Martin Franklin assesses the first Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels, held on 28th-29th April 2026, in Santa Marta, Colombia.

The Santa Marta Conference has been the first international conference on climate change to discuss a transition away from fossil fuels. Described as an historic breakthrough, how much real impact will it have?  

International climate gatherings have long been sites of struggle. Powerful states and fossil‑fuel interests have repeatedly worked to delay any meaningful phase‑out of fossil fuels—at the expense of countries in the global South, Indigenous peoples, and others already living with the consequences.

This Conference appears to have broken with that pattern by excluding those obstructing progress, creating space for genuine global movement toward a fossil‑free future. One climate journalist said: “Word on the street is NO fossil fuel lobbyists at the Santa Marta, Colombia ‘Transition Away’ conference.” 

The road to Santa Marta

By the early 1950s US oil companies had begun to understand that CO2 emissions from fossil fuels produced atmospheric pollution that would lead to climate heating.   The Big Oil response was to bury the evidence and launch campaigns of denial and to discredit independent climate science. Over decades, this campaigning has resulted in global climate negotiations that focus on the symptoms of the climate crisis whilst ignoring the root cause: the unchecked proliferation of fossil fuels.  Now we experience the results – an environmental crisis carrying the risk of environmental tipping points that could have been averted. 

Since the first Conference of the Parties (COP) in 1995, reference to “fossil fuels” was excluded (including the 2015 Paris Agreement).  Finally, 28 years later the 2023 COP28 ended with a pledge to transition “away from fossil fuels in energy systems”.  This was hailed as the “beginning of the end” of the fossil fuel era.  

A year on at COP29 in Azerbaijan, petro states ensured that it ended without a commitment to transition away from fossil fuels.  Poorer nations and peoples vulnerable to the impacts of climate heating and environmental campaign groups expressed their sense of betrayal.  

Their frustration was expressed in angry protests in Brazil at COP30 (2025).  But again, the Conference ended with a final agreement lacking a roadmap for eliminating fossil fuels.  More positively, a “Just Transition Mechanism” to support workers and communities during the transition to clean energy was agreed but without timelines. 

This outcome reflected problems with the structure of COP negotiations that have enabled petro states to block direct discussion of the need to phase out coal, oil and gas.  Frustration led 43 countries plus the EU to sign the Belém Declaration on the Transition Away from Fossil Fuels. Colombia and the Netherlands agreed to cohost the First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels with 18 nation-states aiming to develop a Fossil Fuel Treaty in a forum operating outside the auspices of traditional international climate architecture and free from petro state lobbying. The forum included subnational governments, parliamentarians, civil society, health and faith leaders, Indigenous communities, trade unions, scientists, and others. 

Fifty-seven countries attended Santa Marta.  The US, China, India, Russia and petrostates such as Saudi Arabia were not invited since they lacked the necessary spirit to be part of the “coalition of the willing” and to avoid further unproductive debates.  This coalition represents more than half of global GDP, nearly a third of energy demand and a fifth of fossil fuel supply.

The Conference included a “science pre-conference” attended by around 400 academics; a day for subnational governments, parliamentarians and other stakeholders; and ended with a “high-level segment” with ministers and climate envoys.

The Colombian Environment Minister, Irene Vélez Torres, told a press conference: “There has been a growing gap between science and governments, and governmental decisions, and it happens because there is a lot of denialism.”

Outcomes

The Conference set up three workstreams to overcome fossil fuel dependency in preparation for a second conference in Tuvalu, co-hosted with Ireland. These will:

1. work on roadmaps for a global energy transition, supported by a panel of scientists. The results will be fed into the UN climate planning system
2. work on macroeconomic dependencies and architecture 
3. work on producer – consumer alignment of transition.

The Conference recognised that the countries gathered in Santa Marta face structural dependencies that hinder the development of fossil fuel-free trade systems. Many remain locked into fossil fuels through fiscal dependence, debt constraints, and a global financial architecture shaped around fossil fuel economies.

