30 UN Climate Change Conferences, known as COP, over three decades have failed to deliver a roadmap for phasing out fossil fuels. It wasn’t until COP 28 that the need to transition away from fossil fuels even made it to that COP’s final agreement, a reference that was subsequently eliminated in the last two COPs after pressure from oil-producing states. All this while, increases in global temperatures from rising fossil-fuel-driven carbon emissions have continued, with multiple critical planetary tipping points now already collapsing or proceeding towards irreversible collapse.
On April 28-29, Colombia led efforts to correct COP’s failures by hosting the first-ever multilateral convening with a primary focus on transitioning the world away from fossil fuels in Santa Marta. In December 2024, the Progressive International published a call for the Global South to establish alternative multilateral forums to COP to advance climate diplomacy. The Santa Marta conference, led by Colombia in partnership with the Netherlands, answered that call by bringing together over fifty states committed to collectively implementing solutions for a just transition away from fossil fuels rather than succumb to the perpetual climate obstruction structurally embedded within COPs.
At a time when international climate diplomacy, multilateralism, and world peace are facing unprecedented attacks from the United States, the world’s largest cumulative climate polluter responsible for climate change, the Santa Marta conference offers a pathway towards mobilizing states and institutions in the fight against climate change. 57 states, joined by hundreds of grassroots organizations, scientists, and activists, participated in a week-long process to deliver a pathway for phasing out fossil fuels.
The Santa Marta conference begins a multilateral rebellion that offers hope but there are already signs that the Dutch government tempered the radicalism of their co-host, according to multiple sources. From dropping “just” before “transitioning” in the conference headline to deprioritization of bold agenda items such as Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), the signs are telling. The pre-conference academic segment was dominated by academicians from the Global North, as was the science panel announced as part of the conference outcomes. The three ongoing workstreams responsible for leading the three pillars of the Santa Marta conference are set to be led by three North-based institutions: US-based World Resources Institute (WRI), Canada-based International Institute of Sustainable Development (IISD), and France-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The selection process for these institutions wasn’t transparent and traces its origin to the funding sources needed to run the three workstreams. The selection seems to have happened at the ministerial level given the access these institutions have with decision-makers.
Walking the Talk on Climate Diplomacy
As COPs have continued to sink to lower depths of disrepute in recent editions, the Santa Marta conference offers an alternative model for walking the talk on climate diplomacy. Since January 2023, Colombia has halted any new contracts for fossil fuel exploration. This is in stark contrast to recent COP hosts such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Azerbaijan, where even the Chief Executive of COP 29 was secretly filmed promoting fossil fuel deals during ongoing COP negotiations. The share of solar and wind in Colombia’s energy mix has risen from 2% in 2022 to 17% in April 2026 under President Gustavo Petro’s leadership, according to reports from the Colombian energy ministry. As part of the conference, Colombia voluntarily submitted its 2050 national roadmap on the just transition away from fossil fuels, which the other co-host, the Netherlands, is yet to submit.
In recent years, record numbers of fossil fuel lobbyists attending COPs have outnumbered major country delegations and spaces for dissent have been curtailed both within and outside COP forums. The Santa Marta conference instead incorporated six people’s groups or constituencies in the decision-making process: Afro Descendants, Farmers and Fisherfolk, NGOs and Global Networks, Social Movements, Women and Diversities, and Youth.
Colombian Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development, Irene Vélez-Torres, said at the opening press conference:“We see ourselves as a complement to the UN process, free from the lobby of the oil industry, so that it has no influence on these agendas. This is the moment to put all our cards on the table.” Colombian climate activistYuvelis Natalia Morales Blanco, winner of the 2026 Goldman Prize (an annual Green Nobel awarded to grassroots environmental activists) and leader of the Alianza Colombia Libre de Fracking, said: “We will be the generation that will, one way or another, manage to break free from fossil fuel dependency.”
Intended Outcomes of the Santa Marta Conference
Contrary to expectations, the expected outcome of the Santa Marta conference is not an immediate, legally binding fossil fuel phase-out treaty. Rather, its first task is to shift the frame of global climate diplomacy from debate about whether fossil fuels must go, to a definitive, financed, equity-centered conversation about how.
