Santa Marta Conference: The ills it named and the ways we can move forward with hope

It has been two weeks since the official closure of the First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels held in Santa Marta, Colombia, towards the tail end of April. Yet, those who attended – including me – are still basking not only in the aftermath of the heat of the Colombian sun, but in the hope (and in the ways by which we can operationalise this hope) towards the creation of a just transition that is fast, feminist, fossil fuel-free, and forever.

The Santa Marta Conference

Set against the backdrop of one of Colombia’s northern port cities, whose own economy has historically been coal-fueled, the Santa Marta conference brought together over 50 countries, representing a third of the world’s economy and a third of its fossil fuel consumption, to talk about the practical ways by which we can move away from coal, oil, and gas and into renewables. More than that, it brought up the need to discuss the human element of such a transition: who phases out first (and when), who pays for the transition, and what barriers make it difficult for the transition to take place? At the heart of the conference – and often cited in the meeting rooms and the side conversations – were questions of justice, equity, and human rights; things that, perhaps, have been taken for granted in international negotiations, in the interest of expediency or political convenience. In Santa Marta, these questions refused to stay at the margins – they shaped the tone of discussions and reminded everyone that a just transition is not one that can be measured solely through simple technical shifts from fossil fuels to renewables; it must also be measured by whether affected communities are protected, whether workers are supported, whether Indigenous Peoples are engaging in decision-making processes and have leadership and ownership over projects, whether we’re consciously moving away from the extractive nature of a fossil economy, and whether countries historically locked into extractive economies are given the fiscal and political space to chart a different future.

The week officially began with pre-conferences, bringing together academics on one hand, and civil society on the other, who were – prior to the event – asked to provide contributions representing each of their chapters. Among civil society representatives were Afro-descendent Peoples, Indigenous Peoples, peasant communities, children and youth, and trade unions, among others. A summary of these contributions and the pre-conference were then submitted to the attendees of the High Level segment, through selected sector spokespersons, which guided High Level participants in the drafting of the agreed outcomes.

Moving away from traditional demands of producing a negotiated political outcome (as it was not intended to serve as a negotiating body nor to replace the UNFCCC), the conference instead ended with a set of agreements, making it an implementation-focused event, intended to support countries who are ready to move forward. These agreements included, among others:

1. The announcement of a second conference, to be co-hosted by Tuvalu and Ireland, that will take place in 2027, and the establishment of a coordination group to ensure continuity with subsequent conferences.
2. The handing over of the conference report to the COP30 Presidency to inform its roadmap as well as the UN Secretary-General. There was also an agreement to work with the current and future COP presidencies.
3. The establishment of three open and flexible workstreams to organise efforts ahead of the Tuvalu conference:
   
   1. Work to help countries develop roadmaps and align them with their NDCs.
   2. Work on macroeconomic dependencies and financial architecture to help leverage collective capacities in unlocking finance and investment flows required for the transition.
   3. Work on producer-consumer alignment for the fossil fuel transition – the workstream will also consider how to make transitions people-centered and territorially grounded, therefore tackling the revenue exchange problem while ensuring and advancing energy sovereignty.
4. The launch of the Science Panel for the Global Energy Transition (SPGET) to support countries in overcoming dependence on fossil fuels and help in developing roadmaps aligned with the 1.5C trajectory.

What next?

What happens next will determine whether Santa Marta becomes remembered as a genuine turning point or simply another well-intentioned gathering absorbed into the long archive of climate diplomacy. There is reason for cautious optimism: unlike many international meetings that end with vague declarations and little institutional follow-through (and even fewer discussions of historical accountability and finance), this conference left with concrete workstreams, a timeline towards 2027, and a growing coalition of countries willing to speak openly about a fossil fuel phaseout (through the negotiation of a Treaty) rather than endlessly euphemising it. But optimism alone will not carry the transition forward. The hard political questions remain unresolved, and in some cases were only beginning to surface honestly in Santa Marta – I argue, however, that Santa Marta was an important place to start. It named, where other conferences could (or would) not, the headwinds that continue to obstruct a genuinely just transition: fossil capitalism and its violences, the absence of meaningful conversations around reparations and climate debt, and the ways in which institutions continue to protect profit over people and planet, such as the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism. While placed in the agenda by Colombia (who has since left the mechanism), it was left in by the Netherlands and did not appear in the agreed outcome. Discussions around the ISDS matter because it reflects a growing recognition that governments cannot meaningfully transition away from fossil fuels while remaining vulnerable to corporate litigation for pursuing climate action in the public interest. To this end, the conference named another hard truth: that transition pathways cannot be discussed in abstraction from histories of extraction, underdevelopment, and unequal exchange that have structured the global economy for decades.

At the same time, the conference unfolded against a backdrop of deepening geopolitical instability, including the ongoing war on Iran by US-Israel and the resulting anxieties over energy security and oil supply. These crises reaffirm how profoundly fossil fuel dependence continues to shape global political priorities. Too often, moments of geopolitical shock become justification for renewed extraction, expanded militarisation, and further delay on climate commitments. Yet if Santa Marta offered any lesson, it was that these crises should instead strengthen the urgency of transition work, not weaken it. The challenge now is not simply to demonstrate that moving away from fossil fuels is technically feasible (because we know that it is), but to ensure that the transition itself is democratic, redistributive, anti-colonial, feminist, and rooted in solidarity with the communities who have long shouldered the burdens of an extractive global economy.

Lessons for Loss and Damage

The discussions in Santa Marta also carry important lessons for the evolving conversations on Loss and Damage (and on the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage). Chief among these is the need to understand loss and damage not only as the result of isolated climate disasters, but as the cumulative outcome of centuries of extractivism, colonialism, and fossil-fuel dependent development pathways imposed unevenly across the Global South. In this sense, loss and damage cannot be separated from historical responsibility, nor from the infrastructures of extraction that continue to lock countries into cycles of dependency and debt. The conference repeatedly highlighted the dangers of fossil fuel infrastructure lock-in, from pipelines to export terminals, that risk entrenching both emissions and socio-environmental harms for decades to come, especially as climate impacts intensify.

Another lesson, as meetings on the Barbados Implementation Modalities are ongoing, is the fact that responses to loss and damage must be grounded in bottom-up, community-led processes, particularly those led by Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendant communities, workers, and frontline groups who experience these losses most directly. Lastly, the conference reinforced the urgent need for finance that addresses not only recovery, but also structural transformation away from extractive economies altogether, a lesson that is both urgent and immediate for loss and damage responses. After all, without confronting the fossil fuel systems that continue to produce these harms in the first place, our responses risk remaining reactive rather than transformative.

The Santa Marta conference started conversations on how it can be done. More than that, it gave us hope that a just transition is achievable. The ways by which we carry those lessons will show us whether we can translate that hope, that often-elusive hope in the midst of a world facing multi-crises, into action. What matters now is whether we are prepared to pursue it with the urgency, honesty, and courage that this moment demands.