A photograph of the Santa Marta summit captures a man wearing a cap with the words “Make Science Great Again.” It is the emblem of the first international conference on abandoning fossil fuels, held in Colombia from 24 to 29 April 2026. The real anomaly of this meeting was the explicit exclusion of fossil industry lobbyists. “If you couldn’t commit to phasing out fossil fuels, you couldn’t come,” explained Mark Campanale of Carbon Tracker. Fifty-seven countries attended, but no delegates from Saudi Arabia, Qatar or the Emirates and, significantly, no representatives of the Trump administration.
A horizontal and revolutionary format What struck the participants was the internal structure of the summit, far from the institutional stages of the usual COPs. Sessions were held in small circles where ministers, indigenous leaders and activists discussed as equals, without computers, following the Chatham House rule to encourage maximum candor. “They put us in a situation where we had to speak with our minds and our hearts,” said Juan Carlos Monterrey Gómez, representing Panama. Before the political summit, 400 scientists worked on a new global panel, the Scientific Expert Group for the Global Energy Transition, led by Johan Rockström. The aim is to provide rapid, annual analysis, going beyond the IPCC’s seven-year cycles to respond to the urgency of the crisis.
National commitments and the survival factor On the concrete commitments front, France presented the first organic national roadmap for the transition away from fossil fuels: a stop to coal by 2030 and oil by 2045. Colombia, the host nation, has shown a plan to cut 90% of energy emissions by 2050, estimating that the operation, while requiring 10 billion in annual investments, will generate net savings of 23 billion by mid-century. At the end of the proceedings, the announcement of the passing of the baton: the next conference in 2027 will be held in Tuvalu, co-organised with Ireland. For the small island state, the transition is a matter of physical survival against rising seas. It is a signal that shifts the axis of climate diplomacy towards the search for binding commitments between those who really want to act.
The funding hub and the People’s Summit
The big obstacle remains access to capital. Although renewables are now cheaper than fossils, the countries of the Global South remain trapped in debt and financial structures that leave no room for autonomous choices. Among the proposals that emerged, the use of residual oil revenues to finance the transition stands out, as is already happening in the Brazilian state of Espírito Santo. At the same time, the “People’s Summit” brought together a thousand civil society organizations, producing a very harsh declaration: immediate blocking of all new extraction licenses, national plans with certain deadlines and the end of the legal mechanisms (ISDS) that allow multinationals to sue governments that adopt restrictive climate policies.
What remains of the summit Santa Marta leaves a legacy of three lines of work: national roadmaps, reform of the financial system and reduction of carbon-intensive trade. However, the absences of giants such as the United States, China and India weigh heavily. This “coalition of the willing” represents half of the world’s GDP but only a fifth of fossil production. The bet is that the Colombian model will become a new “social norm” capable of influencing COP31 in Antalya. Meanwhile, for the first time, a climate summit ended without the oil industry being able to rewrite the agreement in the corridors.
