‘Committee of doers’ stare down climate root cause
As the worst oil shock in history shrinks economies around the world, more than 50 countries are banding together to make an orderly transition away from fossil fuels.
Agenda items at the multi-day event, held in the port city of Santa Marta, include phasing out fossil fuel subsidies and an agreement to formalize transition financing for developing countries.
At the conference co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands, promises of developing country-specific road maps away from climate-polluting fossil fuels and supporting multilateral alliances may emerge.
Mary Robinson, founding member of The Elders and former Irish president, says the summit comes at a time when the world is experiencing a wake-up call on energy.
“Over the past month, the United States and Israel have waged an illegal war against Iran, and the consequences have been felt around the world,” he said in a briefing ahead of Santa Marta.
“High oil prices don’t just stay in energy markets; they also penetrate directly into people’s lives.”
A “committee of makers” meeting in the Colombian city is deliberately set apart – albeit complementary – from the official United Nations climate diplomacy process.
The hope is that free from fossil fuel lobbyists and producing countries who could obstruct Conference of the Parties negotiations, high-ambition countries will have a multilateral space to address the root cause of climate change.
Australia will join in a new negotiating role ahead of the next UN climate talks in Türkiye.
Australia’s climate change and energy minister Chris Bowen, chairman of the COP31 negotiations, will not attend and senior officials will be sent to represent the country.
Although Mr. Bowen will not be at the meeting, he has voiced his support for the clean energy transition as a long-term path to energy security.
“No war can stop the flow of the sun into Australia,” he told reporters in early April.
Australia has embarked on an ambitious domestic transition and is actively preparing to supply green metals and critical minerals to a decarbonised world, while remaining a major exporter of coal and gas.
Australia has also signed the Belem Declaration, a voluntary commitment to a “fair, orderly and equitable” roadmap away from fossil fuels, as no formal consensus on the issue could be brokered at COP30.
Brazil has since used its ongoing COP30 presidency to continue negotiations at the highest political level on an orderly plan away from fossil fuels.
The Santa Marta conference is intended to initiate global dialogue supporting the roadmap effort.
Gavan McFadzean of the Australian Conservation Foundation, who attended the summit, will push Australia to use its COP31 negotiating role to drive the fossil fuel transition agenda.
“We’ll want to ensure there’s a strong trade in export fossil fuels and we’ll want to see Australia support that,” he told AAP.
He said Australia also needed to lay the groundwork to transform fossil fuel trading relationships into supplying partners with green metals and other clean products.
While Australia, Canada, Brazil and other fossil fuel-producing countries will participate, the United States, India and China are among those not participating.
COP30 director general Ana Toni advocates for a fossil fuel roadmap process that engages all nations and focuses on bottlenecks in participation.
“We know that some countries are very dependent on fossil fuels and revenues from fossil fuels,” he said during a briefing.
“How can we transition in a way that leaves no one behind?”
A final summary can be expected at the main event on 28-29 April, including the results of accompanying sessions involving civil society, academia and other groups.
The 2027 conference will be held in the Pacific, which has long dominated international climate diplomacy.
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