The fossil fuel phase-out is no longer only a COP phrase. After Santa Marta, it is becoming a governance project.
The first Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels, co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands in April 2026, did not produce a binding treaty, a dramatic final declaration, or a new enforcement body. Its real outcome was quieter: roadmaps, workstreams, coordination, finance discussions, trade alignment, and a coalition of countries willing to move faster than the lowest common denominator of UN climate diplomacy.
That is exactly why it matters.
The danger is not that Santa Marta will fail to produce implementation. The danger is that it will succeed — and produce a fossil fuel phase-out governed primarily by finance, trade, supply security and technical planning, while Indigenous rights remain the language of side events, stakeholder tables and annexes.
Governability is not justice.
Santa Marta is positioning itself as a complementary implementation space: a place where States, development banks, experts and selected stakeholders can turn the COP28 commitment to “transition away from fossil fuels” into practical pathways. The co-host report speaks the language of “system-wide coherence,” “coalitions of doers,” national and regional roadmaps, macroeconomic dependencies, subsidy reform, producer–consumer alignment and financial architecture.
This is not weak language. It is the language in which mandates are written, money is moved and institutions begin to behave differently.
Over the next year, Santa Marta will probably not give us a fossil fuel treaty. It will give us methodology. Roadmap templates, finance workstreams, development-bank coordination, links to NDCs, trade conversations and early groups of first movers will begin to define what “transitioning away” means in practice.
The question will not be whether Indigenous Peoples are mentioned. They will be. The question is whether FPIC, territorial rights, Indigenous data sovereignty, direct finance, sacred sites and defender protection are built into the operating documents — or left as stakeholder priorities outside the machinery.
That distinction matters because the default path is technocratic.
A technocratic phase-out may be ambitious on emissions. It may accelerate renewable energy, reduce fossil fuel subsidies, support clean industrial policy and channel large amounts of finance into transition planning. But it understands the transition mainly as a problem of infrastructure, investment, timelines, supply chains and macroeconomic management.
In that worldview, rights are often treated as safeguards: important, necessary, but still secondary to delivery.
Indigenous rights do not fit comfortably into that model. FPIC slows projects down. The right to withhold consent can stop them entirely. No-go zones remove territories from the project pipeline. Indigenous data sovereignty limits who controls knowledge about land, resources, impacts and risk. Direct community finance bypasses familiar state and institutional intermediaries. Real benefit-sharing changes the economics of extraction. Defender protection limits the use of intimidation, criminalization and security pressure.
None of this is friction by accident. It is governance.
Santa Marta’s own language shows the tension. The co-host report contains stronger rights language than many diplomatic documents usually do. Indigenous Peoples are associated not only with participation, but with self-determination, territorial autonomy, land rights, FPIC including the right to withhold consent, Indigenous governance systems, Indigenous knowledge and data sovereignty, direct climate finance, sacred sites, defenders and rejection of false solutions that undermine Indigenous rights.
That is not decorative language. If taken seriously, it would shift the transition from consultation-based inclusion to rights-based governance.
But the key words are “if taken seriously.” The first real test will be transition minerals.
A fossil fuel phase-out requires grids, batteries, transmission lines, electric transport, renewable infrastructure and industrial transformation. That means copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt, rare earths and other minerals will remain at the centre of energy politics.
This is where the justice claims become measurable.
If FPIC is real, it will show up in transition minerals. If no-go zones are enforceable, it will show up there. If Indigenous data sovereignty matters, it will show up there. If benefit-sharing is more than a public-relations phrase, it will show up there. If defender protection is serious, it will show up there. If the transition is governed by rights rather than only by supply security, it will show up there.
The People’s Declaration makes this point directly. It calls for transition minerals to be governed across extraction, processing, trade, use and disposal under high transparency, environmental, labour and human rights standards. It also calls for no-go zones in biodiversity-rich areas, water-stressed watersheds and sacred territories; reduced material demand; reuse and recycling; community benefit-sharing; public access to contracts and impact data; and a clear boundary against minerals being used for war and militarism.
This is where a technocratic phase-out can become green extractivism.
The pattern is familiar. A crisis is declared. A project becomes urgent. Permitting is shortened. Hearings are compressed. Consultation is treated as a box to check. Resistance is reframed as obstruction. The public is told that sacrifice is necessary because the climate emergency leaves no time.
But a rapid transition that overrides consent is not a just transition. It is emergency extractivism wearing a different label.
By 2031, Santa Marta may have moved in one of three directions.
The most probable scenario is a soft-law architecture: roadmaps, model policies, finance criteria, subsidy transparency tools, trade principles and phase-out benchmarks. This may not look powerful from the outside, but soft law can shape bank decisions, donor funding, national planning, corporate due diligence, investor expectations and reputational standards. It can become the common sense of a field before it becomes formal law.
The better scenario is that Santa Marta becomes a bridge toward stronger international obligations: a fossil fuel treaty, plurilateral phase-out commitments, decommissioning rules, finance windows and enforceable rights-based standards for transition minerals and affected communities.
The worse scenario is that Santa Marta’s language is absorbed into a security-and-industrial-policy agenda. Governments may continue to say they are transitioning away from fossil fuels while accelerating critical minerals, hydrogen, nuclear, large renewables, transmission corridors and green manufacturing under the banner of energy security.
In that scenario, rights remain present in speeches but absent from approval criteria. Indigenous Peoples are invited into consultations but not into decision-making power. Consent becomes risk management. Territory becomes project space. Justice becomes a paragraph.
That is the default risk.
Santa Marta is not just a climate process to monitor. It is an early map of the next governance struggle.
The question is no longer only whether the world will transition away from fossil fuels. It is who will design the transition, who will finance it, who will control the land and data beneath it, who will have the right to refuse, and who will be asked once again to pay the price for someone else’s future.
If Indigenous consent is not a veto point, it is not governance. It is consultation management.
And if Indigenous rights remain outside the operating system of the fossil fuel phase-out, the next five years will not deliver a just transition. They will deliver a technocratic one — faster, cleaner, better financed, and still built on the old assumption that some peoples’ territories are available for the world’s next emergency.
Sources: 1st Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels, Co-host Report, Colombia & The Netherlands, June 2026; People’s Declaration for a Rapid, Equitable, and Just Transition for a Fossil-Free Future.