Sawt Falasteen - Nations kick off world-first fossil fuel exit talks in Colombia

Ministers and climate envoys aim to revive the transition from fossil fuels at the inaugural conference in Santa Marta against a backdrop of crippling global energy shortages and soaring fuel prices.

"Let's make this a turning point in history," Colombia's Environment Minister Irene Velez Torres said as she opened the two-day talks.

The conference bypasses the United Nations climate talks and reflects a growing impatience with its failure to tackle fossil fuels, the main driver of global warming.

But ministers said the volatility driven by the Middle East conflict also underscored the energy security imperative of shifting to renewables.

"We in Europe... are losing half a billion euros each day this war continues," the bloc's climate envoy Wopke Hoekstra told delegates in the coastal city.

"We already had a very good reason to move on (from fossil fuels) for climate action... We now also have it for commercial reasons, and reasons of independence."

The conference was announced late last year but organizers say the Middle East war -- which has seen Gulf exports plummet -- had bolstered the case for a fossil fuel phaseout.

Some governments are however weighing short-term increases to fossil fuel production to plug supply gaps, illustrating the tensions between climate ambition and energy security.

On the list of attendees are major fossil fuel producers Canada, Norway and Australia, and developing oil giants Nigeria, Angola and Brazil.

They join coal-reliant emerging markets Turkey and Vietnam, and small island nations extremely vulnerable to climate shocks, among others.

But the world's biggest emitters of greenhouse gases -- including the United States, China and India -- are not attending, nor are oil-rich Gulf states.

- 'Good faith' -

The conference is not expected to produce binding commitments but a scientific panel has asked governments taking part to consider a halt on new fossil fuel expansion, among other proposals.

Many nations "are here in good faith to really work through what is a very complex challenge made more urgent by the crisis," the UK's special climate envoy Rachel Kyte told AFP in Santa Marta on Monday.

"People seem refreshed to be able to talk about these issues without having to sort of argue the existential question of -- do we need to do this at all?" she said.

As government delegates arrived Monday, activists protested against fossil fuels on the streets and beaches of the Caribbean city, one of the country's busiest coal hubs.

Colombia, which is co-hosting the conference with the Netherlands, is highly reliant on revenue from coal and oil exports, as are other developing fossil fuel producers attending the conference.

Among other agenda items, nations will consider how to equitably reduce fossil fuel production and consumption, and reforming subsidies that throw up barriers to renewable energy investment.

Analysis by the International Institute for Sustainable Development on Monday showed that governments still spent five times more public money on fossil fuels than renewable alternatives.

- 'Fossil fuel ban' -

On Sunday, a scientific panel released a 12-point "menu" of policy options that included "halting all new and expanding fossil fuel extraction and infrastructure projects."

"Without a doubt, there is no justification whatsoever for any new exploration of fossil fuels," the Brazilian scientist Carlos Nobre, a former member of the UN's climate advisory panel, told AFP.

Even as record investments flow into renewable energy, scientists warn the pace is still too slow to keep global temperature rises to safer levels.

"Even if we carried out no new exploration, the amount of fossil fuels -- oil, coal, and natural gas -- that already exists will push temperatures up to two and a half degrees by 2050," Nobre said.

The world has already warmed about 1.4C above pre-industrial times and is tracking to blow past 1.5C in a matter of years.

Above that threshold, scientists warn that coral reefs and Greenland ice sheets could disappear, among other catastrophic and irreversible impacts.

F.Qawasmeh--SF-PST