SANTA MARTA: Around 60 nations are attending a world-first conference in Colombia to tackle an issue that has deadlocked the UN climate talks — how to exit the fossil fuels that cause global warming.

Colombia’s Environment Minister Irene Velez Torres has been prominent as host of this breakaway climate conference, which has drawn nations wanting to accelerate the fossil fuel phaseout despite the stalemate in the UN-led “COP” summits.

These countries represent “a new power”, said Velez Torres, a former mining and energy minister whose own country is navigating its exit from coal and oil.

Major fossil fuel producers are joining the first-of-its-kind talks but the biggest greenhouse gas emitters — including the United States, China and Russia — are skipping the event.

Velez Torres said: “We can look at it the other way around. When the largest emitters have been present at the COP negotiations, they have been the ones who have pushed for a veto to prevent any discussion of the need to transition beyond fossil fuels.

Today, it is worth focusing on the more than 50 countries that are here, representing almost 50 percent of the global population, including consumer countries, producer countries and vulnerable countries of the Global South and North. In that sense, we are a new power today.”

Shift from fossil fuels

The gathering of ministers and officials in Santa Marta, which starts on Tuesday, will focus on practical steps to shift economies away from fossil fuels, rather than setting new global targets of the kind agreed at UN climate summits.

“We’re not negotiating ambitions, we’re not negotiating commitments. This really is about sharing how you do this,” said Stientje van Veldhoven, climate minister for the Netherlands.

Governments will discuss “what kind of financial instruments, what kind of regulatory incentives, are needed to kickstart a phase-out”, she said.

Published in Dawn, April 28th, 2026