SANTA MARTA, COLOMBIA — As the US and Israeli war against Iran puts oil at the centre of global concerns, a new intergovernmental coalition is seeking to accelerate the energy transition outside the UN’s climate change convention (COP) system, which has been trying – and failing – to phase out fossil fuels for three decades.
The coalition’s 57 members, who account for almost half of global GDP, met last week in the Colombian coastal city of Santa Marta for the First Conference on the Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels, co-hosted by the governments of Colombia and the Netherlands.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro said the initiative was established after COP30 ended in November with no concrete resolution on phasing out the use of fossil fuels, which account for 75% of global greenhouse emissions. Since then, it has only been made more urgent by the oil crisis created by the Iran war.
“The ongoing disruptions due to the hostilities in the Strait of Hormuz have underlined that reducing fossil fuel dependencies is critical. It is essential to keep our planet livable, to safeguard energy security, and to build economic resilience to volatile fossil fuel markets,” states the conference’s final communiqué.
Rather than duplicating COPs’ efforts to establish new greenhouse gas reduction targets, the coalition agreed “to advance and accelerate the implementation of agreed goals” by applying pressure and strengthening international alliances within the multilateral negotiations adopted by consensus, the text says.
The conference was significant for its discussions on what “the consequences of decarbonisation” mean for oil exporters, said Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s ambassador for the initiative to create a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. It was the first time such conversations have been had at “a diplomatic forum on climate issues”.
“The fact that a country like Nigeria [which depends on crude oil exports] is here at a high level is very important, because they are not necessarily saying we are going to stick with oil until the end, whatever the cost,” she told openDemocracy. “They are recognising the vulnerability of being economically dependent on those exports.”
This need for economic freedom from oil was recognised by President Petro. “Can capitalism adapt to an energy system that is not fossil-based?” he asked an auditorium of delegates from participant countries, including Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria, the United Kingdom, France and the European Union as a bloc, as well as small island states in the Caribbean and the South Pacific.
Noticeably absent were representatives of the United States and China – the world’s two biggest carbon emitters – as well as Russia and India, all of whom were deliberately not invited to avoid the kind of deadlocks and obstructionism that led to the blocking of efforts to create a roadmap to phase out fossil fuels at COP30.
“When you make a plan, you first call your closest friends, and then you send the invitation to the rest,” Juan Carlos Monterrey Gómez, Panama’s Ministry of the Environment’s special representative for climate change, told openDemocracy.
Monterrey Gómez said the initial focus was instead on strengthening a group of countries committed to phasing out fossil fuels. “With this first group, we can have an honest conversation, without administrative roadblocks. This conversation has never taken place before, and that is historic.”
Other attendees had mixed feelings about the invite list.
While Claudio Angelo, an international policy coordinator at the Climate Observatory, a network of Brazilian environmental organisations, agreed that inviting Donald Trump’s climate-denying US administration would have been “unnecessary”, he told openDemocracy: “China should be here, as it supplies renewable energy technology to the whole world.”
‘Oil is nobody’s friend’
As well as the official delegates, the conference was attended by representatives of social movements, academia, multilateral institutions, parliaments, trade unions, Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples, women and diverse communities, the private sector, farmers, NGOs, children and young people.
In the days leading up to the event, Santa Marta hosted scientific and civil society debates, where activists and Indigenous peoples urged governments to accelerate the energy transition.
Their calls came as a new report by 350.org, a global grassroots movement to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels, found that consumers pay three times for fossil fuels: through public subsidies, on their bills, and through the natural disasters that are a direct consequence of the climate crisis.
“Oil is nobody’s friend,” said Angelo, noting that the international community has viewed the energy transition more favourably as solar and wind technologies have become more accessible over the past decade. Installed capacity of renewable energy was 50% higher last year than in 2023 and almost all new energy demand is being met by renewable sources, according to the final communiqué of the meeting.
For Colombian environment minister Irene Vélez Torres and Stientje van Veldhoven, the Dutch minister for climate and green growth, the event marked the beginning of a new era of global environmental democracy.
