Fossil Fuels
The First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels: Reclaiming Multilateralism for a Just Transition
Informal Note, 28 April 2026
By Daniel Uribe Terán
The First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels, co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands, serves as a necessary platform for reclaiming multilateralism for a just transition. This paper analyses how the conference addresses the ‘judicialization’ of climate obligations following landmark 2025 advisory opinions from the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR). It highlights critical barriers facing developing countries, specifically the ‘regulatory chill’ caused by Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanisms and the ‘debt-fossil fuel trap’ that binds extractive economies to external risks. It also recognises that integrating the ‘People’s Summit’ outcomes into the official Conference could promote a reparative financial model and strengthen the principle of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC). Ultimately, Santa Marta should provide a blueprint for systemic reform, ensuring that global decarbonisation respects resource sovereignty and human dignity while moving toward a coordinated, legally backed effort for collective survival.
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Fossil Fuel-based Economy and Human Rights
Inputs to Inform the Thematic Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights in the Context of Climate Change to the Human Rights Council 59th session
South Centre
February 2025
The South Centre calls for a Just Transition away from fossil fuels, centering the rights of marginalized communities & the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities.
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Painting the Grass Green: A Climate Change Carve-Out in Investment Agreements
By Daniel Uribe
During the Twenty-Eighth Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP-28) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), States recognised the critical need to accelerate efforts to mitigate climate change and called on Parties to take action to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems, to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. However, implementing such a transition finds obstacles in investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanisms, which can undermine regulatory actions necessary for climate policies, leading to a ‘regulatory chill’. As a response to these challenges, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Future of Investment Treaties program has proposed a model carve-out provision to exclude fossil fuel sectors from ISDS protection with procedural safeguards, but its effectiveness may be limited. A holistic reform of investment agreements and additional measures, such as withdrawal from international investment agreements, are necessary to safeguard regulatory space and promote sustainable investment and a just transition.
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Digital economy policies for developing countries
By Parminder Jeet Singh
Digital economy is a given, as much as industrialization was inevitable on invention of means of incorporating steam and later fossil fuel and electric power into manufacturing. It is not a matter of being for or against it. It is about what kind of digital economy we should have. A development agenda for digital economy needs to be articulated, based on a narrative that takes proper account of developing country interests. (more…)
