by 2050.
The French climate envoy, Benoit Faraco, described it not only as an obligation but an opportunity: “This process has made us realise we want to be an electro-superpower,” he said, according to The Guardian. “We want to be the electricity Saudi Arabia of Europe, selling green electrons to the UK, Ireland, Germany, and other countries.”
Many attendees also agreed that any collective movement away from fossil fuels would require addressing the debt crisis in the Global South, which many countries—especially those in Africa, where national debts have doubled in the past five years—have found themselves cranking up fossil fuel production to cope with.
While the conference concluded without any binding plan for debt forgiveness, which many delegates from developing countries had proposed, the participants agreed that poorer countries would need support to move out of debt and finance a green transition.
"Fossil fuel dependency deepens economic instability, fuels conflict, and traps countries in cycles of debt," said Bronwen Tucker, public finance lead for Oil Change International. "As long as Global South countries remain locked in this system, while Global North governments write the financial rules, public resources will continue to flow away from people and toward the systems driving crisis."
Laura Caicedo, the campaigns coordinator at Greenpeace Colombia, described the conference as "an important space to put the just energy transition on the agenda ahead of the Climate COP," which will take place in Turkey this coming November.
"There is willingness and a sense of fresh momentum that is worth celebrating," she said. "But this is only the beginning: more time is needed for this process to mature into a true platform for dialogue that can inform decision-making in this and other cooperation spaces on key energy issues."
The next conference on Transitioning Away From Fossil Fuels is set to occur early next year in Tuvalu, a low-lying Pacific island nation that is at risk of becoming uninhabitable within decades due to sea-level rise.
While climate activists were heartened by the progress made in Santa Marta, Gounden said countries need to come to Tuvalu with concrete plans.
“When we get to Tuvalu, the conversation has to change," she said. "We can’t just bring more ambition; we have to bring proof of implementation."
This week's conference took place against the backdrop of the US and Israel's war in Iran, where US President Donald Trump has suggested a key goal is to "take the oil" controlled by Iran. The obstruction of oil shipments has become a critical piece of strategic and economic leverage and simultaneously inflicted chaos upon the global economy, disrupting humanitarian aid for some of the world's poorest and most vulnerable people.
"Amid a tense geopolitical context and worsening climate extremes," said Rodrigo Estrada, Greenpeace International's senior climate adviser, "Santa Marta helped spark a feeling of renewed energy, but delegates must now follow through to deliver action, not just words."
While the war has sent energy companies' profits soaring, the climate advocacy group 350.org estimated this week that the continued blockade of the Strait of Hormuz could cost households and businesses an additional $600 billion to $1 trillion.
"It’s never been clearer that fossil fuel phase-out is imperative for stability and peace," Tucker said. "Every step away from fossil fuels weakens the outsized power and wealth that allows the US to wage illegal wars in the name of energy dominance."
At the next conference, she added, "The richest polluting countries must show they are serious. Canada, Norway, the UK, and the EU must make real plans to accelerate their fossil fuel phaseout at home and come to the table with real economic collaboration."
Mariana Paoli, the climate policy lead for Oxfam, said the lack of action by rich countries was "disappointing" and needed to change.
"Wealthy governments have still not stepped up to provide sufficient climate financing for poorer countries, which face the brunt of the impacts of the climate crisis," she said. "Rich countries hold the historical responsibility for the climate crisis, therefore they must not only move first and faster but also provide finance at scale for others to follow them."
"A just transition," she said, "must make rich polluters pay for the crisis they have caused."
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'Leaving the US Behind,' 50+ Nations Gather in Colombia to 'Phase Out Fossil Fuels'
"Word on the street is NO fossil fuel lobbyists at the Santa Marta, Colombia 'Transition Away' conference," said one climate journalist.
Apr 24, 2026
Representatives of more than 50 countries on Friday kicked off the First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels in Colombia, a hopeful summit that comes amid a worsening global climate crisis and fossil fuel-producing nations' efforts to block a clean energy transition.
Organizers of the conference—which is taking place in the Caribbean city of Santa Marta and is co-hosted by the Netherlands—said participants aim to "initiate a concrete process through which a coalition of committed countries, subnational governments, and relevant stakeholders can identify and advance enabling pathways to implement a progressive transition away from fossil fuels, creating sustainable societies and economies."
