Santa Marta summit establishes practical pathways for countries to transition away from fossil fuels

At a first-of-its-kind summit in Santa Marta, Colombia, countries left with a practical agenda for moving away from fossil fuels, centred on national roadmaps, subsidy reform and cleaner trade rules. The meeting, held from 24 to 29 April and co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands, brought together 57 countries, alongside scientists, parliamentarians, civil society groups and Indigenous representatives, in a format officials described as a marked departure from the usual tone of UN climate diplomacy.

The discussions took place against a familiar but increasingly urgent backdrop: volatile energy prices, geopolitical instability and intensifying climate impacts. In public remarks, ministers and envoys repeatedly framed the transition away from coal, oil and gas not only as an environmental necessity, but also as a question of economic resilience and energy security. Dutch climate minister Stientje van Veldhoven said price volatility and dependence on imports were already damaging economies, while Nigeria’s Abubakar Momoh argued that the issue was not whether extraction should decline, but how to manage it in a way that is fair and politically workable.

The summit’s final outcome was less a binding commitment than a set of working channels for the next phase. Colombia and the Netherlands announced three voluntary workstreams: one on national and regional roadmaps away from fossil fuels, one on financial reform and fossil-fuel subsidies, and one on trade. The roadmaps are expected to connect with countries’ national climate plans, while the finance track will look at subsidy reform and debt constraints. A third strand will examine how to reduce fossil-fuel intensity in trade, an issue increasingly relevant for industrial supply chains and carbon leakage concerns.

The summit also confirmed that Tuvalu and Ireland will co-host the next meeting in 2027, in the Pacific. That decision matters politically as well as symbolically: small island states have long argued that the global energy transition must be driven faster, and with greater attention to equity, than current negotiations have delivered.

The event’s science component gave the talks unusual depth. Around 400 academics met in Santa Marta for a pre-conference that fed into three new initiatives, including the creation of a global science panel on energy transition. Backed by leading researchers such as Johan Rockström and Carlos Nobre, the panel is intended to provide rapid, country-specific analysis on transition pathways, technology, policy and finance. Its architects say it will work on a much faster cycle than the IPCC, with annual updates and more direct support for governments.

Scientists gathered in Santa Marta also produced a synthesis report with 12 action insights for governments. Among its sharper recommendations were halting new fossil-fuel expansion and treating fossil-fuel advertising as a public health issue. For industrial decarbonisation professionals, that matters because the report links supply-side restraint with wider system changes: investment, policy design, infrastructure and demand reduction all have to move together.

Colombia itself used the summit to underline the domestic stakes. A separate roadmap for the country, led by Piers Forster and colleagues, estimates that emissions from energy use could fall to 90% below 2015 levels by 2050 if the country pursues ambitious electrification and fossil-fuel reduction policies. It also suggests higher upfront investment would be required, but that the economy could eventually see net savings. That combination of near-term cost and longer-term gain is increasingly central to the debate in other producer and transit economies.

Civil society and Indigenous groups were unusually visible throughout the conference. Their interventions helped push the discussion beyond technical transitions into questions of justice, consent and rights. A parallel people’s summit, organised by 900 groups and networks, ended with a declaration calling for a rights-based, funded transition that dismantles the systems underpinning fossil-fuel dependency.

If Santa Marta did not produce a grand treaty or a binding deadline, it did something more unusual in today’s climate politics: it created a structured space for countries to discuss how, concretely, they might leave fossil fuels behind. For a debate that has often been trapped in abstraction, that may prove to be the summit’s most important result.