This was the First Conference on the Transition away from Fossil Fuels.
Keystone-SDA
Switzerland was among 57 countries to take part in the first Conference on the Transition away from Fossil Fuels held in Santa Maria, Colombia. The Swiss government applauded moves towards concrete strategies to phase out fossil fuels.
+ Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox
By participating, Switzerland has shown that it is actively committed to the Paris climate goals, the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN) announced on Thursday. In order to achieve these goals, Switzerland is prepared to share its own experiences and work together with other countries.
The focus of the two-day conference, which was organised by Colombia and the Netherlands, was therefore not on negotiating new climate targets. Instead, the priority was on making progress in implementing existing commitments.
More
More
Switzerland wants a global roadmap to phase out fossil fuels
Intention, phase-out, reduction – but how?
The focus was on reducing economic dependence on fossil fuels, restructuring supply and demand in the energy sector and strengthening international cooperation.
According to the FOEN, the conference showed that there is great interest in the latter. In the aftermath, the department spoke of a “success”: concrete strategies are being developed in many countries to phase out fossil fuels. This also applies to countries such as Colombia and Nigeria, where there is a strong economic dependency on fossil resources.
More
More
‘The transition away from fossil fuels is a prerequisite for global peace’
As a result of the meeting, the hosts defined several areas of work in which countries should work more closely together in future. These include national roadmaps, financing issues and better coordination between producers and consumers of fossil fuels. A scientific committee was also presented to support countries in planning the energy transition.
No binding framework
However, conference participants and organisations such as the “Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative” pointed out that a binding international framework for phasing out fossil fuels is still lacking.
A follow-up conference is planned for 2027 and is to be organised by the Pacific island state of Tuvalu together with Ireland.
The conference is intended as a complement to the UN climate negotiations and as a reaction to the slow progress in global agreements on phasing out fossil fuels. Coal, oil and gas are responsible for the majority of global greenhouse gas emissions and are seen as the main drivers of the climate crisis.
Join the debate:
Translated from German by AI/jdp
We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.
Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.
If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at english@swissinfo.ch.
