SANTA MARTA EXPLAINER: HOW TO INTERPRET THE COLOMBIAN SUMMIT IN APRIL

An international meeting entirely dedicated to the transition away from fossil fuels, held in a major coal-exporting port in the Global South, co-hosted by a Latin American country and a European nation, and operating outside the traditional consensus rules of the United Nations. What exactly is the Santa Marta summit, how does it function, and what are its real political goals? This explainer provides the essential keys to understanding the process.

What is the Santa Marta summit?

The “Santa Marta Dialogue on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels” is an international, plurilateral diplomatic initiative. Its primary objective is to create a dedicated space for political negotiation and technical cooperation specifically focused on the phase-out of coal, oil, and gas.

While traditional climate summits (such as the UNFCCC COPs) address the climate crisis broadly – encompassing adaptation, finance, agriculture, and generic emission reductions – Santa Marta isolates the single most critical driver of global warming: fossil fuel extraction and consumption.

Who organized it and who participated?

The conference was co-hosted by the governments of Colombia and the Netherlands. This partnership is politically significant, as it bridges the traditional divide between the Global South and the Global North, and pairs a nation currently dependent on fossil fuel exports (Colombia) with an industrialized, importing country (the Netherlands).

The summit brought together a “coalition of the willing” rather than a universal assembly. Participants included ministers, diplomats, and high-level representatives from approximately forty countries, spanning small island developing states (SIDS), European nations, Latin American democracies, and vulnerable economies. Crucially, the summit also included active participation from civil society organizations, Indigenous leaders, trade unions, and climate scientists, who engaged directly with government delegates rather than being confined to separate observer zones.

Why was Santa Marta chosen as the venue?

The choice of Santa Marta, a city on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, carries profound symbolic and political weight. It is one of the country’s primary maritime ports for coal exportation, serving large-scale open-pit mines in the nearby departments of La Guajira and Cesar.

Holding a summit on the phase-out of fossil fuels in a region whose economy, infrastructure, and social fabric have been shaped by coal extraction for decades sends a clear message: the transition cannot be discussed in a vacuum; it must be addressed directly within the territories most impacted by the shift.

How does it differ from the UNFCCC COPs?

The fundamental difference lies in the decision-making architecture:

• The UNFCCC model: Operates under the strict rule of consensus, meaning a single country -including major fossil fuel producers – can block progress or veto ambitious language in final texts. This dynamic often leads to lowest-common-denominator agreements.
• The Santa Marta model: Is a plurilateral space. It does not seek universal consensus among all nations on Earth. Instead, it allows forward-leaning countries to move ahead, establish coalitions, design joint methodologies, and build implementation frameworks without being held back by obstructionist states.

If it does not produce a binding treaty, what is its purpose?

Santa Marta was never designed to replace the Paris Agreement or to draft a alternative legally binding treaty. Its purpose is to act as an accelerator and a laboratory:

1. Technical readying: It allows countries to test tools and frameworks, such as the COFFIS methodology for identifying fossil fuel subsidies, that can later be adopted more broadly.
2. Political pressure: By demonstrating that a diverse group of nations can agree on concrete steps toward a phase-out, it shifts the boundaries of what is considered diplomatically possible.
3. Informing the COPs: The technical outcomes, workstreams, and scientific assessments generated in Santa Marta are designed to be injected back into the official UNFCCC process, providing high-ambition blueprints for upcoming negotiations.

What are the main vulnerabilities and risks of this process?

The primary risk is political isolation. Because major greenhouse gas emitters and fossil fuel giants (such as the United States, China, Saudi Arabia, and several major EU member states) are either absent or participating only as observers, the initiatives launched in Santa Marta risk lacking the geopolitical mass required to shift global markets on their own.

Additionally, there is a risk of institutional fragmentation: if high-ambition discussions move entirely outside the UN framework, the official COP process could become even more vulnerable to stagnation, allowing fossil-dependent nations to claim that energy transition discussions belong elsewhere.

What should we look for next?

The true value of Santa Marta will be measured by its continuity. The immediate next steps to track include the initial outputs of the newly established Global Energy Transition Panel, the operational roll-out of the three workstreams (supply/demand, finance, and just transition), and the political preparations for the second summit, which will be co-hosted by Tuvalu and Ireland in 2027.

Ultimately, the success of the Santa Marta process hinges on whether participating governments begin integrating its principles into their own national climate plans (NDCs) and domestic budget policies.

Explainer compiled by the Italian Climate Network institutional relations team.