During three decades of negotiations at the UN, it has been practically impossible to bring to the agreements that emerge from climate summits the reality of what is happening to the planet: up to dangerous levels with the continued burning of fossil fuels (oil, gas and coal). Transferring to the summit texts has been impossible due to the firm veto of the main producers on any mention of fuels. “We have been treating the symptoms and we have never said that fuels are the main cause of this cancer and that is what we have to attack,” summarized Juan Carlos Monterrey, Panama’s special envoy for Climate Change.
“For the first time in 34 years, a conversation is being had that was owed to the world,” said Monterrey, referring to the meeting, which closed this Wednesday in the Colombian city of Santa Marta. This event, in which representatives from 57 countries – which account for 30% of global GDP and fuel consumption – have participated, has given birth to a coalition that aims to promote the energy transition and share initiatives.
“Beyond fossil fuels there is a possible world,” emphasized the Colombian Minister of the Environment, Irene Vélez, at the closing of the event. He has also defended that in Santa Marta it has been possible to “lift the taboos”, in reference to the vetoes on mentions of fossil fuels. The Netherlands’ Climate Minister, Stientje Van Veldhoven, defined the meeting as “a safe space for dialogue.” Colombia and the Netherlands have been the co-organizers of the first conference of this type to be held.
At the meeting, in which scientists and scientists participated in addition to a dozen ministers, experiences and concerns about this “inevitable” transition were shared, in the words of Tina Stege, special envoy for Climate Change of the Marshall Islands. “It is the only sensible path for the safety and protection of everyone,” he added.
This conference was born with a desire for continuity and Tuvalu and Ireland will co-organize the next edition, which will be held in the small Pacific island state in 2027. But the conference is also born with uncertainties about how it will fit into the UN climate summit system and the Paris Agreement, a multilateral process that the fifty countries participating in this event continue to defend despite the “frustrating” nature of the last summits, as many of the attendees recognized in the hallways of the convention center of the Caribbean city that hosted the meeting.
The conference has been a transversal meeting in which fuel-producing countries (such as Colombia, Brazil, Norway and Canada) and purely consuming nations (such as Spain, Germany, Belgium and the United Kingdom) have shared their proposals and concerns, but without closing a final agreement or a single path to follow.
For example, there has been talk of the possibility of launching a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty; or how to put an end to public aid for oil and coal; or how nations with fewer resources need instruments that allow them to reduce their external debt in the context of the transition; or how producing countries can face the loss of tax revenue linked to the fossil sector… More than 600 contributions have been compiled by the co-organizers of this event. And as a result of this conference, several working groups will be created on emissions from the fuel production sector, subsidies, taxation or the necessary reforms of the financial system. Everything focused on that transition to abandon coal, oil and coal.
“These conversations are really healthy and useful,” said Rachel Kyte, the UK’s special climate change envoy. “This is not a conversation that we can easily have in the hallways of the UN or in the COPs,” he added, referring to climate summits.
Frustration
The last of that UN summit was held in November in the Brazilian city of Belém. And in a way it was a turning point, because the veto of the petrostates. The majority of those attending Santa Marta experienced that frustration five months ago.
The European Commissioner for Climate, Wopke Hoekstra, has been one of the participants in this conference who, perhaps, has spoken about this in a starker way: “The reality, unfortunately, is that, and we saw it very well in the previous COP, the only thing we can achieve there is the lowest common denominator.” The origin lies in the form of , which grants a veto power to any of the 200 nations that participate. “It is one of the curses of multilateralism,” admitted Hoekstra. For this reason, he believed, it would be necessary to review the functioning of the COPs.
But Hoekstra also recognized that turning the COPs into something “completely new” will not be an easy task, so “part of the future of international climate diplomacy” will be with “plurilateral initiatives” such as the conference held in Santa Marta. The objective, as the commissioner explained, is to forge a “coalition” and have more countries join it.
It is not lost on anyone that the main world emitter, China, is missing here, unlike the United States. “China would be welcome and it would be important for it to be there,” Kyte admitted.
Defense of multilateralism
Despite this feeling of frustration with the COPs shared by the majority of attendees at Santa Marta, the countries have also wanted to defend multilateralism. “It is essential to address a global crisis that transcends borders,” is stated in the joint positioning of the 14 European countries that have participated in Santa Marta, among which are the four large economies of the EU: Germany, France, Italy and Spain. The writing defends that Santa Marta should be a boost for the UN climate summits in addition to representing “a strong signal to companies, financial institutions and multilateral development banks to invest in the energy transition.”
“The launch of this conference is already a success in itself,” said the third vice president and minister for the Ecological Transition, Sara Aagesen, who stressed that the objective is for the discussions of this initiative to serve “as a catalyst, helping us reach the next COP with real momentum.”
This conference was conceived in a time of frustration, and has been held in another in which the dependence of the world economy on fossil fuels is being questioned beyond environmental or competitiveness reasons (the costs of renewables and electric cars continue to fall). With the war in the Middle East and the price and supply crisis, the feeling of lack of security has increased.
“Dependency on fossil fuels generates vulnerability and moving away from them can protect the economy and the population from the domino effects of conflict, instability and volatility. The transition from fossil fuels reduces vulnerabilities,” notes the text signed by the European countries at the end of this meeting. “The harsh reality is that Europe is being held hostage by something it cannot control,” admitted the Climate Commissioner. “The lessons learned from the fossil fuel-driven crises of recent years force us to accelerate their gradual elimination,” Aagesen stressed.
