A new climate world order is taking shape — without the Earth’s biggest emitters.
A group of some 60 countries is meeting this week on the Colombian coast to figure out how to phase out fossil fuels, after three decades of United Nations-led talks have struggled to produce a clear path for battling climate change.
A lot of big emitters — the European Union, the United Kingdom and Brazil — will be there, as will fossil fuel producers like Canada and Nigeria. Also attending: import-dependent nations like the Philippines and Pakistan, which have been roiled by the Iran war’s effects on oil markets. But one thing that will make the conference in Colombia different is that it won’t include countries that have historically tried to hold back climate action.
“It is hugely important that the Colombians and the Dutch and others have set this up, because we all see how wrecked the COP process is, how vulnerable it is to naysayers and those who want to derail it,” Wopke Hoekstra, the European Union’s climate commissioner, told POLITICO. “What unites this group is the need to find an alternative. And if anything, world events of the last six weeks have proven them right.”
The first-of-its-kind conference kicking off Friday in the coastal town of Santa Marta marks the beginning of a widening effort outside of the annual climate talks known as COP summits to accelerate the shift to solar, wind and other clean energies. It comes after efforts to reaffirm a global pledge to move away from oil, gas and coal fell apart at the COP30 talks last year in Brazil.
Organizers say the conference is for countries that are committed to clean energy, not those that deny climate change.
“We are not unhappy because the U.S. is not here,” Colombia’s environment minister, Irene Vélez Torres, said in an interview. “We knew that they weren’t going to be here. We weren’t expecting them to be here because their energy policy and their economic policy is to ‘drill, baby, drill.’ So this is not the place for them. Also, we didn’t want to have anyone boycotting our conversations.”
The summit comes as the war in Iran roils global energy markets, and as many countries grow frustrated with the protracted pace of global climate negotiations. U.N. climate talks have struggled for years to get countries to act on their pledges.
That’s led to calls for coalitions of willing countries to move forward separately, even if it means not everyone comes along.
“After 30 COPs and so little implementation in terms of phasing out fossil fuels, the conclusion is clear: It has been insufficient,” Vélez said. “This kind of conference is a new multilateralism. It’s inspiring new pathways and new cooperation and new ways of dialogue.”
U.N. has to be ‘transformed’
Co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands, the conference has a goal of identifying concrete measures countries can take to cut their reliance on the fuels responsible for global warming.
The gathering will also include scientists, indigenous groups, nongovernmental organizations and the private sector. Discussions are expected to focus on ways nations can structure their transitions rather than negotiate about the need for them.
“There is a clear need for a platform where we can talk about actual steps, the nuts and bolts, if you will, of the transition towards more renewable energy,” Bastiaan Hassing, head of international climate policy for the Netherlands, said during a recent hearing with the European Parliament’s environment committee.
At last year’s climate talks in Brazil, a small group of fossil-fuel-producing nations prevented agreement on a road map to transition away from fossil fuels. That’s despite countries agreeing to similar language in 2023.
Since then, some of those countries have backtracked on that pledge, and the United States has withdrawn from global climate efforts altogether, with President Donald Trump continuing to rail against renewables.
Still, more than 80 countries at last year’s summit in Brazil backed the idea of transitioning to clean energy.
Colombian officials say the Santa Marta summit can help move that vision forward.
“What we are saying today is that this process is complementary to the COP. It’s not a substitute, we think that the U.N. system is necessary. We think that it has to be also transformed,” Vélez said.
Hopes for pragmatism
While the Iran war has redrawn the global energy map, countries are divided on whether to accelerate their use of renewables or double down on fossil fuels. And some of them attending the conference, such as Mexico and Germany, have expressed interest in expanding oil and gas production in pursuit of energy security.
Some activists and diplomats say they’re hoping for a pragmatic discussion about what it takes to pull off a successful transition, while dealing with related issues such as fossil fuel subsidies and investment in grid infrastructure and battery storage.
“We want to have very open, honest conversations about what are the opportunities that we have ahead,” Vélez said.
