Colombia's environment minister is calling on countries to use the current crisis in the Middle East as a catalyst for accelerating the transition away from fossil fuels, ahead of a major international summit on energy co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands. Speaking to journalists this week, Acting Minister Irene Vélez Torres argued that instability in global oil markets — driven in part by conflict involving Iran and concerns over supply through the Strait of Hormuz, a critical shipping corridor for roughly a fifth of the world's oil — makes the case for clean energy more urgent, not less. "The war in the Middle East has triggered a global crisis," she said. "I believe the movement should be toward radicalising the green agenda and the transitions."

The summit, to be held 24–29 April in Santa Marta, a Caribbean coastal city in northern Colombia, will bring together around 50 countries — including Germany, France, Brazil, Canada, the United Kingdom, Norway and Australia — to discuss pathways away from oil, gas and coal. Spain's minister for ecological transition, Sara Aagesen, is expected to play a prominent role. The conference is structured around three working groups covering international multilateral cooperation, energy supply and demand, and the economic challenges facing fossil-fuel-dependent nations. One key item on the agenda is a proposed "fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty," already backed by 17 countries, which would set caps on the extraction of oil, gas and coal. The Netherlands, as co-host, will focus on the gradual dismantling of fossil fuel subsidies.

The meeting is deliberately held outside the formal United Nations climate negotiations — a system that has struggled for three decades to produce binding agreements on fossil fuel phaseout, largely because all texts must be adopted by consensus, making it easy for less ambitious countries to block stronger language. At last year's COP30 in Belém, Brazil, no direct references to fossil fuels were included in the final declaration. Vélez frames the Santa Marta gathering not as a negotiating forum but as a "political space" for like-minded countries to build momentum and pressure the broader UN process, with conclusions feeding into COP31 in Turkey later this year. "We are not going to demand that countries make commitments," she said.

Colombia itself embodies the tensions at the heart of the debate. One of Latin America's leading oil producers, the country relies on coal and oil for around 40% of its fiscal revenues, and sits alongside vast stretches of the Amazon rainforest — one of the planet's most critical carbon sinks. Under President Gustavo Petro, Colombia has pledged to halt new oil exploration contracts and has increased non-hydropower renewables from roughly 1% to 16% of its electricity mix. Vélez noted that for the first time, coffee exports have overtaken fossil fuels as a source of foreign income, alongside growing revenues from tourism — signs, she argues, that an economic transition is underway. Saudi Arabia, a key oil exporter with strong interests in maintaining production, will not attend.

The geopolitical backdrop adds further complexity. The United States under President Donald Trump has withdrawn from international climate efforts and is actively promoting expanded domestic oil production, a sharp contrast to Colombia's approach. Meanwhile, many developing nations — particularly fossil-fuel exporters in the Global South — are pushing for any energy transition to be "just," acknowledging their deep economic dependence on hydrocarbon revenues. Vélez put it plainly: "Each country is increasingly looking at how to achieve energy sovereignty through its own resources." The Santa Marta summit is intended as the first in a series, with organisers already planning a follow-up conference, hopeful that the logic of energy security will bring more countries on board.