The world’s first fossil fuel phaseout conference has begun in Santa Marta, Colombia, with 57 countries representing more than half of global GDP, 30% of the world’s population and 20% of global fossil fuel production. Fossil fuel phaseout has moved from climate advocacy to the center of the global economy, where it can no longer be ignored.

For years, fossil fuel phaseout has been treated as politically impossible unless every major producer agreed at once. Santa Marta is testing a different theory: that a critical mass of countries can start building the rules, roadmaps, finance mechanisms and scientific capacity needed to manage the decline of coal, oil and gas. Before the next crisis forces the world to do it chaotically.

The conference is co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands and is designed as a space for countries, subnational governments and other stakeholders that recognize the need to implement a transition away from fossil fuels in a just, orderly and equitable manner, in line with climate goals and the best available science.

Tzeporah Berman, founder and chair of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, described the mood in Santa Marta as “really emotional, actually. Kind of euphoric.” In an interview with We Don’t Have Time, she said: “There are 60 countries here and academics and scientists from all over the world, Indigenous people, civil society, all here to have a conversation about how to do a fossil fuel phase-out.”

That last phrase matters: how to do it.

Climate diplomacy has spent decades negotiating around fossil fuels. Santa Marta is about negotiating through them.

The Genie Is Out Of The Bottle

The climate crisis has often been discussed as if it were mainly a problem of emissions accounting. But behind the emissions are three products: coal, oil and gas.

“It’s like the genie’s out of the bottle,” Berman said. She said the conference will change the dialogue, not only in future fossil fuel phaseout diplomacy, but also within the COP process, because the world is finally having a conversation about “the cause of climate change.”

The bottle, in this case, is the long-standing inability of the formal UN climate process to deal directly with the production of coal, oil and gas.

This is why the Santa Marta gathering should be understood less as a side event and more as a prototype. It is not trying to replace the COP process. It is trying to do what the COP process has so far been structurally unable to do: create a dedicated political space for the managed decline of fossil fuels.

In other words, the taboo has broken. The world is no longer only negotiating emissions targets. It is beginning to negotiate the future of the fuels behind them.

Why Half Of Global GDP Changes Everything

A group representing more than half of global GDP and one-fifth of fossil fuel production is large enough to begin shaping markets. Not by announcing the end of oil tomorrow, but by creating policy certainty around what comes next: clean energy investment, fossil fuel subsidy reform, debt relief, legal protections for climate policy, transition planning for workers and communities, and national roadmaps aligned with science.

For investors, that matters. Policy certainty is what turns transition risk into capital allocation decisions.

Berman called the countries gathered in Santa Marta “a coalition of the ambitious” trying to “unstick the conversation of fossil fuels.”

That is a very strong beginning.

Twenty percent of fossil fuel production is not enough to solve the problem. But it is more than enough to change expectations. Once countries that produce fossil fuels start discussing how to leave them behind, the market hears something different from climate rhetoric. It hears transition risk becoming transition policy.

That is how phaseouts tend to happen in practice. First the taboo breaks. Then the process forms. Then capital starts to move.

The Oil Crisis Has Changed The Energy Security Equation

This is the real-world context for Santa Marta. Fossil fuel dependence is no longer just a climate risk. It is a security, inflation, food-system and political-stability risk.

Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, told The Guardian that the current oil crisis has changed the fossil fuel industry “for ever.” His central point was not only about prices. It was about trust. Governments, he said, will reassess the risk and reliability of fossil fuels and accelerate renewables, nuclear power and electrification. “The vase is broken, the damage is done,” Birol said.

This is the bridge Santa Marta needs to build for mainstream financial audiences: fossil fuel phaseout is not anti-growth. It is a strategy for resilience in a world where fossil dependence increasingly imports geopolitical volatility.

New oil fields will not arrive in time to solve an immediate oil shock. New exploration cannot protect households from the next geopolitical crisis. And countries that remain dependent on imported fossil fuels remain price takers in a market they do not control.

That is the old energy system revealing its weakness in real time.

Johan Rockström: Santa Marta Could Be A Turning Point

Johan Rockström, one of the conveners of the new Science Panel for the Global Energy Transition, captured the moment in an interview with We Don’t Have Time after the panel’s launch.

