From 24 to 29 April, Colombia is hosting the first international civil society conference on abandoning fossil fuels — and Italy is there.

From 24 to 29 April, the Colombian city of Santa Marta will host the first International Conference on the Phase-Out of Fossil Fuels, convened by the governments of Colombia and the Netherlands in the wake of the failure of COP30 in Belém. A process born outside the established mechanisms of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change — the UN framework that has until now governed, and often paralysed, global climate negotiations — with a clear objective: to negotiate a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty covering oil, gas and coal.

For more than half a century — it was 1971 when The Limits to Growth report by the Club of Rome modelled scenarios of collapse should demographic, industrial and consumerist growth continue unchecked, predicting the exhaustion of resources within a century — we have known that our economic model is unsustainable. Fifty-five years later, we are still burning fossil fuels, global emissions continue to rise and extreme weather events have increased tenfold. But could this finally be the moment when something begins to change?

The idea is not new. "In September 2020, during Climate Week in New York, more than a hundred Nobel laureates, scientists and movements launched the idea of a non-proliferation treaty," recounts Giuseppe De Marzo, economist and writer, and one of the Italian promoters of the initiative. "Just as fifty years ago we drew up and signed a non-proliferation treaty for nuclear weapons, this time we need a treaty for fossil fuels, because gas, coal and oil can no longer be extracted or burned if we don't want things to end badly."

That momentum was interrupted first by Covid and then by the wars that broke out on our doorstep. But the failure of Belém has reopened the space: emissions keep rising, the Green Fund for countries of the Global South is missing, cooperation is lacking. And Trump tells the United Nations that talking about renewables "is stupid" and that the climate crisis does not exist. It was out of that conference that Colombian president Gustavo Petro and his Dutch counterpart decided to relaunch the campaign and summon the world to Santa Marta. To talk in clear numbers: "We must leave 60 per cent of oil and gas in the ground if we don't want to destroy humanity," explains De Marzo.

At the conference — which takes place symbolically in a Caribbean city that is also, historically, the port from which coal has been shipped to Europe — delegations from more than fifty governments will sit at the same table alongside one hundred delegations of indigenous peoples, Afro-descendant communities, peasant communities, trade unions, NGOs, academics, youth movements and parliamentarians. An unprecedented gathering, built around the idea that the transition away from fossil fuels must be, in the organisers' words, "rapid, just and equitable."

🚨BREAKING NEWS! Pacific nations just made history with a landmark declaration for a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific! ✊🌊Read the Tassiriki Call for a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific 👉 https://t.co/sa712RMMth pic.twitter.com/KgLrxOSl4y

Italy will be there too. With a government delegation whose names are not yet publicly known — Italy is officially listed among the supporting countries — but above all with a civil society delegation coordinated by Fossil Free Rising Italia and Gea – Scuola di Giustizia Ecologica e Ambientale, which will bring to Santa Marta a contribution that goes well beyond mere witness. Among those attending: Rete dei Numeri Pari, LAV Italia, Stop ReArme Europe Italia, Salviamo la Costituzione, WWF and Legambiente. "We have developed more than 300 proposals from the working groups of social movements and non-governmental organisations," explains Elisa Sermarini of Gea, who will be part of the Italian delegation. Proposals to "overcome an economic system that produces death, destruction and exploitation," through a model of cooperation "between grassroots and institutional levels, capable of holding together the various emerging threads of a structural and systemic crisis."

The concrete demands the delegation will bring to the table are two in particular:

A minimum, non-negotiable starting point, according to Sermarini. Dialogue with institutions, she explains, has already produced encouraging signals: "The attention we have received in recent months from the Colombian government has been unprecedented, with a great many spaces for dialogue and exchange." But listening, she warns, is not enough: "We need to move to concrete actions quickly and collectively. We will do our part."

One of the themes running through the entire reflection of the Italian front is the rejection of any national shortcut, of the idea of proceeding in blocs, each going its own way. "Ecological justice, in its approach, requires co-design and co-programming. We must start from the victims, from ecological-distributive conflicts, from communities, from workers, from families hit by the energy crisis. No greenwashing operation can make the problem go away." Santa Marta, for De Marzo, is a historic crossroads: "We can choose whether we want 2026 to be remembered as the year in which an oligarchy of bandits decreed the end of international cooperation and multilateralism on this planet. Or we can believe that in 2026 humanity decided, starting from Santa Marta, to build a path that propels us beyond the fossil fuel era, toward peace and justice."

La conferenza di #SantaMarta in programma dal 24 al 29 aprile è un'occasione storica per andare oltre i combustibili fossiliPer questo chiediamo ai leader politici di dare lo slancio per una transizione energetica equa👇https://t.co/0PjkgWUF3L pic.twitter.com/F5mG8oj5WE

The most radical tone — as is his style — comes from Father Alex Zanotelli, Comboni missionary and a historic voice of Catholic pacifism. Speaking at the Rome press conference "Fuori dall'era dei fossili" held at the Senate, Zanotelli does not spare a harsh reading of the global picture: "Governments are all prisoners of the military-industrial complex of this world." The Santa Marta initiative is "praiseworthy," he acknowledges, but "still not enough": the international direction is "decidedly downward," and the world's leading power, the United States, has already abandoned the Paris Agreement. Faced with governments that will not move, his answer is one and one only: mobilise from below, without hesitation. "Hope today comes only from below — from above there is nothing to expect." He goes further, calling on conscience: "I say this as a follower of that poor Jesus of Nazareth: I ask everyone to find the capacity to do what Ultima Generazione does, including civil disobedience." Because the climate situation, he stresses, is "extremely serious": "We risk heading straight towards scorching temperatures. We cannot accept this in good conscience.