ActionAid hails the Santa Marta Conference as a turning point, even as critics warn that major producers in the room are still expanding output
By Bunmi Yekini
The world’s first dedicated intergovernmental conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels concluded in the Colombian port city of Santa Marta on Tuesday, with over 60 nations closing a landmark three-day summit that climate advocates are calling a decisive break from decades of diplomatic deadlock, and a clear signal that the fossil fuel era has entered its final chapter.
The conference, co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands, brought together more than 50 countries, scientists, civil society organisations, and frontline communities not to debate whether to move the world off oil, gas, and coal, but how.
For Teresa Anderson, Global Lead on Climate Justice at ActionAid International, the gathering was unlike anything the climate movement had seen before.
“So many governments expressed real hunger to be free from the economic and climate harm of fossil fuel dependence,” she said. “This was a watershed moment in which the collective mind became truly focused on the common cause of ending the fossil fuel era.”
“What set this conference apart was the willingness to dive into and address the complex challenges of our fossil-fuelled world. The debt crisis, which keeps so many countries trapped on the fossil fuel treadmill against their will, came up repeatedly. Phasing out fossil fuels is not only a matter of energy transition, but also economic transformation, requiring just transitions and climate finance.”
Anderson called on the momentum to be formalised: “Santa Marta is a major milestone on our journey out of the fossil fuel era. It must set the stage for a new Fossil Fuel Treaty for the countries that are ready to lead the world down this path.”
The Santa Marta conference was born out of frustration with the annual United Nations climate COPs, which have been running for 30 years. While the 2023 COP28 summit in Dubai marked the first time an official UN climate document called for a transition “away from fossil fuels in energy systems,” last November’s COP29 in Azerbaijan saw backsliding, marked by controversy over the host country’s promotion of fossil fuel expansion.
Unlike UN-organised COPs, the Santa Marta gathering was a smaller, solutions-focused forum with no official negotiations. It included an academic conference, a People’s Summit and two days of high-level ministerial meetings. Private sector representatives were permitted to attend only if they were aligned with the conference’s objectives.
A coalition of countries at the ministerial level called on the conference to formally recognise the urgent need to negotiate a new international instrument on fossil fuels, one that would establish binding supply-side obligations, close major governance gaps left by existing frameworks, and create the financial and legal architecture necessary for a globally just transition away from coal, oil, and gas.
A recurring theme throughout the conference was the link between developing nations’ debt burdens and their inability to break free from fossil fuel dependence, a connection Anderson’s remarks directly named.
Several high-level ministers and officials championed the Fossil Fuel Treaty during plenary sessions, framing it as the necessary “legal cure” for a global system currently “poisoned” by coal, oil, and gas. The need to address dependence on fossil fuel revenues was described not merely as a climate issue, but as a systemic economic risk for developing nations.
Civil society organisations, which held a parallel People’s Summit ahead of the high-level talks, launched a People’s Declaration for a Rapid, Equitable and Just Transition, grounding their demands in human rights, energy democracy and climate justice, and explicitly linking fossil fuel dependence to geopolitical aggression.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz was among more than 220 experts who wrote to Colombian President Gustavo Petro urging him to use Santa Marta to build a coalition of countries pushing back against the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) system, which critics say locks developing nations into fossil fuel contracts against their will. Shortly after, President Petro announced Colombia would withdraw from the system.
Not all observers were unreservedly celebratory. Analysis published during the conference by decarbonisation consultancy CarbonBridge highlighted a striking paradox at the heart of the gathering.
Six nations present at Santa Marta, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Mexico, Norway, and Nigeria, account for over 80 percent of fossil fuel production among all nations in attendance. A deeper look at their regulatory frameworks shows that their current trajectories are geared toward continued fossil fuel expansion, even as all six aim to significantly expand renewable energy capacity.
Across all countries gathered in Santa Marta, approximately 14 nations are responsible for the lion’s share of oil production, which has increased by 4 percent since 2020. Just eight countries account for 96 percent of the conference’s natural gas production, which has collectively grown by 5 percent over the past decade.
The conference’s 60-odd participating countries collectively represent only 15 percent of global fossil fuel production, a figure that underscores both the coalition’s ambition and its current limitations.
The Santa Marta conference is the first in a series agreed to by 18 nation-states participating in the development of a Fossil Fuel Treaty. A second conference is expected to be held in the Pacific region within a year.
Brazil’s COP30 presidency, which is running a parallel process to create a roadmap for fossil fuel phaseouts to be delivered at COP31 in November 2026, has indicated it will consider the outcomes from Santa Marta in shaping that roadmap.
The Center for International Environmental Law, which participated in the conference, described the event as signalling “a historic shift from decades of deadlock and debate to coordinated action on a managed and equitable phaseout of all fossil fuels.”
For Anderson and the climate justice movement, the ambition of Santa Marta must now be matched with architecture. A treaty. Binding obligations. Debt relief that frees the Global South from the economic chains that keep it drilling.
The fossil fuel era, the conference’s architects insist, is ending. In Santa Marta, a city that still exports millions of tonnes of coal from the port visible from the conference hotel, that claim has never felt more charged with contradiction, or with possibility.