The summit will not include the world’s largest producers and consumers of fossil fuels — the U.S. and China — or other major oil economies such as India and Middle Eastern nations.
Several countries, including Canada and Germany are sending senior officials but not top ministers. It’s the same for Turkey and Australia, the two countries that are co-hosting COP31 in Antalya.
“Canada appreciates Colombia and the Netherlands’ efforts to advance this conversation through this Conference and has a valuable perspective to share as a major fossil fuel producer that has been and will continue to be committed to its obligations under the Paris Agreement,” Amélie Desmarais, a spokesperson for Canada’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, said in an email.
Chris Bowen, Australia’s minister for climate and energy, told reporters this week that he and Turkey’s climate minister, Murat Kurum, would examine the outcomes of the Colombia summit when preparing for November’s climate talks.
‘Change is happening’
Colombia is a major coal and oil exporter, with fossil fuels accounting for roughly 10 percent of its gross domestic product and 45 percent of total exports in 2024, according to the International Energy Agency.
At the same time, production has been declining, and Colombian President Gustavo Petro has nudged the country toward a clean energy transition. In 2023, he announced an end to new contracts for oil, gas and coal exploration. Colombia also became the first major fossil fuel producer to join a movement for a binding treaty to phase out those polluting forms of energy.
Between 2022 and 2024, the amount of installed solar and wind capacity in Colombia went from 1.5 percent of the total energy mix to 9 percent, according to the Stockholm Environment Institute.
But Colombia has also increased its reliance on imported natural gas, which analysts say exposes it to price volatility.
“Colombia’s energy mix is in transition, but structural challenges — including declining domestic gas production, policy shifts, and hydropower variability — have made LNG imports essential,” Mariana Anjos, a Latin America gas analyst for S&P Global, said in an email.
Vélez said the country’s continued reliance on gas doesn’t contradict its efforts to address climate change.
“Change is happening, but that’s happening only because the policies are changing, and they are not going to change from one day to another,” she said, noting that the country aims to stop using gas as soon as possible.
Ahead of last year’s COP30 climate talks, Petro slammed Trump for his anti-climate stance and called for an economy free of oil and natural gas.
“Mr. Trump is against humankind,” Petro said.
Now the country is on the cusp of an election. Petro isn’t running due to constitutional term limits and despite his ambitious commitment to an energy and economic transition, Colombia has struggled with implementation, said Elisa Arond, a senior research fellow at the Stockholm Environment Institute in Bogota.
“Some of these commitments have stuck. Many have been highly contested,” she said. “The real question is … where the next administration is going to take these commitments.”
‘Speed up this transition’
Hosting a fossil fuel transition conference isn’t without risk.
Some countries want a binding treaty to halt and reverse fossil fuel expansion, while others think it should be voluntary. Those disagreements could lead to mangled messaging from the conference, or a split among nations about how to move forward on climate change.
There could be a perception that “we’re in the middle of a global crisis and all these people are on a beach in Colombia twiddling their thumbs,” said one official from a developed nation who requested anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to the media. “Or that we have a family fight about whether it’s a treaty or not a treaty. I don’t think that’s helpful.”
Colombia and the Netherlands will produce a report summarizing the discussions after the conference. A group of scientists are also launching an advisory panel to provide input on the energy transition.
André Corrêa do Lago, the COP30 president, said there will be different paths for different countries and regions, acknowledging that even while Brazil champions renewables, it has also become a major oil and gas producer.
“There is a great debate in the country, and I think that’s very much what we think should be stimulated, which is the debate inside countries, because each one has to show its own way,” he said.
Activists hope individual countries could create their own road maps to transition away from fossil fuels following the conference. Brazil, as part of its COP30 presidency, is pursuing a road map separate from the U.N. process that it plans to finalize later this year.
Hassing, the Dutch diplomat, said one outcome could be that countries work together to strengthen their transitions or connect with financial institutions or businesses to draw investment.
“This is hopefully the start of a longer-running process where we can get together in an atmosphere where we don’t necessarily negotiate but talk about what we can do together to speed up this transition,” he said.
Zia Weise contributed reporting.