“The Santa Marta meeting has become like a unique moment in history,” Rockström said, “where we meet exactly at the time of a peak of a global energy crisis which exceeds even the crisis of the oil crisis in the 1970s.” He added that energy independence is now “not only about avoiding climate disaster,” but about building “more prosperous, equitable, and resilient societies.”

That framing may be decisive.

The fossil fuel phaseout will not succeed if it is presented only as sacrifice. It has to be understood as modernization.

Rockström also described the Science Panel for the Global Energy Transition as a way to provide country-level, sector-level and year-by-year guidance through 2035. The panel will not replace the IPCC. Its purpose is more practical: to help governments connect science with policy, finance, technology and governance.

The new global science panel has been formed to support countries transitioning away from fossil fuels. The roadmap for Colombia proposes cutting fossil fuel use by 90% by 2050, while generating estimated economic benefits of $280 billion over 24 years.

This is important because the world does not lack climate science. It lacks enough translation of climate science into national decisions that can survive political pressure, industry lobbying and fiscal dependence.

Rockström described the panel as a “global common good” that can serve countries seeking scientific guidance in the transition away from fossil fuels. He said it can help ensure that “the fossil fuel agenda never disappears from the global policy agenda ever again.”

That may be one of Santa Marta’s biggest achievements.

Not a final declaration, but the start of a process.

Colombia Is Trying To Show The Route

The host country is not pretending this is easy.

Colombia is a fossil fuel producer. It has fiscal dependence. It has communities and workers tied to fossil fuel production. It has debt pressures. It has contradictions.

That makes its leadership more important, not less.

During the press conference, Colombia’s environment minister said 56 countries had confirmed delegations, with more than 1,500 civil society participants, more than 400 academics, 30 parliamentarians and 10 subnational governments also involved. She described the conference as a broader process that includes peoples, academics, governments, unions and civil society.

She also said Colombia had already decided, under President Gustavo Petro, not to grant new oil and gas contracts and not to expand the coal industry. At the same time, she acknowledged the country’s fiscal dependence and debt pressure.

That honesty is essential.

A fossil fuel phaseout that ignores economics will fail. But an economic strategy that ignores the decline of fossil fuels will also fail.

Colombia’s roadmap is important because it turns phaseout from a moral position into an economic plan. It proposes cutting fossil fuel use by 90% by 2050 while generating estimated economic benefits of $280 billion over 24 years. That is the kind of proof point the phaseout debate needs: not just what must end, but what can replace it.

Colombia’s answer is not complete. No country’s answer is. But Santa Marta is where the question is finally being treated with the seriousness it deserves.

This Is Not A One-Off Meeting

The key test is whether Santa Marta becomes a one-off conference or the beginning of a durable diplomatic process. The early signs point to the latter.

Berman said this will not be the only fossil fuel phaseout conversation, but “a series of diplomatic conferences.”

Rockström said the same. His hope is that countries gathered in Santa Marta will commit to follow the science, start bending the curve over the next five years and report progress back into the global climate negotiations. Then he added the key line: “Tuvalu has already offered to host the next meeting.”

That matters enormously. One conference is a moment. The second is a process.

For small island states, this is existential. For fossil fuel producers, it is economic. For import-dependent countries, it is security. For investors, it is risk.

For everyone, it is the same question seen from different angles: how do we escape a system that is now endangering both climate stability and economic stability?

History Is Made By Those Who Show Up

Berman offered the historical comparison that may best explain the moment.

“History is made by those who show up,” she said. Landmines, chemical weapons and nuclear agreements did not begin with every country on board. They began with a smaller group willing to design solutions. More countries joined later.

That is the right lens for Santa Marta.

Not all major emitters are present. Not all fossil fuel producers are ready. Not all finance questions are solved. But countries representing more than half of global GDP and about one fifth of fossil fuel production are now represented in a dedicated process to move beyond fossil fuels.

That is not everything.

But it is a very good beginning.

And in the middle of a global oil crisis, this is more than a climate signal. It is a shift in how the global economy thinks about energy.

The old doctrine was: control the oil.

The new one is: escape the risk.

_{Written by Ingmar Rentzhog, climate communicator and Founder & CEO of Wedonthavetime.org, the conference’s official media partner. Follow me on Forbes, LinkedIn and W Social for stories at the intersection of climate, finance and the clean-energy revolution.}