Source: French to English Tester Published on: 2026-05-07
Source: The Conversation – France (in French)– By Jean-Baptiste Meyer, Research Director (Population and Development Center), Research Institute for Development (IRD)
What if climate diplomacy was reinvented outside the traditional COP format? In Colombia, on the occasion of a conference held in Santa Marta from April 24 to 29, 2026, an alternative dynamic has emerged: more open, it seeks to overcome multilateral deadlocks by placing the diversity of knowledge at the heart of decisions.
If there is one finding on which both the “climate deniers” and the radical climate activists agree, it is the uselessness of the COPs, organized under the aegis of the United Nations (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCCC by its English acronym). In both cases, they are criticized for an increasingly apparent inefficiency, where decisions are necessarily made by consensus. Consequently, the consensus becomes so weakthat it no longer expresses anything meaningful or operative.
Thus summarizes the trailer of a documentary film to be released during the summer of 2026, in partnership with the Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD) and the National University of Colombia.
From April 24 to 29, 2026, in Santa Marta, Colombia, an unprecedented conference aimed to finally put the phase-out of fossil fuels back at the heart of the international agenda. Co-organized by Colombia and the Netherlands, it brought together57 Volunteer States(and the European Union as such, ed.).
What was decided on this occasion? Contrary to the climate COPs, where it is primarily thefinal texts that matter, weighed word for word, because voted on by representatives of States, it is mainly the working method that differs here, being much less rigid. It did not come with any particular production obligation, other than to initiate the process of creating a roadmap for the phase-out of fossil fuels. The meeting thus inaugurated new modes of global cooperation on socio-environmental issues.
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The debate on the paralysis of multilateral negotiations in general – and that ofClimate COP in particular – is hardly new. Their annual repetition exacerbates the frustrations of those who truly wish to make progress on climate issues.
At theCOP30 of Belém, in November 2025, about forty countries had expressed their dissatisfaction with the absence of any mention of the phase-out of fossil fuels in the final declaration. More than 80 have joined the initiative encouraging the continuation of work to develop a roadmap to that effect.
Colombia and the Netherlands then invited the states that wished to work on this point to meet at a conference on the sidelines of the COPs. In other words, the Santa Marta conference was certainly not held within the UN framework, but it was nonetheless in continuity with the previous climate COP.
Prepared in an exceptionally short time frame (less than half a year, compared to one year for the climate COPs), this unprecedented conference had a less structured organization on the organizational level. According to observers and participants, there was a somewhat disorganized feel: more improvisation, and sometimes even a lack of clarity regarding the expected deliverables and the next steps.
However, these weaknesses – inherent to the format of the impromptu conference, a milestone between COP30 in Brazil and COP31 in Turkey – were, according to participants, able to be overcome, notably thanks to its voluntary nature. Juan Carlos Monterrey Gómez, climate envoy of Panama, quoted in theClimate Diplomacy Brief, for example declared:
“Santa Marta is a historic moment because it is the first time that we can open our hearts, open our minds, and have a real conversation without those stupid motions to vote, without those stupid procedures that derail the whole session and leave us only ten minutes to address the substance.”
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The Santa Marta method? A breeding ground rather than blue and green zones
Concretely, the conference successively brought together three components: an academic panel (namedAcademic Dialogue) where scientists from around the world have been able to make recommendations, a“people’s summit”, including notably representatives from associations, communities, and unions, and finally, ahigh-level segment (Transition Away from Fossil Fuels, or TAFF), mainly comprising specialized government representatives.
This concentration of themes, skills and wills in restricted spaces has favored a true hotbed, enabling fertile exchanges. It contrasts with the physical organization of the COPs, where several thousand participants meet in a multitude of pavilions, often across multiple buildings. The space is then divided between the blue zone, reserved for national delegations, UN bodies and observer NGOs, where the official negotiations of COP28 take place, and the green zone, open to all other stakeholders.
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Unlike the COPs, where it is the national delegations that debate (discussions relating to the state of science, for example,take place at another time, under the aegis of a subsidiary body, the Santa Marta conference proposed a cross-cutting methodology, involving upstream15 working groupstransnationals. A great heterogeneity characterized all these groups, ranging from representatives of the sciences to those of civil society, including public entities at different levels, as well as funding agencies or multinational companies.
During the two months leading up to the meeting, they worked on three fundamental issues: the structural dependence on fossil fuels, action on supply and demand, and the modalities of international cooperation and climate diplomacy.
Provided by the author
Despite the diversity of statuses and interests of the participants in these working groups, a number of points of convergence emerged:
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the progress made by alternatives to fossil fuels is irreversible,
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It is essential to put an end to fiscal support andlegalAt the extraction of fuels,
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To achieve this, consultation and dialogue are essential.
Putting science back at the center, without forgetting Indigenous knowledge
In Santa Marta, science retained a fundamental role, formalized at the end of the conference by the establishment of aspecific council. Its function is to feed decision-making processes with rigorously developed knowledge. During the conference, participants expressed their faith in an evidence-based policy (evidence based policy). It confers a major responsibility on the scientific community.
But, at the same time, this community is also increasingly being called upon to open up toother modes of knowledge (traditional/ancestral, local, etc.). Some would see in this cooperation insurmountable contradictions, due to an irreducible incompatibility of knowledge. But in practice, this processis already beginning to bear fruit.
The heterogeneity of the participation of social bodies in the conference thus made it possible to introduce genuine spokespersons for natural entities. Beyond researchers, regularly called upon to explain behaviors and degradation, it also highlighted indigenous, peasant, or Afro-descendant communities.
The cognitive marriage between these heterogeneous knowledge requires, however, a trans-epistemic work. Epistemologies vary considerably between those based on organized skepticism (scientific disciplines) and those relying on traditional explanations sometimes of a religious nature, which involve spiritual entities, for example. Yet, somenotable convergences exist, especially with regard to ecological awareness, likely to influence the resulting political positions.
Despite everything, a certain hierarchy was able to endure during the conference between these actors of cultural diversity and those of governance, reflected in the successive division of the segments (academic, civil society, then government representation) and their degree of exclusivity. But the trend towards openness and inclusion indicates more than an ideological change: it is also a (partial but real) modification of objective references.
Indeed, in the new climate diplomacy promoted in Santa Marta, there is“sketch of the Parliament of Things”, as described by Bruno Latour in 2018. It consists of reviewing the roles attributed to politics, expertise, and technocracy, and where it would no longer be only humans who have theright to be represented.
This concept raises new questions for law and international political economy. An upcoming book, originating from aEuropean and Latin American project on ecological transitionto which I collaborated, begins to question the conception of geopolitics centered on the human.
Towards a new climate geopolitics?
The efforts made in Santa Marta have transcended national divides, but also north-south ones, in a certain way. With a bicameral Euro-Latin presidency (Colombian-Dutch), and Euro-Oceanic for the next conference which will be co-organized by Ireland and Tuvalu, the great Manichean division of the historical responsibilities of the ecological footprint (which, historically, is astumbling block of the climate COPs) has certainly not been completely erased. However, it has been softened by the framing of the conference around finding solutions.
All regions of the world were represented, with a relative majority from Europe (more than a third of the officially present countries), followed by Latin America, then Asia, Africa, and Oceania. None of the major hegemonic claimant countries were invited – neither the United States, nor China, nor Russia – and the only major emerging country to participate was Brazil.
In January 2026, the Canadian Prime MinisterMark Carney was precisely referring to such a model on the occasion of the Davos Economic ForumÂ: the one where the will of intermediate countries would allow the construction and viability of alternative coalitions, against the unilateral imposition of the hyperpower.
But the vision of the Santa Marta conference is established and stands out on at least two points:
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the first concerns the importance given to the Global South,
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and the second, the eruption of non-humans into the field of geopolitics.
Even though the predominance of the North remained in the coordinations, the composition of the attendance at the meetings naturally favored the participation of individuals from the South. The topics discussed reflected issues that primarily concern them, since the current ecological impacts affect them as a priority. By placing the South at the heart of the debates, such a meeting contributes to rebalancing them and renews the way they are approached.
With this renewal of the contradiction aimed at it, climate denialism (which, as we have seen with thewithdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement, finding allies at the State level) is very likely to gradually face increased isolation. Its attempts at leadership have long fallen flat in Belém, where no country abandoned the Paris Agreement. They could be overwhelmed by initiatives such as those explored in Santa Marta, which also sought to anticipate their adverse effects. Mechanisms have thus been considered to counter the rise in demand for hydrocarbons that could be caused by a price drop owing to the growth of renewable energies.
The global economic crisis caused by thetensions sur l’approvisionnement en pétrole passant par le détroit d’Ormuzreminds, in all cases, of the urgency to accelerate the energy transition.
Jean-Baptiste Meyer received funding from his institute, the IRD.
–ref. Santa Marta Conference: the new tracks of climate diplomacy emerging outside the climate COPs –https://theconversation.com/santa-marta-conference-the-new-pathways-of-climate-diplomacy-emerging-outside-the-climate-cops-282288