"This process will be informed by the experience and perspectives of national and subnational governments, academia, Indigenous peoples, peoples of African descent, peasants, civil society, workers, the private sector, and other key actors at different stages of the transition," the organizers added.
The conference comes amid widespread disappointment and frustration over what climate defenders called a "shamefully weak" draft text—called the Multirão Decision—produced at last November's United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP30, in Brazil. The final document removed all mentions of fossil fuels amid pressure from oil and gas-producing nations like the United States, Russia, and Saudi Arabia, and the presence of a record number of industry lobbyists.
“When multilateral processes move slowly, concrete alliances of the willing can take us a long way," German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said this week at the 17th Petersberg Climate Dialogue in Hesse state, where high-level representatives from around 40 countries discussed "concrete steps towards overcoming the climate crisis."
I've worked on #climate and fossil fuels for almost 30 years and the Santa Marta Conference is definitely one of the most hopeful things I've seen. Finally some governments are exploring solutions that meet the scale of the crisis. Good explainer 🧵👇
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— Patrick Reinsborough ❌👑 (@giantwhispers.bsky.social) April 24, 2026 at 7:57 AM
The Santa Marta conference, which will run through April 29, will focus on three main areas:
- Overcoming economic dependence on fossil fuels;
- Transforming energy supply and demand; and
- Advancing international cooperation and climate diplomacy.
Major fossil fuel producers including Angola, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway, and the United Kingdom are among the 54 nations represented in Santa Marta.
Notably absent from the conference are some of the world's biggest greenhouse gas polluters, including the United States, China, Russia, India, and Japan. Their absence is fine with Colombian Environmental Minister Irene Vélez Torres, who told The Guardian that “this is not the space for them."
"We are not going to have boycotters or climate denialists at the table,” Vélez said.
Also missing by design are the legions of lobbyists who increasingly swarm COP conferences.
Word on the street is NO fossil fuel lobbyists at the Santa Marta, Colombia 'Transition Away' conference. But it does have some of the best climate scientists in the world for an advisory panel.
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— Bob Berwyn (@bberwyn.bsky.social) April 24, 2026 at 11:15 AM
Former Peruvian Environment Minister Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, who heads the World Wildlife Fund's global climate division, said in a statement that "changing the world’s dependence on fossil fuels isn’t a slow problem with a slow solution: We need a rapid, global shift to renewable power, smarter grids, and efficiency, so emissions fall fast and stay down."
"And we need a ‘coalition of the willing’ to show us the way," he added. "Santa Marta is an inflection point and an opportunity that we should not miss.”
The absence of the United States surprised no one, given the Trump administration and Republicans' promotion of oil, gas, and coal. Big Oil invested $445 million during the 2024 election cycle in efforts to elect Trump and other Republicans and promote fossil fuel-friendly policies.
Trump, who ran on a “drill, baby, drill” energy policy, has signed a series of executive orders aimed at boosting fossil fuel production, including by declaring a fake “energy emergency” in a push to fast-track permit approvals. He also tapped former fossil fuel executives to head the Department of Energy and Interior Department, which have pursued a policy of opening up more public lands and waters for fossil fuel development.
At the same time, the Trump administration dropped out of the Paris climate agreement for the second time and moved to roll back the modest climate progress achieved under former President Joe Biden.
Melinda Lewis—who directs the Global Trade Watch program at the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen—is attending the Santa Marta conference, where she is working to dismantle the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) system. The enforced mechanism empowers multinational corporations to sue governments before panels of corporate attorneys and has been denounced by opponents—especially those in the Global South—as a novel form of colonialism.
"While it is tragic that the United States government is failing to meet this critical moment for climate action, we are encouraged that the rest of the world has recognized that it’s high time to take bold action to remove the arcane ISDS extra-legal instrument buried in trade and investment treaties that has been used as a cudgel by fossil fuel and extractive industries to stymie government actions that might reduce their profits," Lewis said on Friday.
As Canadian researcher Joseph Bouchard recently wrote in a Common Dreams opinion piece, "Colombia is especially exposed" to ISDS harm, as "the country has 129 oil and gas projects covered by ISDS provisions, leaving it vulnerable to a wave of potential claims as it pursues its energy transition."
Lewis noted that Colombia's government, led by leftist President Gustavo Petro, "recently announced its intention to renounce its treaties that include ISDS as part of the full package of needed action to usher in a clean energy transition."
