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 were 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 observation on which “climate deniers” and 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 in English). In both cases, they are reproached for an increasingly apparent ineffectiveness, where decisions are necessarily made by consensus. Consequently, the consensus becomes so weakthat it no longer expresses anything meaningful or operational.
Thus the trailer for a documentary film to be released during the summer of 2026, in partnership with the Institute of Research for Development (IRD) and the National University of Colombia, summarizes it.
From April 24 to 29, 2026 in Santa Marta, Colombia, an unprecedented conference aimed to finally place the phase-out of fossil fuels back at the heart of the international agenda. Co-organized by Colombia and the Netherlands, it brought together57 voluntary States(and the European Union as such, editor’s note).
What was decided on this occasion? Contrary to the climate COPs, where it is primarily thefinal texts that matter, weighed word by word, as they are voted on by representatives of States, it is above all the working method that differs here, much less rigid. It was not accompanied by any specific production obligation, except to initiate the process of establishing a roadmap for the phasing out of fossil fuels. The meeting thus inaugurated new modalities 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, around forty countries had expressed their dissatisfaction with the absence of any mention of phasing out fossil fuels in the final declaration. More than 80 joined the initiative encouraging the continuation of work on drafting a roadmap in this regard.
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 nevertheless part of the continuation of the previous climate COP.
Prepared in an exceptionally short time frame (less than half a year, compared to one year for climate COPs), this unprecedented conference had a less structured organizational framework. According to observers and participants, there was a somewhat disorganized aspect: more improvisation, and sometimes even a lack of clarity on the expected deliverables and the next steps.
However, these weaknesses – inherent to the format of the ad hoc conference, an interim point 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, Panama’s climate envoy, quoted in theClimate Diplomacy Brief, for example declared:
“Santa Marta is a historic moment, because it is the first time we can open our hearts, open our minds, and have a real conversation without those stupid requests for a vote, without those stupid procedures that derail the entire 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 were 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), comprising mainly specialized government representatives.
This concentration of themes, skills, and wills in limited spaces fostered a true melting pot that allowed for fruitful exchanges. It contrasts with the physical organization of the COPs, where several thousand participants gather in a multitude of pavilions, often across several 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 who debate (discussions related to the state of the science, for example,take place at another time, under the auspices of a subsidiary body, the Santa Marta conference proposed a cross-cutting methodology, involving upstream15 working groupstransnationals. A great heterogeneity characterized the entirety of 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 preceding the meeting, they worked on three fundamental issues: 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 certain number of points of convergence have emerged:
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the progress made by alternatives to fossil fuels is irreversible,
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it is essential to end fiscal support andlegalDuring 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, enacted at the end of the conference by the establishment of aspecific council. Its function is to feed decision-making processes based on knowledge developed in a rigorous manner. During the conference, the participants expressed their faith in 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…). Some would see in this cooperation insurmountable contradictions, due to an irreducible incompatibility of knowledge. But in fact, this processis already beginning to bear fruit.
The heterogeneity of social groups’ participation in the conference thus made it possible to introduce genuine spokespersons of natural entities. Beyond researchers, who are regularly called upon to explain behaviors and degradation, it also highlighted indigenous, peasant, or Afro-descendant communities.
The cognitive marriage between these heterogeneous knowledges nevertheless requires trans-epistemic work. Epistemologies vary considerably between those based on organized skepticism (scientific disciplines) and those resorting to traditional explanations sometimes of a religious nature, which involve spiritual entities, for example. Yet, somenotable convergences exist, especially regarding ecological awareness, likely to influence the resulting political positions.
Despite everything, a certain hierarchy was able to persist during the conference between these actors of cultural diversity and those of governance, inscribed in the successive division of the sequences (academic, civil society, then governmental representation) and their degree of exclusivity. But the tendency toward openness and inclusion demonstrates more than an ideological change: it is also a (partial but real) modification of the objective references.
Indeed, we find in the new climate diplomacy promoted in Santa Marta, a“sketch of the Parliament of Things”, as described by Bruno Latour in 2018. It involves revising the roles assigned to politics, expertise, and technocracy, 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. A book to be published soon, stemming from aEuropean and Latin American project on ecological transitionto which I contributed, begins the questioning of the conception of geopolitics centered on the human.
Towards a new climatic geopolitics?
The efforts made in Santa Marta have transcended national divisions, but also north-south divisions, 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 one third of the officially present countries), followed by Latin America, then Asia, Africa, and Oceania. None of the major countries with hegemonic ambitions 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 discussing such a model on the occasion of the Davos Economic ForumA: where the will of intermediate countries would allow for building and making viable alternative coalitions, against the unilateral imposition of the hyperpower.
But the vision of the Santa Marta conference stands out and is distinguished 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 irruption 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 Southern nationals. The topics addressed reflected issues that primarily concern them, since the current ecological impacts affect them first and foremost. By placing the South at the heart of the debates, such a meeting contributes to rebalancing these debates and renews the way they are approached.
With this renewal of the contradiction towards it, climate denial (which, as we have seen with theUnited States withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, finding relay points at the scale of the States) is likely to gradually face increased isolation. Its attempts at leadership have lost momentum in Belém, where no country has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement. They could be overtaken 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 increased demand for hydrocarbons that could be generated by a drop in prices due to the growth of renewable energies.
The global economic crisis caused by thetensions on oil supply passing through the Strait of Hormuzrecalls, in all cases, the urgency of accelerating the energy transition.
Jean-Baptiste Meyer received funding from his institute IRD.
–ref. Santa Marta Conference: new avenues of climate diplomacy emerging outside the climate COPs –https://theconversation.com/conference-of-santa-marta-the-new-paths-of-climate-diplomacy-emerging-outside-of-the-climate-cops-282288