Who
Amazon Watch team, Indigenous Leaders from Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru (bios attached)
When/Where
April 24-29, 2026, Santa Marta, Colombia
Why now
The First Conference on Transitioning Away From Fossil Fuels marks a turning point in climate diplomacy. It is the first time countries will explicitly address the root cause of the climate crisis: the unmitigated proliferation of fossil fuels. Despite being the #1 source of human caused C02 emissions, they appear only once in negotiated climate texts. Hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands, it brings together almost 60 countries in a “coalition of the willing” to identify barriers and solutions to a fossil fuel phase out, and chart the policies and pathways to implementation, and whose outcome will feed into Brazil’s roadmap submission before COP 31.
Indigenous peoples and frontline communities affected by fossil fuels have been calling for action from world leaders for decades. The conference emerged from growing frustration with the lack of meaningful commitments and tangible action under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process, which has convened nearly 30 times since the Kyoto Protocol yet failed to match the urgency of the moment, as climate impacts are arriving stronger and sooner than predictions with every passing year.
Amazon Watch is accompanying a delegation of Indigenous leaders from across the Western Amazon at the conference, who are calling for a Fossil Free Amazon and a rapid, financed, and fair energy transition that includes accountability and remediation for industry’s toxic legacy, and a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty as a framework to advance multilateral cooperation on action and implementation.
We came here with three messages:
- The Amazon rainforest has reached its tipping point and governments must declare the Amazon as a Fossil Free Zone for extractive industries to limit global temperatures within 1.5 C degrees, as stated in 2015 Paris Agreement, to prevent catastrophic planetary heating.
- Indigenous peoples and defenders are central to protecting the Amazon. Their long history of resistance to extractivism—and ongoing defense of their territories—is essential to safeguarding biodiversity and a prerequisite for any just transition away from fossil fuels.
- Financiers and investors of the Global North play an outsized role in funding Latin America’s dependence on oil, feeding into a vicious cycle of ecological debt, rendering the Amazon biome and Indigenous territories into sacrifice zones – a clear re-manifestation of colonialism.
If you want to learn more about the cases we accompanied in Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia, click here.
