Hard choices test breakaway climate summit

Colombia and the Netherlands say it will take time for countries to make wholesale changes. They’re encouraging them to develop road maps for their transitions. Another summit is being planned next year in the tiny, Pacific island nation of Tuvalu.

They also want to expand the reach of the summit’s coalition and connect it back to the U.N. process and other climate forums. That could be a challenge if the two blocs are on different paths. While the war in Iran has pushed some countries to think about accelerating the shift to clean energy, others are leaning more on coal or considering more drilling.

Other countries, particularly small island nations, said the discussions in Santa Marta must be heard on a bigger stage — including the U.N. global climate talks known as COP.

“There’s this gorge of silence on a topic that is at the root of this problem,” Tina Stege, climate envoy for the Marshall Islands, told reporters. “All of the practical, concrete, real, meaningful discussions we’re having here on how to address that silence, that has to be visible, inform, impact, shape what we’re doing at the COP.”

While the U.S. wasn’t invited because of its commitment to fossil fuel expansion, China also didn’t attend the summit, despite being the dominant producer of clean energy technologies. Whether these breakaway summits can be successful without involving the world’s largest-emitting countries is a decision for the future. For now, the organizers say a victory was grasped by gathering dozens of nations that are willing to act faster on climate change.

“When they look back at us from the future, not only will they remember the conversations and the speeches,” Colombia’s environment minister, Irene Vélez Torres, said in her closing remarks. “They will remember that we were there and working on the challenges of our time.”