The most ambitious specific outcome pushed at Santa Marta was a formal acknowledgment of the need to negotiate a Fossil Fuel Treaty. This could include supporting diplomatic efforts like the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, which already has backing from 18 countries and 200 cities. The three demands of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative map onto the three pillars of the Santa Marta conference’s outcomes: a Debt Resolution Facility and Global Just Transition Fund to free Global South nations from the debt-fossil fuel trap; coordinated halt to new fossil fuel projects and associated subsidies led by wealthy nations; and managing fossil fuels' role in funding global conflict through investment in decentralized renewables.
Resolving a few structural barriers towards a fossil fuel treaty featured prominently in weekend discussions leading up to the ministerial segment of the conference. The first is Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) — the opaque legal mechanism that allows fossil fuel corporations to sue governments in closed international tribunals when climate policies cut into their profits. According to the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), fossil fuel companies have extracted at least $100 billion through these mechanisms, with average awards in fossil fuel cases reaching $600 million. Over 10,000 fossil fuel assets worldwide sit under ISDS protection. Colombia is walking the talk here, too. After over 220 economists, including Stiglitz, Piketty, and Ha-Joon Chang, wrote to Petro in March 2026 urging him to build a coalition to exit the ISDS system, he announced Colombia's withdrawal from ISDS entirely. Santa Marta marks the first time a major international climate gathering has put challenging ISDS on its agenda. Harj Narulla, a barrister specializing in climate law and litigation and representing Solomon Islands at the Santa Marta conference, suggested a way forward on ISDS - “Unilateral withdrawals from ISDS can be ineffective and invite legal challenges. One way out of ISDS is for a bloc of countries to come together and agree that ISDS provisions between them will no longer apply.”
The second barrier is eliminating fossil fuel subsidies. Despite climate commitments, governments globally continue to pour public money into the very industry driving the crisis. Civil society organizations at Santa Marta pushed for binding frameworks to eliminate these subsidies across all sectors and redirect those funds toward renewables, just transition programs, and debt relief, ensuring that the money currently bankrolling the problem starts financing the solution instead.
The third barrier is unjust public finance with high interest rates for the Global South and debt held by Global South nations with multilateral finance institutions. Jwala Rambarran, Senior Advisor on Climate Finance to the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty and Former Central Bank Governor of Trinidad and Tobago, spoke with Progressive International and noted, “Too much of today’s climate finance is reproducing the very debt traps it claims to solve. Global South countries are being asked to transition through high-cost loans, complex instruments, and financing structures that often lock them into new dependencies rather than expand their policy space. A just transition cannot be built on unjust finance. Multilateral finance institutions must shift decisively toward grants, concessional resources, debt relief, and instruments that lower the cost of capital for clean energy, resilience, and economic diversification. At the same time, the Global South must strengthen alternative, South-led financing channels — including creation of new institutions such as the Debt Resolution Mechanism of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative — that can support transition pathways based on equity, sovereignty, and development justice.” Mariana Paoli, Policy and Advocacy Lead at Oxfam International, spoke with Progressive International and noted that the Global South countries need to unite and push for climate debt to be situated under a ‘United Nations Convention on Debt’. This move would help advance proceedings on debt restructuring through a simple majority within the UN General Assembly rather than being controlled by multilateral finance institutions that serve the interests of their primary shareholders, which are the US, UK, EU, Australia, and Japan.
Instead of providing climate finance for just transition, North-led multilateral institutions are locking countries in the Global South into long-term fossil fuel debt trap. Progressive International had covered the issue of European public finance trapping African nations into loss-making fossil fuel infrastructure to fulfill their own short-term gas needs. Nafisa Shah, Member of Parliament from Pakistan, spoke with Progressive International at the Santa Marta conference and highlighted the role of IMF and World Bank in leading Pakistan into the same fossil-fuel debt trap - “We must learn from not repeating the same mistakes from the past. In the early 1990s, World Bank and IMF policies pressured Pakistan into privatization of the energy sector moving away from state-run infrastructure. This created a boom of independent power producers and led to reliance on imported fuel, long-term circular debt, and high-cost power contracts instead of making state-owned renewable energy investments.”
