A just future beyond fossil fuels: Why the ‘First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels’ matters for Indigenous Peoples’ rights

Written on 09 April 2026. Posted in News

In April 2026, Santa Marta, Colombia, will host the First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels a global gathering aimed at advancing concrete and just pathways to phase out oil, coal and gas while accelerating the shift towards equitable, low-carbon economies. Co-organised by Colombia and the Netherlands, the conference builds on political momentum generated at COP30 in Belém, Brazil. There, 24 countries reacted to the fact that the main decision – the Mutirão decision – omitted any direct reference to fossil fuels, reflecting opposition from several producer countries and persistent divisions among negotiating blocs. In response, these countries issued the Belém Declaration on the Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels, calling for coordinated and collective action among states to expedite the phase-out of fossil fuels and to anchor climate action in science-based and rights-based approaches.

Meeting the objectives of the Paris Agreement and fulfilling States’ obligations to protect the environment – including through measures addressing fossil fuel production, licensing and subsidies – will require unprecedented international cooperation to ensure that no country or community is left behind. According the organisers, the conference is guided by a set of principles centred on action, scientific evidence and inclusive participation. It is conceived as a space for governments and stakeholders already committed to advancing a just, orderly and equitable transition away from fossil fuels, prioritising implementation and practical solutions rather than further diagnosis or persuasion.

The conference is also structured around three thematic pillars: overcoming economic dependence on fossil fuels, including fiscal dependence, energy security and economic diversification; transforming both supply and demand, through measures such as phasing out key demand drivers, managing exploration and extraction licensing, planning for the closure of fossil fuel infrastructure and redirecting subsidies towards clean energy investment; and advancing international cooperation and multilateralism to close governance and implementation gaps and address barriers in international law and finance that constrain the transition.

A climate conference focused on fossil fuels

Unlike many previous climate summits, which often address multiple agenda items across mitigation, adaptation and finance, this event is singularly focused on fossil fuels. It seeks to convene governments, civil society, Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendant communities, workers, youth, academia and private actors to co-design viable policies and roadmaps for moving beyond fossil energy.

This focus is critical because fossil fuels remain the single largest driver of global greenhouse gas emissions. Without targeted strategies to reduce both their production and use, limiting warming to 1.5°C is increasingly out of reach. Government projections indicate that planned fossil fuel production would exceed levels consistent with the Paris Agreement by more than 120% by 2030, and by 2050 output could be around 4.5 times higher than what is compatible with a 1.5°C pathway. These projections highlight the urgency of coordinated global action to phase out coal, oil and gas. 

Implications for Indigenous Peoples' rights – reflections from the Indigenous Debates special issue on fossil fuels

The Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels has not yet announced concrete policy commitments specifically for Indigenous Peoples, but it has framed several goals relevant to them: ensuring participation in shaping transition strategies, embedding the transition in human-rights and justice frameworks, recognising Indigenous knowledge and leadership, addressing the socioeconomic impacts of fossil fuel phase-out in affected regions, and including Indigenous voices in developing a global roadmap for ending fossil fuel extraction.

One of the explicit objectives of the conference is therefore to create a multi-stakeholder space bringing together governments, experts, civil society, and Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples to discuss pathways for a just transition away from fossil fuels. The summit is designed as a forum where these groups can contribute to identifying fair and equitable strategies to transition to sustainable and diversified energy systems.

For Indigenous Peoples globally, these debates are not abstract; they are lived realities. The perspectives gathered in the November 2025 special issue of IWGIA’s online magazine, Indigenous Debates, show what is at stake in the discussions now taking place at the conference and what a genuinely just transition would need to confront.

Focusing on the conference’s host country, René Kuppe's examination of El Cerrejón coal mine in Colombia illustrates how the energy security policies of consumer countries can directly undermine Indigenous Peoples’ rights. While Colombian coal is exported to a different global markets, Germany sharply increased imports following the Ukraine war, just as it was ratifying International Labour Organization Convention 169 to demonstrate international solidarity with Indigenous Peoples. El Cerrejón is owned by Swiss transnational Glencore and Kuppe documents its operations, which are located in Wayuu territory, have led to the disappearance and diversion of rivers in one of the driest regions of tropical South America, severe environmental and health impacts, despite a 2017 Constitutional Court ruling. The case exposes how “the defence of Indigenous rights clashes with the global investment protection regime.”

Photo: El Cerrejón continues to leave irreversible impacts on the Guajira desert. Credit: Tanenhaus

Similarly, Mario Zúñiga Lossio shows in his analysis of Peru's Lote 192 how decades of oil exploitation have produced more than 3,200 contaminated sites in Achuar, Inga and Kichwa territories, with clean-up costs officially estimated at 1,700 million dollars over 42 years – a burden shifted onto future generations. He argues that any attempt to move away from fossil fuels must begin by acknowledging, repairing and learning from this history: a transition, he insists, “cannot proceed without memory.”

