The first conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels, held in Santa Marta, Colombia over 24-29 April, ended with participating countries agreeing to three workstreams to continue activities in the future.
The first workstream will help countries develop their own roadmaps to transition away from fossil fuels and align them with their nationally determined contributions — climate targets. These roadmaps will have to include emissions stemming from fossil fuel exports, which Colombian environment minister Irene Velez-Torres said was a "blindspot" in countries' climate strategies.
This workstream will be spearheaded by the scientist-led panel announced earlier in the conference.
Roadmaps to transition away from fossil fuels were first mentioned last year. Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called on countries to create an international plan to move away from fossil fuels during a leaders' summit a few days before the UN Cop 30 climate summit held in November in Brazil.
But the call did not make it to the summit's final decision despite backing from over 80 countries. Instead, the Cop 30 presidency pledged to create a roadmap on the issue outside of official negotiations.
Colombia and France both presented official roadmaps during the Santa Marta talks. The Netherlands — which co-hosted the conference — has plans to phase out fossil fuel subsidies, environment minister Stientje van Veldhoven said.
Brazil also pledged to create a national roadmap this year, but that has been delayed and has no timeframe for completion, the environment ministry's secretary for climate change Aloisio de Melo told Argus earlier in the conference.
The second workstream will support countries' needs to change their financial systems and unlock investment flows required for the transition, focusing on debt constraints, financial incentives and subsidies.
"We have seen at least three different traps that we want to address: the fiscal, debt and subsidy traps," Velez-Torres said, implying that these factors limit countries' ability to transition away from fossil fuels. "And to address those, we are saying let's make an analysis but also let's be creative and innovative about what are mechanisms within the financial system that need to change to transition away from fossil fuels."
The final workstream will study countries' trade balances and advance progress toward fossil fuel–free trade systems. That means organising, mapping and coping "with whatever trade is still producing emissions" and try to lean towards a "more green trade", Velez-Torres said.
"We have to be able to measure how much of a country's exports are fossil-fuel based" so the workstream can map how much of that particular economy needs to shift towards greener alternatives, she added.
Some happy, some frustrated
The conference drew mixed opinions from participants.
Some commended it for providing an alternative, more focused space to discuss the transition away from fossil fuels compared with the UNFCCC framework.
EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra said that countries gathered in Colombia because Cops have become spaces where "the only thing [countries] get is the lowest common denominator".
The transition away from fossil fuels was a taboo topic in international climate talks previously, Brazilian climate umbrella group Observatorio do Clima said. So creating a space for it to be openly discussed was "historic", it added.
"It's been really healthy to have these open conversations [about transitioning away from fossil fuels]", the UK's special climate representative Rachel Kyte said, adding that countries were able to "disagree agreeably" during the talks.
Some of the disagreements came from what topics to prioritise, what instruments to use to hasten the transition, and how to handle carbon markets and hard-to-abate sectors, she said.
Cop 30 chief executive Ana Toni said the talks were "really helpful" and a "genuine exchange", adding that the Cop 30 presidency will take inputs from the conference into its roadmap.
Van Veldhoven attributted the open discussions to the conference's focus on co-operation rather than negotiations.
But some participants were disappointed that it did not immediately produce a report to feed into the Cop 30 presidency's roadmap. The report will instead be made available in June, the conference's organisers have said.
Until then, participants will have to "give good faith" that the report will address the correct issues, Mariana Paoli, the global advocacy lead at non-governmental organisation (NGO) Oxfam, told Argus. But she indicated concerns about what was discussed in some closed-door meetings, particularly talks surrounding debt-swaps, which she characterises as "false financial solutions".
The conference's impacts are "limited by conclusions that do not propose new frameworks or international mechanisms", Catalina Caro, a representative from environmental NGO Friends of the Earth, said. This was a key call from participants earlier in the conference.
Santa Marta to Tuvalu
The discussions held at Santa Marta will continue in a second conference, which will take place in 2027 in the island nation of Tuvalu.
Ireland will co-host the event. Having one country each from the so-called Global North and South shows the unity among countries committed to transitioning away from fossil fuels", Tuvaly environment minister Maina Talia said.
The next hosts will revist Colombia and the Netherlands' methodology regarding which countries to invite, Talia added . Many large oil producing and consuming countries such as the US, China, India and Argentina were not invited to the Santa Marta conference as it was intended to be a "coalition of the willing", meaning it was a conference focused on talking to those are already taking steps to transition away from fossil fuels.