The second conference in the series is already scheduled, to be hosted by Tuvalu – a frontline Small Island Developing State for whom fossil fuel phaseout is an existential question. Ireland is the co-host for the second conference with Tuvalu continuing the South-North partnership. Dr. Amiera Sawas, Head of Policy and Research for the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, noted that “While the role of Global North countries is important to ensure the flow of finance and technology transfer needed for a global just transition, Global South nations should see this as a moment to harness their collective power. The world cannot transition without them, they represent almost 90% of all its people and own the lands and resources needed to make it happen. As we build up to the Tuvalu conference, southern nations have the opportunity to chart a new course towards climate justice and a fair, funded transition away from fossil fuels.”
Colombia's Leadership on the Santa Marta Conference and the Hague Group: A Pattern of Global South Assertion
The Santa Marta conference extends Colombia’s demonstrated leadership on the global stage under its Leftist President Gustavo Petro. The conference draws inspiration from The Hague Group – a coalition of Global South nations co-chaired by Colombia and South Africa to hold Israel legally accountable for its genocidal assault on Gaza. The Santa Marta conference, like the Hague Group, attempts to use the very international institutions historically deployed against Global South countries to hold climate polluters responsible. In both cases, Colombia has leveraged proceedings and rulings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to foster multilateral solidarity and bypass complicity and obstruction from the Global North.
Last July, in a case brought forth by Vanuatu and other Pacific Island nations, the ICJ issued a landmark advisory opinion affirming that states have a legally binding duty to prevent climate harm and co-operate. Around the same time, Colombia officially offered to host the Santa Marta conference. Special Envoy of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty and Former Colombian Environment Minister Susana Muhamad spoke with Progressive International and noted the intentional similarities in the two convenings as challenging the Global North’s complicity and obstructionism in the context of the ongoing war on Iran and genocide in Gaza - “There are parallels between the Hague Group and the Santa Marta conference by design and they demonstrate the political will and a pathway for the Global South to move beyond the structural obstacles. Resources that could be building climate solutions are instead funding wars and genocides while the military-industrial complex itself emits emissions greater than large groups of countries.”
The idea for the Santa Marta conference was conceived after COP 29 negotiations in Baku, Azerbaijan, which yet again failed to deliver any agreement on phasing out fossil fuels. The final COP 30 text in Belem didn’t even mention the words ‘fossil fuels’ or the need to transition away from them, let alone creating a roadmap for the transition. In the context of this failure, the governments of Colombia and the Netherlands, supported by 18 other states, announced their intention to host the Santa Marta conference just the day before COP 30 concluded.
The Santa Marta conference is also modeled after other proven successes in multilateral diplomacy. These include the Ottawa process that resulted in the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, the Oslo process that led to the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions, and the most recent 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. In each of these three cases, a few states challenged an established framework, built a broader coalition circumventing obstructive powers, and shifted the international law and norms. While Canada and Norway led rebellions resulting in the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty and the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions, respectively, today, Global South states like Colombia and Vanuatu are carrying the mantle in the fight against climate change.
Closing
Issue #108 of The Internationalist diagnosed a disease that has affected the global fight against climate change – COP's structural capture by fossil fuel interests and the Global North’s obstruction. It offered a medicine: Global South solidarity, alternative forums, and legally-grounded international coordination. In Santa Marta last week, that prescription got filled.
And the pharmacist is Gustavo Petro's Colombia. The same government that severed diplomatic ties with Israel, suspended coal exports, and co-convened thirty nations in Bogotá to enforce international law through The Hague Group is now doing the same for the climate: halting its own fossil fuel contracts, convening the willing, bypassing the obstructors, and putting the question of fossil fuels where it belongs: on a path toward a legally binding international treaty. In his closing remarks, Petro also questioned capitalism’s ability to adapt to a non-fossil fuel-based energy system and thereby challenged its complicity in perpetuating an ongoing system of planetary destruction.
All of this unfolds just weeks before Colombia's May 31 presidential election. Senator Iván Cepeda of Petro's Historic Pact coalition is currently leading polls, and the question of whether this radical diplomatic tradition will outlast its creator hangs over the Caribbean city's sea air.
Indraneel Dharwadkar is a freelance climate journalist covering international climate policy and climate obstruction. He also works on securing climate adaptation finance for the Global South.