Indigenous leaders said more must be done to ensure a just transition.
“We are very concerned. We talk about a just transition, but in practice it is not true,” Oswaldo Muca, General Coordinator of the Organization of Indigenous Peoples of the Colombian Amazon, told Inter Press Service. “Mining continues. Extraction continues. Deforestation continues. The territories and Indigenous peoples continue suffering this problem, and it is becoming more serious every day."
Muca added that benefits from resource extraction "do not reach Indigenous territories, but they destroy the territory and leave the damage."
On Friday, more than 250 legal experts from around the world asserted that "phasing out fossil fuels is not a political choice—it is a legal obligation."
The jurists noted in an open letter that "the International Court of Justice (ICJ) unanimously confirmed that every state must use all means at its disposal to prevent significant harm to the climate system, including by avoiding the principal activities driving it: fossil fuel production and use."
The letter's signers include former Irish President Mary Robinson and Julian Aguon, an Indigenous human rights lawyer from Guam who played a key role in winning the ICJ climate case.
"The phaseout of fossil fuels is not just scientifically necessary to prevent catastrophic and irreversible harm to the climate system, all peoples, and ecosystems; it is legally required," they wrote. "It is also socially, economically, and environmentally beneficial for present and future generations."
Ultimately, countries participating in the Santa Marta conference will draw their own individual roadmaps with the help of scientists and other experts.
“If we think about it," said Vélez, "the conference is that turning point where, collectively, we decide to be on the right side of history."
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When Women Forced Global Climate Talks to Face the Truth
Daniela Durán González’s words felt less like a procedural objection and more like an oracle speaking truth in the court of self-appointed climate policy gods.
Mar 08, 2026
The final moments of United Nations climate summits usually follow a familiar script. In the closing plenary, decisions are gaveled through, despite several powerful objections stated by delegates from climate-vulnerable countries and quietly noted by the Conference of Parties presidency, and the appearance of full consensus by all governments is carefully preserved—no matter how compromised the outcome actually is.
At COP30 in Brazil, that script was nearly held with business as usual.
By the final plenary, meaningful references to fossil fuel phaseout, pushed by a growing number of countries, had already been stripped from the presented outcome text. Many months of organizing and campaigning by civil society, increasingly dire scientific warnings, and pressure from leaders in Brazil and some of the most climate-vulnerable nations had been erased. The fossil fuel omission left behind a painful awareness of the continued death and destruction of communities and land that will inevitably result from this inaction. The disappointing outcome was sadly to be expected, but that didn’t make the moment any less heavy.
Civil society engages in COPs year after year, not because we believe these negotiations will save us, but because they are sites of power, and nonengagement would signal the loss of resolve. We come to stop devastating outcomes from getting worse, to confront decision-makers face to face, to hold governments accountable in real time, and to intervene with sustainable and equitable solutions that are rising from frontline and grassroots communities.
The climate emergency is a mirror, reflecting back to humanity that how we are living with the Earth and each other is existentially flawed.
But something unusual happened in the final COP30 plenary that many of us were thrilled to witness. The climate negotiator from Colombia lifted her flag and spoke out.
Daniela Durán González, head of international affairs at the Colombian Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, raised a procedural objection and disrupted the final conference procedures. The mood in the room shifted instantly, and what had felt preordained suddenly felt like a seismic eruption. I remember exchanging glances with my colleagues as we rose to our feet, cheering as the weight of the moment sank in. For a brief, electric moment in time, the machinery of managed consensus was forced to stop.
Throughout COP30, negotiators wrestled with the need to scale up finance—especially for adaptation; commitments to mitigation efforts; and deep political divisions over whether and how to confront the root causes of climate change, including by advancing just transition pathways. At the center of those divisions and heated discourses were fossil fuels—the source of most global greenhouse gas emissions. Despite support from roughly 80 countries for including language on a roadmap to phase out fossil fuels, opposition from major producing nations and others prevented the inclusion of any explicit mention of fossil fuels in the final outcome text.
Instead of addressing the source of the crisis, the agreed outcome text tinkered only on the margins with some vague commitment to tripling adaptation finance by 2035 and a focus on advancing voluntary implementation initiatives, while abandoning a direct confrontation of fossil fuel phaseout that many delegates had sought.
