With COP30 delivering mixed results on a fossil fuel phaseout, attention is turning to new spaces for building climate action. The Santa Marta conference, hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands, could push governments to deliver concrete plans through a just transition and tax reform
COP30 ended with mixed results, but one signal was clear: the world is keen to move on from negotiation towards real action and implementation.
The rationale for countries to do so is already there. Governments have agreed global commitments to end deforestation, and previous UN climate summits confirmed the need to transition away from fossil fuels.
But progress on negotiations, particularly around securing clear language that commits governments to a full fossil fuel phaseout, is proving to be sticky. Despite the climate movement’s momentum in recent years, any meaningful forward motion has stalled thanks to intense lobbying and blocking from polluting industries and petrostates.
Follow us on WhatsApp | LinkedIn for the latest headlines
To remedy this, the Colombian and Dutch Governments, backed by the Brazilian COP Presidency, proposed a new approach to implementation that can take place outside COP’s official negotiation spaces, mobilising those ready to work.
But what will that look like? And can it be effective?
What is the Santa Marta conference, and why does it matter for the fossil fuel phaseout?
The Santa Marta conference, taking place in Colombia in April 2026, aims to push governments beyond the limits of the formal negotiations. Longstanding disagreements surrounding topics like climate finance deployment, the types of measures countries should pursue, and how to close the ambition gap have seen very little progress in recent years.
Santa Marta is looking to change that. It is envisioned as a space for the countries ready for action. This “coalition of the willing” will get into the details of what a transition away from fossil fuels could look like.
Decisions are made at COP by consensus, meaning nearly every country in the world has to agree to what is included in the treaty texts. This ensures sweeping international support for policies, but also leaves the process vulnerable to obstruction from countries with vested interests in polluting industries, like oil and gas or agribusiness.
Global Witness has demonstrated for many years the considerable presence of fossil fuel industry lobbyists at COP, which we believe acts as a corrosive influence at the summit.
The Santa Marta conference, by contrast, is not yet another round of formal negotiations. It is a political intervention designed to break free from the years of lowest-common-denominator outcomes we’ve seen at previous COPs and push governments to act on what science and justice both demand – a rapid, fair transition away from fossil fuels.
Beyond countries, all stakeholders are invited to participate – including civil society, youth and Indigenous communities. We strongly support this open invitation for groups. New approaches need new leaders and new voices, and talks should not be dominated by those invested in the status quo.
Recap: What was the verdict at COP30?
The Brazilian Presidency had ambitious targets for COP30. At the end, they were able to unveil the Global Mutirão, a roadmap for “uniting humanity in a global mobilization against climate change.”
The Global Mutirão focused on the need to move into an implementation phase at COP, but crucially failed to mention fossil fuels, both to acknowledge the role fossil fuels play in causing climate breakdown or to put forward plans to phase out their use.
Earlier drafts did try to address this, but that language was ultimately removed after pressure from petrostates.
While the spirit of the Global Mutirão was a welcome statement on the manner in which countries need to collectively approach our biggest challenge, it felt contradictory to the experience of many environmental and human rights defenders on the ground, who were excluded (some, by force) from COP’s decision-making spaces.
Given petrostate success in blocking the roadmaps language as well as the disproportionately high number of fossil fuel lobbyists at the climate summit, the COP’s goals for working towards inclusiveness and implementation fell short.
Read more: COP30 verdict: People in, polluters still in?
How geopolitics and conflict are reshaping the global energy conversation
The Santa Marta conference will arrive at a time of major upheaval in the global energy markets. On top of the climate imperative to transition away from fossil fuels, nations around the world are being roiled, once again, by oil shocks from the ongoing Israel-US war against Iran.
Attacks on energy infrastructure and trade routes in the Middle East are exposing a hard truth: global dependence on the fossil fuel industry makes societies more vulnerable, not secure.
Price shocks and supply disruption are pushing up energy costs worldwide, with low and middle-income households paying the heaviest price. These trends are only expected to worsen.
What should Santa Marta deliver? Global Witness’s policy positions at a glance
The Santa Marta conference is the first of other planned convenings for countries to move forwards on creating a roadmap for the fossil fuel transition.
Global Witness submitted three positions to the conference that we strongly believe should be featured in the design and development of the roadmap at Santa Marta:
- Climate finance should be publicly funded and grant-based and compensate for past harms. Presently, too many of the funds backing climate finance rely on private, debt-based or other inflexible forms of financing that feed into an uneven power dynamic, keeping recipient countries locked into an unsustainable debt burden. Instead, the country’s most responsible for the climate crisis must recognise climate finance as part of their compensation for the massive environmental debt owed towards the rest of the world.
- New financial mechanisms should target fossil fuel profits and support financing of the transition. “Make Polluters Pay” mechanisms directly target company revenues or profits in order to raise funds for the transition away from fossil fuels. One example could be a global and national surtax on fossil fuel industry profits. This surtax would raise climate finance while reducing the industry’s profit-making incentives for investors, which help to maintain fossil fuel dominance of the energy system. See more on this below.
- A just transition led by communities and defenders. The transition away from fossil fuels should ensure a community-led process with adequate protections and participation of environmental and human rights defenders. Major decisions on the roadmap, such as target-setting, climate finance, safeguards, monitoring and review, and pathways towards implementation must ensure defenders are leading the design of the transition.
The conference should inform the ongoing formal COP process, with those COP actors absent from at Santa Marta still engaging constructively on the agreed outcomes.
Why a fossil fuel phaseout requires global tax reform
One of the more exciting opportunities for the Santa Marta conference is to bring together different strands of global work into one cohesive roadmap. For example, outside of climate negotiations, work is currently underway at the UN to create a new global tax treaty known as the UN Tax Convention.
Global coordination on taxes should support wider climate goals, including climate finance and reforms to the international financial system, to support climate transition pathways.
As part of these negotiations for a convention (scheduled to be adopted in September 2027), governments should introduce a new tax on the profits of multinational fossil fuel companies and use the proceeds to fund climate action, including financial support for communities affected by the fossil fuels phaseout.
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
Governments should introduce new national level taxes on their domestic fossil fuel industries, also designed to fund climate action and to co-exist with the UN tax rules once they’ve been decided.
By reducing the profitability of investing in oil, gas and coal, new taxes on the massive profits made by these climate-wrecking industries could also accelerate the shift to genuinely sustainable forms of energy, such as wind and solar power.
Removing the advantages that the fossil fuel industry currently enjoys, like subsidies, tax breaks and entrenched infrastructure, can help to remove cost distortions that disadvantage renewables.
From stalled negotiations to structural change
Power does not exist in a vacuum but is entrenched in political, financial and economic systems that stem from them. To deliver a just, equitable and sustainable phaseout of fossil fuels, nations must address who holds the power and who is granted participation in climate conventions.
COP30 exposed the limits of how multilateralism currently works. Without taking concrete actions that respond to the consensus that has already been reached on fossil fuels, we risk stalling or reversing climate progress.
The Santa Marta conference is an opportunity to establish a new pathway forward. The full participation of parties and non-parties, the ambition to push for bold legislation, and a willingness to expand the politics of the possible will all be needed to make substantive progress.
Santa Marta could be the first of many opportunities to realise this future. But that future, we know, cannot succeed without a commitment to justice, accountability and a thoughtful transition to new forms of power and wealth.
Authors
Ashley Thomson, Senior US Policy Advisor, Forests