Participants agreed that transitioning away from fossil fuels is not simply a matter of replacing one energy source with another. It requires broad economic transformation to overcome structural dependencies and debt constraints, expand reliable sustainable energy access, and build diversified, resilient economies. These changes must be planned with workers and communities to ensure a transition that is fair, rights-based and delivers tangible benefits for marginalised groups.

To break fiscal lock-ins, countries need to build “sovereign transition capacity” through strengthened public financial management. Debt restructuring and the use of sovereign funds should help create space for transition investment, including direct access to finance for local authorities and Indigenous peoples.

Progressive tax reform, green budgeting and strategic public investment could help level the playing field for green industries. This includes ending fossil fuel tax breaks, taxing windfall profits, and using tax mechanisms to incentivise investment in sustainable sectors.

The Conference included a “People’s Assembly” with Indigenous peoples, Afro- descendent communities, peasant farmers, trade union representatives, women, children and other civil society members. 

Representatives from these groups were able to engage in some of the proceedings but one indigenous activist said: “This is the last time we will be a token. You want our pictures, not our voices. You want our stories, not our struggles… True solidarity with each other is the prerequisite to a just transition.”

Analysis

The international community has shown the capacity to tackle a global environmental problem. The 1987 Montreal Protocol was an agreement resulting in the phasing out of substances such as CFCs, responsible for ozone depletion. Could Sainta Marta herald similar progress?

The discussions and future plans set at Santa Marta could not have happened at a COP.  They showed an understanding of how to address the climate crisis with a focus on achievement.  The Conference set up a panel of global experts to provide scientific advice to countries to reduce fossil fuel dependence and manage the growing risks of high oil prices, geopolitical conflict and extreme weather damage.

Almost half of the countries at the Conference were fossil fuel producers.  They are expected to set out how they intend to wind down output. But the roadmaps are voluntary and there are no stipulations on the structuring of plans or deadlines for completing the transition. It’s unclear how there could be any enforcement or penalties for failed targets. 

France has unveiled a roadmap setting deadlines to phase out fossil fuel for energy purposes by 2050. The UK has apparently made no similar commitment and is currently falling behind its existing targets set under the Paris Agreement.  

The results of the Conference will feed into existing UNFCCC frameworks and are intended to inform Global Climate Action Agenda for COP31.  This will no doubt sharpen the debates, but COP structures will likely inhibit progress.   

Global justice campaigners have raised concerns that the Conference’s previously strong focus on tackling “corporate courts” has been significantly diluted in the final takeaways. The fossil fuel industry has used the Investor-State Dispute settlement system (ISDS) extensively to protect its investments, thereby presenting a major obstacle for countries seeking to phase out fossil fuels and change. 

Conclusion

The war in the Middle East has throttled Gulf energy exports, exposing the urgent need to break the world’s dependence on fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are increasingly recognised not only as drivers of climate heating but also as sources of geopolitical risk and instability.

Arguments for climate justice are becoming ever stronger, and Santa Marta offers a new platform for advancing them. Yet the challenge of persuading governments to adopt the conference’s proposals remains enormous.

The United States no longer engages constructively with international environmental forums; instead, it seeks to undermine them. At the same time, international law and institutions are being weakened by illegal wars and human rights abuses, with perpetrators largely acting with impunity. The post-WW2 international order is fracturing at precisely the moment when global cooperation is most essential and needs to be strengthened.

Given the context it is difficult to be optimistic, but the Santa Marta conference marked a significant shift in how the climate crisis is discussed at the international level. It linked the causes of the crisis — and the pathways out of it — to the structural inequalities and injustices embedded in a fossil‑fuel‑based global economy.

Future conferences will hopefully push UN Climate Change processes to move faster and more effectively, while limiting the ability of fossil fuel interests to block progress. Combined with growing pressure from civil society and climate justice movements on domestic politics, this may help drive the policy changes the world urgently needs.

Martin Franklin is a member of the steering committee of the Islington Environmental Forum.

Image: https://craigberry.substack.com/p/technology-can-help-to-slow-or-reverse Creator: Nick Humphries. Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 Deed