SANTA MARTA, Colombia — The vibe was good at the world’s first climate summit outside of the United Nations process. Now comes the hard part.
Nearly 60 countries met along Colombia’s Caribbean coast this week to break away from what they describe as a troubled U.N. process on global warming, so they could move faster toward flipping their economies to clean energy — instead of just talking about it. They zeroed in on the basic steps of phasing out fossil fuels — surpassing in theory aspirations being pursued within the U.N. for 30 years.
The test now is how to put those measures into practice without getting dragged into the same delays and divisions that have stalled global climate talks for years.
“It’s hard. We will not have solved this overnight, but we need to get started on this process,” said Stientje van Veldhoven, the Netherlands’ minister for climate and green growth.
The six-day summit, co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands, highlighted for many what can happen when a group of willing countries come together to share experiences and seek ways forward, without the influence of the world’s largest emitters and disruptors, such as the U.S., Saudi Arabia and China. The U.S. wasn’t invited.
“In the time allotted, we haven’t got down into the nitty-gritty,” said Rachel Kyte, the United Kingdom’s climate envoy, adding that “we desperately need this space.”
“It is how do we all help each other do something that’s never been done before?” Kyte told POLITICO’s E&E News.
There are risks that the process could plod along or fail to deliver on the promise of making energy sources cleaner. That aim has been top of mind here as the war in Iran sent oil prices to a four-year high as the conference wrapped up. But to many of the government officials, academics, scientists and activists here, this summit was already deemed a success because it avoided the pitfalls of a U.N. process in which a small group of energy-rich nations can derail efforts to slow fossil fuel use.
Now, these nations will need to be specific about their next steps — and who will be involved, said Jules Kortenhorst, co-chair of the Energy Transitions Commission, a coalition focused on supporting the shift to cleaner energy.
That means identifying real world tools that can be used by countries and development banks to finance clean energy, he said.
‘A long-term thing’
For two days during the summit, government officials, civil society organizations and climate advocates huddled behind closed doors to share their experiences about grappling with the energy transition — even though not every country referred to it that way.
The 57 nations represented at the summit included coal-dependent countries like Colombia, fossil fuel importers such as the Philippines and oil producers like Nigeria.
All were here because they agreed that a shift to clean energy is needed. But how it happens could differ dramatically in each place, energy experts said.
Magnus Onuoha, a consultant for Nigeria’s ministry of regional development, said the country needs to build an alternative source of revenue as it works to shift its entire economy away from oil and gas.
“We’re not going to phase out, we’re phasing down. It’s a long-term thing,” he said.
“In phasing down, you need to plan very well,” Onuoha added. “We need to also have a lot of changes in terms of regulations … diversification into other sectors like climate smart agriculture, clean energy, solid minerals and green industry.”
Like Nigeria, the revenues from Ghana’s oil and gas reserves go toward supporting major infrastructure and public services. That makes it hard to reduce the revenue from those resources, even if countries see the necessity.
“We know the impact of the climate crisis, and we do know that it is fossil fuel that is causing it,” said Cecil Dzelu, technical director at Ghana’s state climate ministry. “On the flip side of that, we are also a [producing] country of fossil fuels.”
Some officials said they were encouraged by Nigeria and Ghana’s willingness to contemplate an energy transition, even though it’s difficult.
“We also have to take into account that people depend for their livelihoods or for their ability to go to work on these kinds of revenues related to fossil fuels, and that is why it is a transition,” said Veldhoven, the minister from the Netherlands. “Because if it fails for people, ultimately it will fail for the world.”
Challenges of our time
The lift ahead is big, in part because it involves an economic overhaul — not just a switch from one form of energy to another.
Colombia and the Netherlands say it will take time for countries to make wholesale changes. They’re encouraging them to develop road maps for their transitions. Another summit is being planned next year in the tiny, Pacific island nation of Tuvalu.
They also want to expand the reach of the summit’s coalition and connect it back to the U.N. process and other climate forums. That could be a challenge if the two blocs are on different paths. While the war in Iran has pushed some countries to think about accelerating the shift to clean energy, others are leaning more on coal or considering more drilling.
Other countries, particularly small island nations, said the discussions in Santa Marta must be heard on a bigger stage — including the U.N. global climate talks known as COP.
“There’s this gorge of silence on a topic that is at the root of this problem,” Tina Stege, climate envoy for the Marshall Islands, told reporters. “All of the practical, concrete, real, meaningful discussions we’re having here on how to address that silence, that has to be visible, inform, impact, shape what we’re doing at the COP.”
While the U.S. wasn’t invited because of its commitment to fossil fuel expansion, China also didn’t attend the summit, despite being the dominant producer of clean energy technologies. Whether these breakaway summits can be successful without involving the world’s largest-emitting countries is a decision for the future. For now, the organizers say a victory was grasped by gathering dozens of nations that are willing to act faster on climate change.
“When they look back at us from the future, not only will they remember the conversations and the speeches,” Colombia’s environment minister, Irene Vélez Torres, said in her closing remarks. “They will remember that we were there and working on the challenges of our time.”
