Sixty Nations Converge on Colombia to Revive a Stalling Fossil Fuel Phase-Out

Santa Marta, a port city on Colombia's Caribbean coast, is not the obvious setting for a geopolitical reckoning over oil and gas. But that is precisely where delegations from sixty countries are gathering to try to salvage something meaningful from the wreckage of last year's COP30 climate negotiations, which ended without the binding fossil fuel commitments many had hoped for. The summit, the first of its kind dedicated entirely to the question of phasing out fossil fuels, represents a calculated bet by its organizers: that a smaller, more focused coalition can move faster than the unwieldy consensus machinery of the United Nations climate process.

The timing matters. COP30, held in Belém, Brazil, was supposed to be a turning point. The previous year's Dubai agreement had, for the first time in COP history, explicitly called for a "transition away" from fossil fuels. But the language was carefully softened, the timelines vague, and the enforcement mechanisms essentially nonexistent. Major oil-producing nations pushed back hard, and the final text left climate advocates deeply frustrated. What emerged from Belém was not a breakthrough but a holding pattern, and the Santa Marta summit is, in part, a direct response to that stagnation.

The coalition assembling in Colombia is not a random cross-section of the international community. It skews heavily toward nations that are either acutely vulnerable to climate change or have made early domestic commitments to clean energy. Small island states, Scandinavian governments, and several Latin American nations are expected to be well represented. Notably absent, or present only at the margins, are the world's largest fossil fuel producers and consumers. That absence is both the summit's greatest weakness and, paradoxically, its potential source of momentum.

There is a long history of climate coalitions forming with great fanfare and dissolving quietly when the hard work of implementation begins. The High Ambition Coalition, the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance, the Powering Past Coal Alliance — each has generated headlines and genuine diplomatic energy, and each has struggled to translate membership into measurable emissions reductions. The risk in Santa Marta is the same: that sixty countries sign a communiqué, return home, and face the same domestic political pressures that have always made fossil fuel phase-outs easier to promise than to execute.

What makes this moment different, or at least potentially different, is the economic context. The cost of solar and wind energy has collapsed over the past decade in ways that were barely imaginable when the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015. According to the International Energy Agency, solar photovoltaic capacity additions broke records again in 2024, and renewable energy is now the cheapest source of new electricity generation in most of the world. The financial case for fossil fuels is eroding even without policy pressure, which means that a credible international coalition could accelerate a transition that market forces are already nudging along.

But the second-order consequences of a successful phase-out coalition deserve careful attention. If sixty countries move decisively to restrict fossil fuel demand, the pressure on non-member petrostates intensifies in ways that could be deeply destabilizing. Nations whose entire fiscal architecture depends on hydrocarbon revenues — think Venezuela, Nigeria, or Iraq — face not just economic disruption but potential state fragility. A rapid, unmanaged transition could hollow out government revenues in countries that have few alternative tax bases, triggering social unrest that spills across borders. The coalition's moral authority depends on whether it pairs its phase-out ambitions with credible support for the countries most economically exposed to the transition it is demanding.

Colombia's decision to host this summit is itself a statement. President Gustavo Petro has made climate action a centerpiece of his administration, even as his country remains a significant coal exporter. That tension is not incidental — it is the whole story. Colombia is trying to model what a fossil-fuel-dependent developing nation looks like when it chooses a different path, and Santa Marta is the stage for that argument.

Whether sixty countries can hold together long enough to matter at COP31 and beyond will depend less on the communiqué they produce this week than on the domestic political durability of the governments signing it. Elections, energy price shocks, and industrial lobbying have a way of quietly dismantling international commitments. The summit's real test will come not in Colombia but in the budget negotiations, legislative chambers, and regulatory agencies of the countries represented here — places where the language of climate ambition meets the friction of actual governance.

The fossil fuel era will end. The only open question is whether it ends on a timeline that keeps global warming within manageable bounds, or one that does not.