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More than 50 countries have agreed to work on trade measures aimed at cutting demand for fossil fuels, among a series of proposed steps to drive down the production and use of coal, oil and gas.
The first international conference on shifting away from fossil fuels also pledged to expose how much participant nations each support or subsidise the planet-warming fuels, and to work on financial reforms to tackle what organisers called the fiscal, debt and subsidy “traps” that lock countries into fossil fuels.
“We decided that the transition away from fossil fuels could no longer remain a slogan but must become a concrete political and collective endeavour,” said Irene Vélez Torres, environment minister of Colombia, which co-hosted the six-day gathering with the Netherlands at the coastal city of Santa Marta.
Dutch climate minister Stientje van Veldhoven-van der Meer told the FT it was hoped that work on so-called fossil fuel-free trade systems would find ways to change “the need to use fossil fuels for the products that we use”.
She cited “buyer-seller” arrangements that encouraged deals between customers and suppliers of green energy or technologies.
“The question is, what is the scale at which you need to organise that,” she said. “Can you incentivise this through bilateral trade agreements for example?”
The world’s biggest emitters, including the US, China and India, were not present at the event, which took place outside the official UN climate negotiations.
Organisers decided not to invite countries such as Russia and the US, which had what Veléz Torres described as an openly “extractivist agenda”. China was only invited through its private sector because organisers wanted to avoid what she called the “stationary bike” of UN climate summits.
UK climate envoy Rachel Kyte said there were multiple reasons why China, a green tech leader and large fossil fuel user, had to be part of the next talks on phasing out fossil fuels, to be co-hosted by the low-lying Pacific island nation of Tuvalu and Ireland in early 2027.
“Making it clear to China that they would be welcome to be here I think would be important,” she said.
The Netherlands co-chairs a coalition of 17 countries working to remove the fossil fuel subsidies and incentives that total more than $900bn a year and can lock countries into fossil fuel dependence while diverting public funds away from clean energy investment.
The countries in Santa Marta will not be asked to join the coalition but are invited to use its work to analyse their own levels of financial support.
They also agreed to work on road maps that make clear how nations can phase out both the production and consumption of fossil fuels.
Pressure to draw up such proposals arose at the conference after France unveiled its own cohesive plan, which was largely based on existing green commitments but spelled out when its use of oil, gas and coal would end.
The Brazilian hosts of last year’s UN COP30 are also carrying out separate work on a road map for phasing out fossil fuels, following a failure to include it in the final agreement there.
Van Veldhoven-van der Meer said organisers had conversations with the chairs of the next UN climate COP, due to take place in Turkey in November, about how the Santa Marta conference work might be fed into the UN process.
She said it was possible it could be part of a so-called action agenda, rather than the formal negotiations, where big oil-producing countries have historically blocked efforts to even mention fossil fuels in final agreements.
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