Photo: Contamination in Lot 192 affects the Achuar of the Pastaza and Corrientes rivers, the Inga of the Pastaza, and the Kichwa of the Tigre. Credit: Julián Vilca – Puinamudt

At the same time, as Edson Krenak warns, the emerging energy transition is reproducing the same injustices in new forms. Analysing lithium extraction in Brazil’s Jequitinhonha Valley and the “Lithium Triangle” of Chile, Argentina and Bolivia, he argues that “the extraction of minerals for ‘green technologies’ relies on the same destructive practices that defined the fossil fuel economy.” Lithium projects are turning Indigenous territories into new sacrifice zones through water depletion, pollution and cultural loss, while being justified in the name of climate action. Krenak underlines the alarming fact that 54 per cent of the minerals needed for the energy transition lie within Indigenous territories, yet FPIC is routinely violated.

Photo: International Dialogue of Communities Affected by Lithium, Brazil 2025. Credit: Cultural Survival / Djalma Arana (2025)

This pattern is not confined to South America. Earthworks investigation of Quebec's mining expansion reveals how a celebrated 2022 fossil fuel ban coexists with a massive expansion of mining for socalled critical minerals with around 10 per cent of the province under mining claims and 60 per cent of those claims overlapping rivers. Projects like the Lomiko graphite mine and Strange Lake rare earths, backed in part by United States Department of Defense funding, illustrate how so-called “clean energy” supply chains “quietly align with U.S. military priorities” while FPIC remains more aspirational than real.

Photo: Regroupement de Protection des Lacs de la Petite-Nation

Whilst lithium attracts attention as a so-called transition mineral, coal extraction continues to devastate Indigenous communities. Suhas Chakma's documents how India’s shift to commercial coal mining during the COVID19 pandemic has accelerated land acquisition in Adivasi territories, with 113 coal mines auctioned by December 2024 and demand expected to reach up to 1.5 billion tonnes by 2030.  His case studies from Hasdeo Arand, Deocha-Pachami, Bijahan and Gondalpara show consent processes reduced to formalities, cancellation of recognised forest rights, and violent repression of protest, concluding that this “approach not only perpetuates human rights violations but also endangers irreplaceable ecological and cultural heritage, as vast forested areas vital to biodiversity and Indigenous identity are sacrificed.”

Photo: Adivasi protesters march against new coal mines in Chhattisgarh. Credit: Adani Watch

Finally, Edward Porokwa’s investigation of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) in Tanzania reminds us that fossil fuel harms extend along entire transport corridors. The 1,445kilometre pipeline cuts across eight regions, affecting Maasai, Hadzabe, Akie, Barbaig, Sukuma and Nyamwezi communities. PINGO’s Forum’s field research reveals deep flaws in consultation and participation, grave cultural violations such as grave exhumations without adequate consent or ritual support, loss of grazing land, inadequate or absent compensation, and unfulfilled promises of social investment. Porokwa’s research “demonstrates EACOP’s systematic failure to respect Indigenous rights, to implement meaningful consultation processes, and to deliver the promised benefits to affected communities.”

Photo: EACOP will require access to more than 4,000 hectares of land. Tabora Region. Credit: PINGO’s Forum

Conference opportunities and expectations

The Indigenous Debates articles make clear what the objectives of the First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels must mean in practice if they are to matter for Indigenous Peoples: transitions that confront, rather than erase, historical harms; that refuse to replace fossil fuel sacrifice zones with “green” sacrifice zones; that place FPIC and Indigenous governance at their centre; and that break with development models built on the dispossession of those who have cared, for generations, for the lands and waters on which our common future depends.

For this reason, the Conference must explicitly reject the reproduction of extractive violence through “green” mining and address the structural barriers to justice. As Edson Krenak emphasises, transitions must be “rooted in a rights-based approach that recognises that the integrity of life in territories is non-negotiable”. Echoing this perspective, Earthworks stresses the need to centre Indigenous governance systems and ensure that FPIC is not reduced to a “mid-project checkbox” but respected as “a binding right that can change, reshape or halt projects entirely”. In addition, as Mario Zúñiga Lossio warns, the Conference’s commitments must address the “unpayable debt” created by hydrocarbon extraction and ensure that future generations are not left to shoulder remediation costs that rightly belong to extractive industries and complicit states.

Indigenous leadership will be essential to achieving these goals. Accordingly, Indigenous representatives must exercise genuine decision-making power over the Conference’s agenda, procedures and outcomes, so that the transition away from fossil fuels also marks a transition away from colonial patterns of governance and extraction.

Looking ahead

As the world moves closer to climate tipping points with profound implications for ecosystems and human well-being, the urgency of phasing out fossil fuels has never been greater. Yet without genuinely inclusive processes that prioritise Indigenous Peoples’ rights, justice and self-determination, the energy transition risks deepening existing inequalities and reproducing new forms of extractive harm.

The upcoming First International Conference on the Transition Away from Fossil Fuels in Colombia could mark an important turning point, but only if it truly creates space for Indigenous perspectives to shape climate decision-making. The central question, as Zúñiga Lossio suggests, is whether governments will pursue transitions that honour memory and justice, or allow the “oil civilisation” to leave its debts unpaid while new forms of extraction devastate the same territories under a green banner.

IWGIA will be watching closely to see whether commitments made in Santa Marta translate into binding pathways and measurable milestones, rather than rhetorical pledges alone, and to ensure that a post-fossil future is also a just and Indigenous-centred one.

Top photo: For Indigenous communities, the green transition reproduces the injustices of the past and deepens territorial dispossession. Credit: Rodion Sulyandziga

Tags: Business and Human Rights , Climate