GCE Webinar: The Beginning of the End for Fossil Fuels? Unpacking the Santa Marta Conference

In late April 2026, representatives from 57 countries gathered in Santa Marta, Colombia, for the First International Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels. Although coal, oil and natural gas are responsible for 3/4 of global emissions, their role in the climate emergency has been kept off the agenda for the past 30 years. The Santa Marta Conference aimed to break this silence: facilitating cooperative dialogue and addressing the most challenging issues to defossilisation. 

On Thursday 21 May, GCE hosted a live online event: “The Beginning of the End for Fossil Fuels? Unpacking the Santa Marta Conference” to outline the outcomes of the meeting and discuss how the debates might be integrated into future COP negotiations. 

The panel brought together three attendees from the Santa Marta Conference: Valeria Zanini, Policy Advisor for Climate Diplomacy at ECCO think tank, Professor Peter Newell from the University of Sussex and James Trinder, who works in International Climate Policy at CAN Europe. It was moderated by Lucrezia Lenardon and Nouha Salhi from the GCE COP31 team.

Acting as a complementary space alongside the UNFCCC, Santa Marta was a coalition of the willing for countries interested in phasing out fossil fuels. It was organised around three main pillars: overcoming economic dependence on fossil fuels, transforming supply and demand, and advancing international cooperation and climate diplomacy. 

Key takeaways

Professor Peter Newell stated that although there are many mini-lateral arrangements, Santa Marta is the first time we have seen key actors come together to speak explicitly about transitioning away from fossil fuels and strengthening international cooperation. Countries representing ⅓ of global fossil fuel production and ⅕ of global fossil fuel consumption came together to discuss the issue, including vulnerable economies and several large fossil fuel producers such as Brazil, Canada, Nigeria, Mexico, and Colombia, as well as COP 31 co-hosts Australia and Turkey.

Because Santa Marta didn’t involve any legally binding decisions or financial commitments, it created space for more open and trust-building conversations between governments and other actors present. This more informal methodology allowed participants to bring a range of often-neglected issues to the table, including debt, trade, financial constraints and investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanisms.

When reflecting on the key priorities at Santa Marta, Valeria Zanini pointed to bilateral cooperation between importers and exporters, particularly the need for greater support for countries whose economies are heavily dependent on fossil fuels. For Zanini one of the main takeaways for the next conference is the need for greater transparency on fossil fuel subsidies and the economic conditions that underlie fossil fuel dependence.

James Trinder also highlighted the Colombian government’s interest in voicing the expertise and experience of civil society through a People’s Declaration, a chapter of the conference in which frontline collectives, Indigenous People, youth, and other social movements called for an immediate and equitable transition away from fossil fuels. However, Trinder also pointed to broader questions about how effectively the chapter fed into the conference’s high-level segment, and whether they could meaningfully translate into action on the ground in Indigenous territories.

On the question of EU participation, Valeria Zanini drew attention to the often overlooked political leverage of the importing bloc on fossil fuel phase-out. Although the EU accounts for only 6% of global emissions, it is responsible for approximately 20% of global fossil fuel imports. However, despite reasonable EU turnout, James Trinder suggested that the importing bloc didn’t play a particularly productive role at Santa Marta. Notably, the EU failed to support outcomes on the fossil fuel treaty or ISDS, and has yet to commit clearly to a fossil fuel phase-out framework or fossil fuel taxation.

A synthesis of the Santa Marta conference will be published in the coming months, most likely in advance of COP31. A second conference co-hosted by Ireland and Tuvalu in 2027 also aims to continue the process started at Santa Marta. 

Momentum was certainly built in Santa Marta, but the question is whether it can be translated into genuine commitment to a fossil fuel phase-out in formal UN climate negotiations. In relation to GCE’s COP strategic thematic priorities – a just phase-out of fossil fuels, greater climate finance and more inclusive climate governance – Santa Marta is a step forwards, operating at a level of ambition that the formal process hasn’t yet reached. Through the People’s Declaration, Santa Marta also set the tone for a more inclusive climate governance that guarantees meaningful participation of Indigenous people, local communities, civil society, and young people.

The conference agreed on three workstreams to carry the process into future climate negotiations. Workstream 1 will focus on designing national and regional fossil fuel transition roadmaps; workstream 2 will address the economic conditions that cause fossil fuel dependence; and workstream 3 aims to foster connections between fossil fuel-producing and -consuming nations to reshape trade systems.

Each one of these workstreams relates to live issues that were negotiated at SB64, the 64th session of the UNFCCC subsidiary bodies from June 8 to 18, 2026 in Bonn, Germany. Santa Marta was created to support, rather than undermine, the UNFCCC formal process and build political weight behind a fossil fuel phase-out and a just transition. However, with no binding commitments, Bonn will be the first marker of whether the ambitions of 57 countries can be translated into global implementation.

Watch the webinar: