The sea in Santa Marta has its own memory.

It arrives in slow blue folds against the Caribbean shore, touching the old stones of Colombia’s northern coast before retreating again, as if rehearsing the patient rhythm of change. Palm leaves bend in the warm wind. The sun lingers longer here, heavy and bright. And beneath that brightness, in hotel halls and conference rooms, the world has gathered to discuss the slow unmaking of another tide—the age of coal, oil, and gas.

There is something quietly symbolic about the setting.

Santa Marta, one of the oldest cities in South America, has long stood between histories: between mountains and sea, between trade and empire, between extraction and survival. This week, it stands between two futures. Delegates from around 60 countries have arrived for the first major international conference dedicated specifically to transitioning away from fossil fuels—a gathering shaped not by ceremony alone, but by frustration.

For years, climate negotiations have moved in circles.

At global climate summits, words like “transition,” “net zero,” and “mitigation” have floated through plenary halls and into communiqués, often softened by compromise. At last year’s COP30, efforts to build a formal roadmap for phasing out fossil fuels reportedly stalled under resistance from major oil-producing nations. The result was familiar: a diluted consensus, a delayed decision, another year lost to debate.

In Santa Marta, the tone is different.

Co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands, the conference seeks to move beyond broad promises and toward practical plans. Ministers, scientists, Indigenous leaders, unions, civil society groups, and business representatives are expected to discuss national roadmaps, just transition strategies, subsidy reforms, and ways to protect workers and communities as economies shift. A new international panel of scientific and economic experts is also expected to offer guidance on managing the transition.

The language here is more direct.

Not “lowering emissions,” but phasing out fossil fuels.

Not “eventually,” but beginning now.

And yet, absence can shape a room as much as presence.

The United States is not attending.

Neither are China or India—three of the world’s largest energy consumers and among the most influential players in any global energy transition. America’s absence feels especially notable. Once a central architect of climate diplomacy, Washington now finds itself outside a coalition seeking to accelerate a process it once publicly endorsed. Organizers and observers have framed the summit as a “coalition of the willing,” an effort to move ahead even without unanimous agreement.

Still, those present carry considerable weight.

The countries represented account for a significant share of global GDP, population, and fossil fuel production. Among them are both climate-vulnerable island nations and major producers such as Brazil, Canada, Australia, Nigeria, and Norway—states whose economies remain tied, in varying degrees, to the very fuels under discussion.

This is where the conversation grows complicated.

To leave fossil fuels behind is not only to shut wells and mines. It is to redraw labor markets, rewrite trade balances, rethink subsidies, and confront the politics of affordability and energy security. Recent turmoil in global oil markets—exacerbated by tensions around the Strait of Hormuz and wider regional instability—has reminded the world how deeply dependence runs.

For some nations, transition is an environmental necessity.

For others, it is an economic risk.

For many, it is both.

And yet the science presses forward without pause. Rising temperatures, worsening droughts, stronger storms, and more volatile seasons continue to turn climate forecasts into lived reality. In places already vulnerable, delay is no longer abstract.

So in Santa Marta, amid speeches and policy papers, there is an undercurrent of urgency.

The conference is not expected to produce a binding global treaty. There may be no dramatic final declaration that changes markets overnight. But perhaps that is not the point. Sometimes history begins not with signatures, but with alignment—countries deciding, together, to name the direction of travel.

Outside, the Caribbean tide continues its patient work.

It moves in, then out. Again and again.

And perhaps that is the image this moment offers: change not as a single wave, but as repetition, pressure, and persistence—until even stone begins to yield.

In Santa Marta, sixty nations are trying to imagine that future aloud.

Whether the world follows may depend as much on those absent as those present.

AI Image Disclaimer Illustrations were created using AI tools and are not real photographs, but conceptual visual representations.

Sources Reuters The Guardian International Institute for Sustainable Development Climate Change News Forbes