With COP30 delivering combined outcomes on a fossil gasoline phaseout, consideration is popping to new areas for constructing local weather motion. The Santa Marta convention, hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands, may push governments to ship concrete plans via a simply transition and tax reform
COP30 ended with combined outcomes, however one sign was clear: the world is eager to maneuver on from negotiation in the direction of actual motion and implementation.
The rationale for international locations to take action is already there. Governments have agreed world commitments to finish deforestation, and former UN local weather summits confirmed the necessity to transition away from fossil fuels.
However progress on negotiations, notably round securing clear language that commits governments to a full fossil gasoline phaseout, is proving to be sticky. Regardless of the local weather motion’s momentum lately, any significant ahead movement has stalled because of intense lobbying and blocking from polluting industries and petrostates.
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To treatment this, the Colombian and Dutch Governments, backed by the Brazilian COP Presidency, proposed a brand new method to implementation that may happen outdoors COP’s official negotiation areas, mobilising these able to work.
However what is going to that appear like? And might or not it’s efficient?
What’s the Santa Marta convention, and why does it matter for the fossil gasoline phaseout?
The Santa Marta convention, happening in Colombia in April 2026, goals to push governments past the bounds of the formal negotiations. Longstanding disagreements surrounding matters like local weather finance deployment, the varieties of measures international locations ought to pursue, and shut the ambition hole have seen little or no progress lately.
Santa Marta is trying to change that. It’s envisioned as an area for the international locations prepared for motion. This “coalition of the keen” will get into the main points of what a transition away from fossil fuels may appear like.
Choices are made at COP by consensus, which means practically each nation on this planet has to agree to what’s included within the treaty texts. This ensures sweeping worldwide help for insurance policies, but additionally leaves the method susceptible to obstruction from international locations with vested pursuits in polluting industries, like oil and fuel or agribusiness.
International Witness has demonstrated for a few years the appreciable presence of fossil gasoline business lobbyists at COP, which we consider acts as a corrosive affect on the summit.
The Santa Marta convention, in contrast, shouldn’t be one more spherical of formal negotiations. It’s a political intervention designed to interrupt free from the years of lowest-common-denominator outcomes we have seen at earlier COPs and push governments to behave on what science and justice each demand – a fast, truthful transition away from fossil fuels.
Past international locations, all stakeholders are invited to take part – together with civil society, youth and Indigenous communities. We strongly help this open invitation for teams. New approaches want new leaders and new voices, and talks shouldn’t be dominated by these invested in the established order.
Recap: What was the decision at COP30?
The Brazilian Presidency had formidable targets for COP30. On the finish, they have been capable of unveil the International Mutirão, a roadmap for “uniting humanity in a worldwide mobilization towards local weather change.”
The International Mutirão targeted on the necessity to transfer into an implementation part at COP, however crucially failed to say fossil fuels, each to acknowledge the position fossil fuels play in inflicting local weather breakdown or to place ahead plans to part out their use.
Earlier drafts did attempt to handle this, however that language was finally eliminated after strain from petrostates.
Whereas the spirit of the International Mutirão was a welcome assertion on the way wherein international locations must collectively method our greatest problem, it felt contradictory to the expertise of many environmental and human rights defenders on the bottom, who have been excluded (some, by drive) from COP’s decision-making areas.
Given petrostate success in blocking the roadmaps language in addition to the disproportionately excessive quantity of fossil gasoline lobbyists on the local weather summit, the COP’s objectives for working in the direction of inclusiveness and implementation fell quick.
Learn extra: COP30 verdict: Folks in, polluters nonetheless in?
How geopolitics and battle are reshaping the worldwide power dialog
The Santa Marta convention will arrive at a time of main upheaval within the world power markets. On prime of the local weather crucial to transition away from fossil fuels, nations all over the world are being roiled, as soon as once more, by oil shocks from the continuing Israel-US struggle towards Iran.
Assaults on power infrastructure and commerce routes within the Center East are exposing a tough fact: world dependence on the fossil gasoline business makes societies extra susceptible, not safe.
