Frustrated by U.N. Process, 50+ Countries Launch Alternative Climate Change Foru [0:00-5:00]

This is democracy now, democracynow.org. I'm Amy Goodman in Toronto, Canada. One Gonzalez is in Chicago. What will it take to transition world economies away from fossil fuels? And Friday, more than 50 countries began gathering in the Caribbean Coastal City of Santa Marta, Colombia, in a groundbreaking effort to open another channel of global cooperation on climate change after years of frustration over the UN-led cop process, which requires consensus. The transitioning away from fossil fuels initiative was launched in the final hours of COP30, held in Belem, Brazil last year, as fossil fuel-producing countries led by Saudi Arabia and Russia blocked binding commitments sought by more ambitious nations. Colombia and the Netherlands are co-hosting the gathering, billed as a coalition of the willing. This is Colombia's Minister of the Environment and Sustainable Development. Irene Velez, in her opening remarks. 31 years after the first COP on climate change, global CO2 emissions have increased by at least 65%. It could be said that we have failed, but we would also like to think that we are precisely at a moment of opportunity when the window has not yet closed. The transition faces technical, economic, and let us say plainly geopolitical obstacles, because despite having a science-based agreed roadmap, we are also under enormous pressure in a changing world, where decisions also end up being shaped by the pressure of war. Several major fossil fuel powers, including Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Nigerian Norway, are in attendance. The timing of the summit couldn't be more relevant as the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz's focused world attention on the vulnerabilities of fossil fuel-dominated economy. For more, we go directly to Sanamara, Colombia, where we are joined by Kumi Nairu, South African human rights and environmental justice activist, President of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative, former head of Greenpeace International, as well, Amnesty International. Kumi, welcome back to Democracy Now, nearly 60 nations are gathering where you are for the first global summit on phasing out fossil fuels. Can you talk about the significance of this moment, of this summit? Thank you, Amy, and greetings to your listeners and viewers, to put it very simply, so that we can all understand, imagine one day you rush off to work in a hurry, you get home, you open the door, and you see water coming out of the bathroom as you pass the kitchen, you pick up the mop, you go to the bathroom, you open the door and you say, oh, in rushing to work you left the stopper on and the water is, you know, filled up and was now flowing into the passageway. What do you do first? Do you start mopping the floor first or you turn off the tap? So the frustration comes from 30 years of mopping up the floor and not addressing the food cause of climate change, which is our dependence and addiction to fossil fuels, which is at least more than 75 to 86% of the problem of what's driving climate change. So we have been together at many climate negotiations and you will remember in Copenhagen, in 2009 we asked for a fab deal, not a fabulous deal, but a fair, ambitious and binding deal. And each year what we get is a flat outcome full of loopholes and I'll leave it to the imagination of your audience to say what the beast stands for. So eventually now we are saying that we have to take the process of the most ambitious countries we accept the science to actually come together and provide leadership where we are not constrained by the reality of the climate negotiations where you need absolute consensus. So that's where the conference comes in, it's inspired by other moments in history where progress outside formal UN processes, just to take an example, a landmine treaty for example, was negotiated completely outside of the UN system and then brought into the UN system and then with the overwhelming number of countries actually supporting it. So this gathering in Santa Marta is about breaking the deadlock, creating a space where ambition is not held hostage and where real pathways to face out fossil fuels can be discussed openly and honestly. Now, Kumi, in the gathering at Santa Marta there are still major nations that skipped the summit including China, India and Russia.