At the UN climate conference COP30, which was held last November in Brazil, a group of 85 countries were defeated in their attempt to make a call to follow a roadmap to gradually eliminate fossil fuels. Several of those losers, however, will have a new opportunity in Colombia, on April 28 and 29, at the First International Conference on the Just Transition to Abandon Fossil Fuels.
That conference will take place in Santa Marta, co sponsored by Colombia, the fifth largest exporter of coal in the world, and the Netherlands, nation of origin of Royal Dutch Shell, one of the largest oil companies in the world. The objective will be to resume what they could not achieve at COP30 and begin to trace the roadmap that oil producing countries blocked in Brazil.
An important fact highlighted by Mark Hertsgaard and Kyle Pope in an article in El Pais, from Spain, is that this conference will not be governed by UN rules, which require consensus, but by majority, “thus avoiding that a handful of countries sabotage progress,” they assure, and they highlight that “the underlying terrain of this conference will no longer be mainly political, but economic: the relentless forces of the market that shape the world economy, including the possible emergence of a de facto economic superpower.”
Losers at COP30 can function as an economic superpower
The two authors estimate and anticipate that at the conference in Santa Marta “the Governments that make up a ‘coalition of the willing’ will share plans for the transition of their economies, moving them away from oil, gas and coal, without leaving workers and communities behind.”
They also maintain that those countries “will be joined by climate activists, indigenous and union leaders and other voices of civil society that will share concrete plans to turn the abstract goal of gradually eliminating fossil fuels into a practical reality.”
Their optimism does not seem to have limits. They believe that the secret weapon of the “coalition of the willing,” as they call the countries that will meet in Colombia, is “its potential to function as an economic superpower.” And they recall that, at COP30, at least 85 countries supported the global roadmap to gradually abandon fossil fuels, including Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Spain. The main countries of the global south, Brazil and Mexico —the tenth and thirteenth largest economies in the world— also supported the measure.
Hertsgaard and Pope give an additional piece of data to show the muscle of the 85 losing countries of COP30 and why they can function as an economic superpower: their combined gross domestic product (GDP) amounts to 33.3 trillion dollars, a figure higher than the 30.6 trillion dollars of the GDP of the United States, the largest economy in the world, and considerably higher than the 19.4 trillion dollars of the GDP of China, the second largest economy in the world.
Santa Marta and Colombia would go down in history
“That economic weight gives those 85 countries enormous influence,” the authors highlight. “If this conference manages to trace a credible roadmap to gradually eliminate fossil fuels, it could cause a great impact on financial markets, government ministries and the highest business spheres around the world.”
And they quote Mohamed Adow, director of the non profit organization Power Shift Africa, for whom “a coalition of that magnitude that signals its intention to leave fossil fuels behind would send an unequivocal message: the era of oil, gas and coal is coming to an end, and smart investments are shifting.”
For Hertsgaard and Pope, if a large part of the world economy announces its intention to abandon fossil fuels —and presents convincing plans to achieve it— private investors and government planners around the world would have to ask themselves whether investing more money in oil exploration would leave them with stranded assets practically without value. The same would happen with coal mining or gas.
If these ambitious expectations are fulfilled, Santa Marta and Colombia would go down in history for having been the place where the end of fossil fuels began to become a reality.