Value shocks and provide disruption are pushing up power prices worldwide, with low and middle-income households paying the heaviest value. These developments are solely anticipated to worsen.
What ought to Santa Marta ship? International Witness’s coverage positions at a look
The Santa Marta convention is the primary of different deliberate convenings for international locations to maneuver forwards on making a roadmap for the fossil gasoline transition.
International Witness submitted three positions to the convention that we strongly consider must be featured within the design and growth of the roadmap at Santa Marta:
- Local weather finance must be publicly funded and grant-based and compensate for previous harms. Presently, too lots of the funds backing local weather finance depend on personal, debt-based or different rigid types of financing that feed into an uneven energy dynamic, protecting recipient international locations locked into an unsustainable debt burden. As an alternative, the nation’s most chargeable for the local weather disaster should recognise local weather finance as a part of their compensation for the huge environmental debt owed in the direction of the remainder of the world.
- New monetary mechanisms ought to goal fossil gasoline income and help financing of the transition. “Make Polluters Pay” mechanisms straight goal firm revenues or income to be able to elevate funds for the transition away from fossil fuels. One instance might be a worldwide and nationwide surtax on fossil gasoline business income. This surtax would elevate local weather finance whereas lowering the business’s profit-making incentives for buyers, which assist to take care of fossil gasoline dominance of the power system. See extra on this beneath.
- A simply transition led by communities and defenders. The transition away from fossil fuels ought to guarantee a community-led course of with sufficient protections and participation of environmental and human rights defenders. Main selections on the roadmap, akin to target-setting, local weather finance, safeguards, monitoring and overview, and pathways in the direction of implementation should guarantee defenders are main the design of the transition.
The convention ought to inform the continuing formal COP course of, with these COP actors absent from at Santa Marta nonetheless participating constructively on the agreed outcomes.
Why a fossil gasoline phaseout requires world tax reform
One of many extra thrilling alternatives for the Santa Marta convention is to convey collectively completely different strands of world work into one cohesive roadmap. For instance, outdoors of local weather negotiations, work is at present underway on the UN to create a brand new world tax treaty often called the UN Tax Conference.
International coordination on taxes ought to help wider local weather objectives, together with local weather finance and reforms to the worldwide monetary system, to help local weather transition pathways.
As a part of these negotiations for a conference (scheduled to be adopted in September 2027), governments ought to introduce a brand new tax on the income of multinational fossil gasoline firms and use the proceeds to fund local weather motion, together with monetary help for communities affected by the fossil fuels phaseout.
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Governments ought to introduce new nationwide stage taxes on their home fossil gasoline industries, additionally designed to fund local weather motion and to co-exist with the UN tax guidelines as soon as they have been determined.
By lowering the profitability of investing in oil, fuel and coal, new taxes on the huge income made by these climate-wrecking industries may additionally speed up the shift to genuinely sustainable types of power, akin to wind and solar energy.
Eradicating the benefits that the fossil gasoline business at present enjoys, like subsidies, tax breaks and entrenched infrastructure, will help to take away price distortions that drawback renewables.
From stalled negotiations to structural change
Energy doesn’t exist in a vacuum however is entrenched in political, monetary and financial programs that stem from them. To ship a simply, equitable and sustainable phaseout of fossil fuels, nations should handle who holds the ability and who’s granted participation in local weather conventions.
COP30 uncovered the bounds of how multilateralism at present works. With out taking concrete actions that reply to the consensus that has already been reached on fossil fuels, we threat stalling or reversing local weather progress.
The Santa Marta convention is a chance to determine a brand new pathway ahead. The complete participation of events and non-parties, the ambition to push for daring laws, and a willingness to develop the politics of the attainable will all be wanted to make substantive progress.
Santa Marta might be the primary of many alternatives to grasp this future. However that future, we all know, can’t succeed with no dedication to justice, accountability and a considerate transition to new types of energy and wealth.
Authors
Ashley Thomson, Senior US Coverage Advisor, Forests
