Rachel Rose Jackson is a climate researcher and international policy expert whose work involves monitoring polluter interference at the UNFCCC and advancing pathways to protect against it.
Next week, dozens of governments will gather in the Colombian city of Santa Marta for a conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels.
The conference is a first of its kind, in name and in practice. It’s a welcome change to see a platform for global climate action actually acknowledge the primary cause of the climate crisis – fossil fuels. This sends a clear message about what needs to be done to avoid tumbling off the climate cliff edge we are precariously balancing on.
The agenda set for governments to hash out goes further than any other multilateral space has managed to date. Over the week, participants will discuss how to overcome the economic dependence on fossil fuels, transform supply and demand, and advance international cooperation to transition away from fossil fuels.
Alongside the conference, academics, civil society, movements and others are convening to put forward their visions of a just and forever fossil fuel phase out. The conference can help shape pathways and tools governments can use to achieve a fossil-fuel-free future, particularly if the dialogue begins with an honest assessment of “fair shares.”
This means assessing who is most responsible for emissions and exploring truer means of international collaboration that can unlock the technology, resources and finances necessary for a just transition.
Fossil fuel-driven violence is spiraling in places like Palestine, Iran, and Venezuela. Climate disasters are causing billions and billions of dollars in damage annually with no climate reparations in sight. All of this remains recklessly unaddressed on account of corporate-funded fascism.
We know the world’s addiction to fossil fuels must end. Is it surprising that a global governmental convening chooses now to try to tackle fossil fuels? It shouldn’t be, but it is.
COP failures
By contrast, meetings of governments signed up to the longest-standing multilateral forum for climate action—the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – took nearly three decades before it officially responded to the power built by movements and acknowledged the need to address fossil fuel use at COP28 in 2023.
Even then, this recognition came riddled with loopholes. It may seem illogical that a forum established by governments in 1992 to coordinate a response to climate change should take decades to acknowledge the root of the problem. Yet there are clear reasons why arenas like the UNFCCC have consistently failed to curb fossil fuels decade after decade.
What would the outcome be when a fossil fuel executive literally oversaw COP28 and when Coca-Cola was one of the sponsors for COP27?
How can strong action take hold when, year after year, the UNFCCC’s COPs are inundated with thousands of fossil fuel lobbyists?
And how can justice be achieved when there are zero safeguards in place to protect against the conflicts of interest these polluters have?
Colombia pledges to exit investment protection system after fossil fuel lawsuits
Justly transitioning off fossil fuels cannot be charted when the very actors that have knowingly caused the climate crisis are at the helm—the same actors that consistently spend billions to spread denial and delay.
Unless platforms like the UNFCCC take concerted action to protect climate policymaking from the profit-at-all-costs agenda of polluters, the world will not deliver the climate action people and the planet deserve.
The impacts of climate action failure are now endured on a daily basis in some way by each of us – and especially by frontline communities, Indigenous Peoples, youth, women, and communities in the Global South. We must be closing gaps and unlocking pathways for advancing the strongest, fairest and fastest action possible.
Learn from mistakes
Yet, as we chase a fossil-fuel-free horizon, it’s essential that we learn from the mistakes of the past. We do not have the luxury or time to repeat them. History shows us we must protect against the polluting interests that want the world addicted to fossil fuels for as long as humanly possible.
We must also reject their schemes that undermine a just transition—dangerous distractions like carbon markets and Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage (CCUS) that are highly risky and spur vast harm, all while allowing for polluters to continue polluting.
Fossil Free Zones can be on-ramps to the clean energy transition
We get to a fossil-fuel-free future by following the leadership of the movements, communities and independent experts who hold the knowledge and lived experience to guide us there.
We succeed by protecting against those who have a track record of prioritising greed over the sacredness of life.
And we arrive at a world liberated from fossil fuels by doing all of these things from day one, before the toxicity of the fossil fuel industry’s poison takes hold.
If this gathering in Santa Marta can do this, then it can help set a new precedent for what people-centered and planet-saving climate action looks like. When everything hangs in the balance, there can be no if’s, and’s, or but’s. There’s only here and now, what history shows us must be done, and what we know is lost if we do not.
