This website provides an independent perspective on the Santa Marta Process by LINGO and is not the official website of the First Conference in Santa Marta.
Implementing the transition beyond fossil fuels
Santa Marta Process
A collaborative international initiative for advancing beyond fossil dependency towards a world in balance: prosperous, healthy and socially just.
Santa Marta Process Building Blocks
Implementing the transition beyond fossil fuels
Case studies
Central Banks
Case studies
Health
Case studies
Methane
Case studies
Fossil Free Zones
Case studies
Fossil Fuel Treaty
Case studies
SP-GET
Case studies
Arbitration
Case studies
Zero Carbon Prosperity
Case studies
Fossil Free Trade
Case studies
Transparency
Case studies
Roadmaps
Case studies
Dialogues of Origin
Outcomes
- Second Conference in Tuvalu announced
- France presented National Fossil Fuel Phaseout Roadmap
- Central Banker’s SMarT FSG established
- Science Panel for the Global Energy Transition announced
- Finance, Trade and Roadmaps Workstreams announced, supported by IISD, CEPR, OECD, SP-GET and NDC Partnership
- Transparency Initiative: COFFIS offer to countries to help with fossil fuel subsidy analysis
- Roadshow about the Santa Marta Process at London Climate Action Week, COP31 and beyond announced by Colombia & Netherlands
1st Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels Report
Facts and Figures
Discover the World, Taste Life
Media Coverage
Carbon Brief
Financial Times
The Guardian
The Guardian
The Washington Post
What is the Santa Marta Process?
Why it exists
The Santa Marta Process emerged to address a critical gap in climate governance: the inability of international negotiations to adequately confront fossil fuel dependency
How it works
A coalition-driven process focused on implementation, practical collaboration, and accelerating fossil fuel transition initiatives.
SANTA MARTA PROCESS
Guiding Principles
The Santa Marta Process is built on collaboration across diverse regions, perspectives, and leadership models to accelerate collective action. The following principles are not explicitly agreed principles that all participants in the process subscribe to or practice to the same degree. They represent a mix between observations of participants and declared goals by the co-hosts and other stakeholders.
Common Questions
The Santa Marta Process emerged in response to a critical gap in international climate governance: the inability of the UNFCCC process to meaningfully address fossil fuels. Rather than replacing the UNFCCC, it complements it by advancing collaboration and practical action on a topic, on which consensus-based negotiations have struggled to make progress: transitioning away from fossil fuels.
The Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative originally proposed - and then helped organize - the Santa Marta Conference. However, the process evolved into a broader collaborative platform, which recognized that while many participating countries support the Treaty, others do not. It is one important area of discussion within the process, but not its defining framework.
Tuvalu’s role reflects both climate leadership and urgency. As a small island nation on the frontlines of the climate crisis, Tuvalu has not only been a strong voice in the UNFCCC for decades, it is also a strong advocate for ambitious fossil fuel action and binding methane cuts. Tuvalu has offered to co-host the Second Conference co-chairing it alongside Ireland.
At COP30, Brazilian President Lula called for a global roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels. COP30 CEO Ana Toni asked the organizers of the Planetary Science Pavilion at COP30, Johan Rockström and Carlos Nobre, to set up an agile scientific panel to supply the roadmap process with targeted, up-to-date and timely scientific assessment and advice. That’s where the Science Panel for the Global Energy Transition (SP-GET) originated. With the support of the Santa Marta host countries and the Brazilian COP30 presidency, the SP-GET was publicly announced during the Academic Segment of the Santa Marta Conference and is expected to become operational over the course of 2026 and present its first results at COP31. SP-GET will be coordinated from hubs at the Universidade de São Paulo in Brazil and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.
At COP30 in Belem, over 80 countries explicitly supported President Lula’s call for a fossil fuel phaseout roadmap (see above) in an open letter. Blockers stopped the proposal anyway and COP30 ended with a text without an explicit reference to fossil fuels - what has been called “less progressive and science-aligned than our children’s school books”. At the end of COP30, Brazil announced they would organize a voluntary roadmap process on fossil fuels anyway, and report back at COP31 in Antalya. The Santa Marta Conference has complemented and prepared this effort, organizing many discussions on roadmaps (including a two-day Roadmaps Workstream at the Science & Policy Segment - Workstream Summary). Recommendations arose to make sure that national roadmaps complement the global one, and that they include the extraction of fossil fuels, not just their burning, as under the UNFCCC. The SMP can be seen as a coalition of the willing on moving beyond fossil fuels and it is expected that many of its countries will develop national fossil fuel phaseout roadmaps over the next months and years, ideally including some of the Santa Marta principles.
The Science-Policy Community
- The Santa Marta Conference opened on April 24-25, 2026 with the First Global Science & Policy Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels, the “Academic Dialogue” Segment, ahead of and in parallel with a dozen other stakeholder segments, and before the High-Level Segment on April 28-29, 2026, which closed the Conference.
- The Science-Policy Community that worked together for this occasion consisted of over 400 experts on the ground in Santa Marta, and hundreds more virtually.
- Spectrum of outcomes: Synthesis Paper, Workstream Summaries and Recommendations, SP-GET Announcement, Central Banks SMarT FSG, a Fossil Methane Circle, etc.
Why Santa marta?
Heart of the World
The territory where the Santa Marta Process is rooted, carries deep symbolic meaning. The region that encompasses the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and surrounding lowlands and beaches, including the city of Santa Marta, is considered the Heart of the World by the four Indigenous peoples of the region (as beautifully explained in the documentary Tanuzanamu, produced by them – Trailer), whose knowledge system is recognized by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage. Grounding the process with its First Conference here in the Heart of the World represents interconnectedness, responsibility, and global stewardship on a journey beyond fossil fuels that aims to rebalance the world and move humanity beyond its adolescence into a more mature way of living in harmony and as stewards on this beautiful planet teeming with life.
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