A landmark two-day international climate conference in Santa Marta, Colombia, has concluded with more than 50 countries agreeing to develop national "roadmaps" for phasing out fossil fuel production and use — a significant if cautious step forward in global efforts to address the climate crisis. The meeting, co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands, brought together 59 nations in what organisers described as a "coalition of the willing," explicitly excluding major emitters and petrostates such as the United States, China, India, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Participants agreed on a set of concrete, if non-binding, measures: each country will draft its own transition roadmap, a new scientific panel will be established to consolidate knowledge on phasing out coal, oil and gas — modelled in part on the IPCC, the existing body for climate science — and governments will jointly examine financial and trade barriers to the transition, including fossil fuel subsidies and debt burdens facing poorer nations. France became the first developed country to release such a national roadmap during the conference, though critics noted it largely repackaged existing policy. Colombia also published a draft roadmap and helped set up the scientific advisory panel.

Colombia's environment minister Irene Vélez Torres, who chaired the talks, struck a deliberately ambitious tone at the closing plenary: "We decided not to resign ourselves to an economy built on the destruction of life. The transition away from fossil fuels could no longer remain a slogan but must become a concrete, political and collective endeavour." The Netherlands' climate minister Stientje van Veldhoven acknowledged that countries would move at different speeds and that a one-size-fits-all approach was neither practical nor desirable, given that nearly half the participating states are themselves fossil fuel producers.

The Santa Marta conference was born of frustration with the United Nations climate summit process, where consensus rules — requiring agreement from all countries, including major fossil fuel exporters — have repeatedly blocked direct discussion of phasing out coal, oil and gas over more than three decades of negotiations. While the Santa Marta gathering operated outside the formal UN framework, organisers stressed that the roadmaps and alliances formed here are intended to feed into the Cop31 UN climate summit scheduled for November. A follow-up conference will be held early next year on the low-lying Pacific island nation of Tuvalu — a country acutely threatened by rising sea levels — co-hosted by Ireland.

Environmental campaigners welcomed the outcomes while stressing that ambition must now translate into action. Tzeporah Berman, founder of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, called Santa Marta "a historic breakthrough — the first time a group of nations willing to act has come together" to break the deadlock that has paralysed UN climate talks. A note of realism also ran through the proceedings: the coalition collectively represents more than half of global GDP and roughly a third of global energy demand, but accounts for only a fifth of fossil fuel supply — meaning the heaviest producers remain outside the tent. Whether the voluntary roadmaps will generate the binding commitments many climate advocates say are necessary remains, as yet, unanswered.