“This new method of dialogue between civil society, parliamentarians and governments represents a new multilateral collective force that is not bound by consensus and is led by women,” Torres said at the conference’s close. Veldhoven agreed, saying the meeting was the first step towards a proactive coalition of governments that do not negotiate, as happens at the UN, but rather collaborate with one another.
At the conference, civil society and governments agreed on steps to address the inequalities in the energy transition, which is taking place primarily in the Global North, rather than in countries where it is most needed but that lack the financing for green energy. These included drafting national road maps for the phase-out of fossil fuels, in addition to the global road map that will be discussed at COP31 this year.
“This is a contribution towards resolving common and interdependent problems through dialogue, discussion and cooperation, rather than through military means,” said Muhamad, who was Colombia’s Environment Minister until early 2025.
Harjeet Singh, the founder and director of the India-based Satat Sampada Climate Foundation that advocates for global climate justice, said the war in Iran has opened people’s eyes to the vulnerability inherent in dependence on fossil fuels.
“In a recent statement, India’s road and transport minister said that the era of diesel and petrol vehicles is over. It's all about clean fuels, biofuels and electric vehicles,” Singh told openDemocracy.
But this realisation is meaningless without “international cooperation in green finance”, he said, noting that India self-funds 80% of its climate initiatives despite being a part of the Global South – and needs trillions more dollars for its transition away from fossil fuels.
Democracy, climate denialism and the future
Carlos Nobre, a researcher at the University of São Paulo and a member of the scientific panel for a Global Energy Transition, highlighted the risk that citizens might elect leaders who deny climate change. This is a particularly pressing worry in Amazonian countries such as Brazil, Colombia and Peru, where far-right parties that deny the climate crisis or are committed to expanding fossil fuels stand a chance of winning presidential elections taking place this year.
“It is not just that the far right seeks to maintain dependence on fossil fuels, but that they also intend to push ahead with deforestation and the removal of protections for indigenous peoples. We must not head towards ecocide, that is, ecological suicide,” said Nobre in an interview with openDemocracy.
Colombia remains the world’s deadliest country for environmental activists – an issue that must be addressed at the election on 31 May and can serve as a gateway to discussing wider environmental policies, says Liberal Party congressman Juan Carlos Losada, a member of Colombia’s Parliamentarians for a Fossil-Fuel-Free Future network.
Losada believes the candidate of the ruling left-wing Historic Pact coalition, Iván Cepeda, “will clearly prioritise the defence of human rights at a local level, and other issues will fall under that umbrella”. Polls currently suggest Cepeda will lead the election’s first round, although most analysts believe he is unlikely to reach the 50% threshold needed to win outright.
The other presidential candidates say “that if they come to power, they’ll go all out to extract every last bit of what exists,” Losada said, referring to the right’s proposals to intensify coal mining and introduce fracking.
“The debate on energy security has changed, and fossil fuels are seen as part of the insecurity issue,” said Brazilian Ana Toni, the executive director of COP30, noting: “It’ll be interesting to see how different actors act from now on.”
Speaking to openDemocracy at a press conference, Toni acknowledged the contradictions facing even climate-conscious governments, such as Brazil’s. “I don’t know if this conference is going to change the mind of Petrobras and its exploration plans,” she said, referring to Brazil’s state-owned oil company, which last year obtained permission for new exploration 500 kilometres from the mouth of the Amazon, days before world leaders met to debate the climate crisis at COP30.
“But it is changing the mind of many people in many countries,” she argued, noting that a move away from fossil fuels is becoming more popular as wars, supply shocks and extreme weather events expose the risk of oil and gas dependence. “When we talk about the transition, we do it not just because of climate change but also because of energy and economic security, and peace.”
These risks will be on full display at next year’s conference, where delegates will visit one of the countries most threatened by rising sea levels: Tuvalu, a South Pacific island nation that is co-hosting the second conference with Ireland.
“We, the small Pacific Islands, have no choice but to be ambitious,” said Brianna Fruean, a climate activist from Samoa, at a rally during the Colombian conference. “The next summit in Tuvalu will put faces to our countries and bring world leaders to the frontline of the climate crisis.”
