Scientists Push Colombia Summit to Draw a Hard Line on New Fossil Fuel Expansion

When Colombia agreed to host the world's first intergovernmental summit dedicated entirely to managing the decline of fossil fuels, it signaled something rare in climate diplomacy: a willingness to talk not just about clean energy futures, but about the deliberate winding down of oil, gas, and coal. Now, with that summit approaching, a group of scientists has submitted formal action recommendations urging attending countries to halt all new fossil fuel expansion, a demand that sounds straightforward but carries enormous geopolitical and economic weight.

The recommendations, revealed by Carbon Brief, ask summit participants to treat the cessation of new fossil fuel development not as an aspirational target but as an immediate policy commitment. The scientific logic behind this is well-established. The International Energy Agency concluded in its landmark 2021 Net Zero by 2050 report that no new oil, gas, or coal fields should be approved if the world is to stay within 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming. What is new here is the forum: a dedicated intergovernmental gathering where that science is being placed directly in front of policymakers whose economies, in many cases, still depend heavily on fossil fuel revenues.

Colombia itself is an instructive case. President Gustavo Petro has made ending fossil fuel dependency a centerpiece of his administration's identity, yet Colombia remains a significant oil and coal exporter. The tension between Petro's climate ambitions and the fiscal realities of a country where hydrocarbons fund a substantial share of public revenue is not a minor footnote. It is the central contradiction that this summit must somehow navigate. Hosting the meeting is itself a form of soft power, allowing Colombia to position itself as a leader in the energy transition narrative even as its own transition remains incomplete and contested domestically.

The scientists' recommendations arrive into a diplomatic environment that has historically struggled to translate climate science into binding commitments. The Glasgow Climate Pact in 2021 marked the first time a UN climate agreement explicitly mentioned fossil fuels, calling for a "phase-down" of unabated coal and a phase-out of "inefficient" fossil fuel subsidies. The careful hedging in that language was not accidental. It reflected the resistance of petrostates and fossil-fuel-dependent economies who view production limits as an existential economic threat.

What makes a summit like this one different, at least in theory, is that the countries choosing to attend are presumably more aligned with the transition agenda. But "more aligned" is not the same as ready to commit. Many attending nations are middle-income countries that have argued, with some justification, that wealthy industrialized economies built their prosperity on fossil fuels and are now, in effect, pulling up the ladder. The concept of a "just transition" is supposed to address this asymmetry, but the financial mechanisms to make it real, including loss and damage funds and transition finance, remain chronically underfunded.

The scientists' call to halt new expansion also intersects with a growing body of research on "carbon lock-in," the way that new fossil fuel infrastructure creates decades-long economic and political dependencies that make future phase-outs progressively harder. Every new oil field approved today is not just a source of emissions. It is a future lobbying interest, a future stranded-asset dispute, and a future political constituency resistant to change. Halting expansion now, the argument goes, is exponentially cheaper and less disruptive than managing the unwind of infrastructure built in the 2020s and 2030s.

If the summit produces even a soft consensus around halting new expansion, the second-order effects could ripple well beyond the countries in the room. Financial markets are increasingly sensitive to policy signals on fossil fuels. A credible multilateral commitment, even a non-binding one, could accelerate the repricing of fossil fuel assets and influence the risk calculations of development banks and institutional investors who are still financing new extraction in the Global South.

There is also a feedback loop worth noting on the domestic politics of attending countries. Leaders who sign onto strong language at an international summit create a reference point that civil society, courts, and opposition movements can use to hold them accountable at home. Colombia's own climate litigation history, including court rulings that have recognized the rights of future generations, suggests that international commitments do not stay neatly contained within diplomatic communiqués.

The harder question is whether a summit without the United States, Saudi Arabia, Russia, or other major producers can meaningfully reshape the trajectory of global fossil fuel development. It probably cannot do so alone. But it can establish a norm, and norms, once established among a critical enough coalition, have a way of becoming the baseline against which all future negotiations are measured. The scientists submitting these recommendations understand that. Whether the diplomats in the room are prepared to act on it is the question that will define what this summit actually achieves.