COP30 unfolded amid a growing and dangerous consolidation of power further aggravating and entrenching inequity. Many of the world’s wealthiest governments and global elites are well aware not only of the accelerating climate crisis, but simultaneously of biodiversity collapse and social instability. Because they are dependent on the fossil fuel economy for their wealth and power, these leaders are willing to do anything but stop the extraction of coal, oil, and gas. Rather than changing course (and exploring other energy sources), many major players are preparing to survive the polycrisis that they themselves are inciting, by escaping to fortified enclaves, privatized resilience, and militarized borders—while the rest of the world absorbs the fallout.
Science offers no room for denial about where all of this is heading. Under existing climate policies, global warming could reach nearly 2.8°C. While countries have strengthened current national climate pledges, even if honored, the world would still be moving toward 2.3-2.5°C of global warming. Any of these scenarios is a catastrophic overshoot. What we call “climate disasters” are, in truth, interlocking ecological, social, and economic crises unfolding simultaneously. Every fraction of a degree of warming deepens the wound that’s inflicted on forests, oceans, ice, and human communities alike. We are talking about forests that breathe life into the Earth, rivers that carry the water of life, soils that sustain our food.
The world’s richest corporations and governments have built their wealth on fossil fuel extraction and domination, and they will not suddenly stop these operations on their own. More than 1,600 fossil fuel lobbyists roamed the halls of COP30, their presence outnumbering every party’s delegation except Brazil’s and setting a new deplorable record. Throughout the conference, fossil fuel-producing countries worked to revert the negotiations back to narrow discussions of emission reductions alone, protecting their expansion agenda while presenting the appearance of action. This is why organizing and resistance by civil society are so essential.
The climate crisis is a symptom of deeper, interlocking crises—racial, economic, ecological, and spiritual—rooted in an ideology of supremacy that treats land, water, life, and people as disposable. Indigenous, Black, brown, and Global South communities have borne the brunt of this deadly logic for centuries, and climate breakdown is an acute and tragically visible manifestation of this ideology.
It was into this constructed reality that Daniela Durán González made her forceful intervention in the closing plenary, reminding us that Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva officially designated the COP30 climate summit in Belém as the "COP of Truth."
The "COP of the Truth" cannot support an outcome that ignores science. According to the IPCC, nearly 75% of global CO2 emissions come from fossil fuels. There is no mitigation if we cannot discuss transitioning away from fossil fuels with means of implementation in a just, orderly, and equitable manner… Denying the best available science requires us to not only put the climate regime at risk but also our existence.
The hall erupted as civil society cheered her on.
Her objection to adopting the mitigation text—registered through a formal point of order—caused the entire plenary proceedings to come to an abrupt stop, which is an exceptionally rare act in a space defined by diplomatic choreography. The COP Presidency temporarily halted the plenary to deliberate the point of order, which inevitably served to bring further attention to the powerful objection. But what followed, as the session reopened, exposed even more about the culture of power dynamics inside these negotiations.
Rather than engaging substantively, a senior Russian delegate took to the floor and admonished González and other objecting nations (who were also represented by women leaders) to “refrain from behaving like children who want to get your hands on all the sweets.” Delegates from Latin America (also women leaders) immediately rebuked the comment as offensive and inappropriate. The exchange laid bare how patriarchal and colonial logics continue to shape climate discourse—where women, particularly women from the Global South, are met with ridicule rather than respect when they speak truth to power.
In that moment, Daniela Durán González’s words felt less like a procedural objection and more like an oracle speaking truth in the court of self-appointed climate policy gods. To hear a strong woman, unbowed, articulate what Indigenous peoples, frontline communities, and global climate advocates have been demanding was to glimpse a different futurity—one not dictated by patriarchal, colonial inertia but shaped by those who have lived the consequences first or deeply care about our collective future.
The climate emergency is a mirror, reflecting back to humanity that how we are living with the Earth and each other is existentially flawed. To address it, we must also confront questions of leadership, equity, justice, and care. Every negotiation, every summit, every treaty is not merely a political event—it is a new opportunity to take part in writing and choosing our future by confronting power imbalances and inequities.
The UN climate process operates by consensus, meaning every party must agree before a decision is adopted. In theory, this is meant to protect equity. However, in practice, it amplifies the power of fossil fuel states and entrenched economic interests, diluting ambition and sidelining voices that challenge the status quo. In recent years, civil society has advocated for reform in the UN climate summit process to limit the power of the fossil fuel industry and elevate the solutions and advocacy of climate justice leadership.
