“It’s Happening”: Coalition of Countries Announce Plan to Start Advancing Fossil Fuel Phaseout
With roadmap for transitioning away from fossil fuels failing to make it into COP30 outcome, some countries are looking beyond the UNFCCC process.
A group of 24 countries signed onto a “declaration on transitioning away from fossil fuels” at COP30 in Belém, Brazil and announced the first international conference on this transition to take place April 28-29, 2026 in Colombia. Credit: Screen shot from press conference broadcast on Nov. 21, 2025.
Something is happening. As this headline today from The Guardian states: “End of fossil fuel era inches closer” as the COP30 UN climate summit in Belém, Brazil officially comes to a close.
The transition away from fossil fuels towards clean, renewable energy is in motion – but important questions remain as to how fast and fair the transition will be and how it will be funded. Although the summit outcome text failed to include a transition roadmap or concrete language on fossil fuel phaseout, momentum is building beyond the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process to start to work towards implementing this transition.
More than 80 countries backed calls for a roadmap for phasing out fossil fuels, but these calls faced stiff resistance from petrostates like Saudi Arabia, which “use the consensus rule to block action and ambition,” as the Center for International Environmental Law’s Erika Lennon explained. Lennon and other advocates continue to call for urgent reforms to the UNFCCC procedure in order to address this deliberate obstruction.
In the meantime, countries supportive of moving away from fossil fuels are taking matters into their own hands and forging ahead. Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva reportedly said he would take the roadmap proposal to the G20 summit and was prepared to fight for it, even though it is unlikely to gain traction among some major emitters and fossil fuel producers. COP30 president André Correa do Lago also said he would carry the roadmap idea forward through high-level dialogues that he plans to hold over the next year. But perhaps the most significant development is the announcement by the government of Colombia on Friday that it will be hosting, in alliance with the Netherlands, the first international conference on the just transition away from fossil fuels just five months from now.
“The phaseout of fossil fuels is not only necessary but inevitable. What the world must decide now is how and how fast.” - Irene Vélez Torres, Colombia environmental minister
The conference will take place on April 28 and 29, 2026 in Santa Marta, Colombia. “This will be a broad intergovernmental, multi-sectoral platform complementary to the UNFCCC designed to identify legal, economic, and social pathways that are necessary to make the phasing out of fossil fuels,” Colombia environmental minister Irene Vélez Torres explained at a high-level press conference on Friday at COP30 in Belém. Colombia is among the two dozen countries that are backing what they call the Belém Declaration on the Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels – a commitment to operationalize and act on the promise that all parties to the UNFCCC made two years ago in Dubai.
“This declaration is grounded in a simple scientific truth – fossil fuels are the primary driver of climate crisis, and keeping the [Paris Agreement] objectives require a fast, full, fair, and financed phase out,” Torres said. “As difficult as it can be, we also know that this conversation cannot end here. We must keep the momentum, lead with bravery, rise to the challenge, and build a coalition of the willing.”
The 24 countries that have signed onto the declaration include: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Cambodia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, Fiji, Finland, Ireland, Jamaica, Kenya, Luxembourg, Marshall Islands, Mexico, Micronesia, Nepal, Netherlands, Panama, Spain, Slovenia, Vanuatu and Tuvalu.
“We need to build this group of states that is going to make this happen, regardless of what happens with the UNFCCC,” Vanuatu’s climate change and environment minister Ralph Regenvanu said.
His colleague from the fellow small island Pacific nation of Tuvalu echoed the sentiment of frustration with the existing international climate regime. “After 30 years, this process is still failing us,” Tuvalu minister of climate change Maina Talia said at the press conference. “So, we will not wait.”
“The Pacific will be at the conference in Santa Marta, and we are preparing to host the second meeting,” Talia added. He said the new process “complements the Paris Agreement by addressing fossil fuel phaseout directly, equitably, and with real accountability.”
The science and the law are clear that there can be no real future for fossil fuels. In its landmark advisory opinion on climate change issued in July, the International Court of Justice even suggested that countries that fail to protect the climate system by continuing to support fossil fuel production, consumption, licensing, and subsidies may be committing internationally wrongful acts. “The ICJ reinforces that continuing to expand fossil fuels, knowing the harm, is incompatible with states’ legal obligations,” Vishal Prasad, leader in the group Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change, said during a COP30 press conference earlier in the week.
The economics are also increasingly favorable for renewable energy. As UN Secretary-General António Guterres pointed out during an address on Thursday at COP30, “clean energy has never been cheaper and more abundant.”
The barriers to preventing climate chaos and realizing a clean energy future are not technological nor economic, but political. The political will and courage may still be sorely lacking for most major fossil fuel polluting countries, but like the clean energy revolution itself, the movement away from fossil fuels now appears to be unstoppable.
“The phaseout of fossil fuels is not only necessary but inevitable,” Colombia’s Torres said. “What the world must decide now is how and how fast.”
“We cannot afford to wait,” Marshall Islands special envoy for climate change Tina Stege said. “As an atoll nation that is just 2 meters above sea level, we know that climate action cannot wait.”
“This roadmap is inevitable,” Stege added. “It’s happening.”