Santa Marta climate meeting’s roadmaps must be translated into actual policy

In the last week of April, representatives from more than 50 countries gathered at Santa Marta in Colombia for a climate conference born of frustration with the UN-administered negotiations. The deliberations ended on Wednesday with a call for participating countries to develop national roadmaps to end the use of fossil fuels — in fact, France pledged to phase out oil and gas use between 2030 and 2050. The UNFCCC’s CoPs have almost always come unstuck on the issue of fossil fuels. By operating outside the consensus-bound framework, the Colombia conference gave itself the leeway to advance faster than CoPs. However,…