Yet, González’s intervention did not disappear from the proceedings. When the closing plenary resumed, the COP30 President, Ambassador André Corrêa do Lago, acknowledged the need for further work on fossil fuel phaseout by proposing a Presidency-led one-year road map process. He suggested the same for deforestation, as both of these critical—and interconnected—issues were absent from the formal text.
This acknowledgment was also recognized and was in support of another significant breakthrough heralded at COP30. Colombia, alongside the Netherlands, announced an April 2026 international conference focused entirely on fossil fuel phaseout, informed by years of advocacy from climate justice movements and the vision of a civil society initiative called the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Throughout COP30 women leaders, including Daniela Durán González reminded us that leadership is not an inheritance of patriarchal privilege but responsibility to the living, those yet to be born, and the sacred agreement between humanity and Earth.
The April conference in Colombia comes at a pivotal time and demonstrates just how many countries are ready to move forward on a phase-out plan. At COP30, more than 80 countries called for language in support of a transition away from fossil fuels, and there are now 18 countries that have endorsed the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. These countries recognize what is at stake, and the criticality of their upcoming dialogue cannot be overstated. To arrange this conference is to formally acknowledge that no matter how many technological solutions might be developed, if we do not stop the source of climate collapse—coal, oil, and gas—we will not be here to carry out the next steps toward rebuilding as a human community.
It needs to be stated that the parties’ adoption of a new Gender Action Plan and agreement to develop a Just Transition Mechanism were real victories at COP30, ones that were hard fought for and should be truly celebrated, even if details—and dedicated funding—for their successful implementation are yet to be elaborated. They are crucial mechanisms the climate justice movement can utilize to drive change from within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change process, even as it seeks to reform the UNFCCC to better fulfill its mandate and promise. Nevertheless, what was delivered at COP30 is profoundly insufficient. It falls short of what is urgently needed in collective action for the millions already living through climate-fueled devastation and for ecosystems being irreversibly damaged by fossil fuel expansion and deforestation.
Whether we like it or not, and despite the shortcomings of the process, the COP negotiations remain an important part of how we show up and how we collectively work to make our way out of the climate disaster. They provide the access to governments we need to make our demands turn into action. Yet, we can also remember that hope does not live in negotiated text—it lives in people’s movements globally. Communities continue to rise with clarity and courage, advancing real solutions grounded in Indigenous knowledge, feminist principles, climate justice frameworks, and frontline leadership. Communities are insisting on a world shaped by care, consent, justice, and liberation.
Indigenous women leaders from Brazil were clear from the beginning that the COP30 conference should take place in the Amazon. The rainforest biome is at a critical tipping point, and the entire world ecologically depends on the survival of the Amazon. The women wanted the world to hear the voice of the forest and the voices of Indigenous Peoples calling for protection against fossil fuels and other extractive industries.
Specifically, Indigenous women explained that they wanted the global community to experience the spirit of the Amazon because it is time to reforest our minds. “We are here not only to negotiate,” they said, “but to remember.”
Reforesting the mind is an invitation to undo the dead matter logic that governs modern systems—the belief that separation from the Earth is natural, that endless extraction is progress, and that the future can be postponed. It is a call to restore relationship, memory, equity, reciprocity, and responsibility as living principles.
COP30 revealed the crisis with painful clarity. But it also revealed the power of women’s voices to interrupt dangerous narratives and insist on truth. Throughout COP30 women leaders, including Daniela Durán González reminded us that leadership is not an inheritance of patriarchal privilege but responsibility to the living, those yet to be born, and the sacred agreement between humanity and Earth.
Sitting in the plenary with colleagues from all over the world—vigorously applauding both González’s intervention and the COP30 president’s favorable acknowledgement of the First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels in Colombia (a process outside of the UNFCCC)—it was impossible not to feel that history had briefly opened, offering a pathway for new opportunities.
That is why, ahead of the upcoming conference in Colombia, the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network is organizing the Women’s Assembly for a Just Fossil Fuel Phaseout on March 31, the last day of Women’s History Month. At the assembly over 20 global women leaders will convene to advance strategies, proposals, and projects to call for transformative action in Colombia. All are welcome. Now, we need to work toward reforesting our minds and using that opening to ensure a better, more just future.Keep ReadingShow Less
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