Against a backdrop of rising global temperatures driven by decades of fossil fuel consumption and repeated deadlock at United Nations climate negotiations, around 60 countries have convened this week in Santa Marta, Colombia, for a landmark gathering aimed at forging collective action to phase out coal, oil, and gas — a goal that major UN climate summits have repeatedly failed to deliver.
The participating nations collectively account for approximately one-fifth of the world’s total fossil fuel production, counting major producers including Colombia, Australia, and Nigeria among their ranks. Notably absent from the talks, however, are the world’s largest fossil fuel-consuming and producing powers: the United States, China, and India.
For years, progress on cutting fossil fuel dependence has stalled at the annual UN Climate Change Conference (COP), the global governing body for climate action. The consensus-based rule structure of COP negotiations means every participating nation holds veto power over final agreements, allowing large fossil fuel-producing blocs to block ambitious targets. This gridlock left many delegates deeply frustrated after last November’s COP30 held in Belém, Brazil, where efforts to adopt a formal global roadmap for a full fossil fuel phase-out collapsed in the face of opposition from major oil-exporting countries.
Organizers emphasize that this new Colombian gathering is not intended to replace the COP process, but rather to complement it by building momentum that can break long-standing impasses. The urgency of this effort has been amplified by leading climate science, which warns that the window to limit global warming to the 1.5°C threshold — the safe guardrail set in the Paris Agreement to avoid the worst, irreversible climate impacts — is rapidly closing.
“ We are inevitably going to crash through the 1.5°C limit within the next three to five years,” Professor Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told BBC News. “Breaking through 1.5°C means we enter a far more dangerous world — with more frequent and intense droughts, floods, fires and heatwaves — and we are already approaching critical tipping points in major Earth systems.”
Beyond climate science, shifting global geopolitics is reshaping the global energy conversation, adding new urgency to the push for transition. Under the second Trump administration, the world’s largest economy, the United States, has ramped up aggressive policies to expand domestic coal, oil, and gas production, creating global uncertainty about the pace of decarbonization. Many middle-power nations have since adopted a wait-and-see stance, hesitant to commit to fast transition without clearer global direction.
Participants in the Santa Marta talks say the gathering’s core goal is to demonstrate that a critical mass of nations is already committed to shifting to renewable energy, giving hesitant countries the confidence to move forward. “We are committed to working with other countries to support those wishing to drive forward their transitions to clean and secure energy,” said UK Climate Envoy Rachel Kyte, who is in attendance. “We have the experience of our transition to share and the recent experience of driving to energy security with our clean power mission.”
Recent geopolitical unrest has underscored the risks of continued fossil fuel dependence, pushing energy security back to the top of the global policy agenda. Ongoing conflict in the Middle East, combined with rising tensions in the strategic Strait of Hormuz through which 20% of the world’s daily oil shipments pass, has sent global oil prices climbing in recent weeks.
“The urgency is multiplied. What’s happening has worsened the fossil fuel crisis we’re already in,” said former Irish President Mary Robinson, a founding member of the elders group of former global leaders, who is attending the talks. “This is exactly why this conference matters now.”
These market disruptions are already shifting consumer and industry behavior, Rockström reported. After a recent advisory board meeting with automotive giant Mercedes-Benz, he noted that the company had seen a sharp uptick in European consumer demand for electric vehicles, driven by growing public desire for energy independence away from volatile global fossil fuel markets.
The formation of this new “coalition of the willing” has sparked debate about whether it signals a permanent shift away from the consensus-based COP process. But observers and organizers alike argue it can instead revitalize global climate action. “Ultimately you don’t need all countries to drive global progress. You need a starting point,” said Katerine Petersen, a climate analyst with think tank E3G who is attending the gathering. “Then you need a coalition that can expand over time and show how it can and will be useful. And I think that’s what we’re expecting to see from Santa Marta.”
Organizers stress the meeting remains complementary to COP, and key leaders from last year’s COP30 in Brazil are in attendance in Santa Marta. Conclusions from the Colombian gathering will be integrated into Brazil’s national fossil fuel phase-out roadmap, which the country will release ahead of COP31 scheduled to take place in Turkey this November. Even as domestic protestors in London rallied this week against plans for new UK oil and gas exploration, the Santa Marta meeting marks a key test of whether smaller, committed blocs can push the world faster toward a clean energy future when global negotiations stall.