Bonn Climate Talks 2026: What to expect after Santa Marta

The climate community returns to Bonn for the 64th session of the UNFCCC Subsidiary Bodies (SB 64), from June 8 to 18, 2026. Following the 30th UN Climate Change Conference (COP 30), the global climate agenda has entered a decisive implementation phase, with a strong focus on translating climate ambition into practical solutions. While that shift to implementation is felt across every agenda item, it is perhaps felt most acutely in the transition away from fossil fuels (TAFF).

At COP 30, there was widespread disappointment that parties did not agree on a formal TAFF roadmap within the COP 30 outcome. A push by around 80 nations ultimately fell short amid procedural disagreements and resistance from fossil fuel-dependent economies. But the scale of support behind the proposal could not be ignored. In response, the Brazilian COP 30 Presidency committed to developing a fossil fuel roadmap outside the official process. Colombia and the Netherlands announced that they would co-host a dedicated conference on the issue, to be held in Santa Marta in late April 2026.

What happened in Santa Marta matters for Bonn because 57 countries showed up, engaged seriously on implementation, and demonstrated that political weight behind the transition is growing. That shift in the political baseline is itself a form of pressure on formal negotiations—and SB 64 is the first major test of whether it translates into higher ambition.

What Happened in Santa Marta, and Why Does It Matter for Bonn and Beyond?

The First International Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels, held from April 24 to 29, 2026 in Santa Marta, Colombia, brought together 57 countries, including vulnerable economies, major importing blocs such as the EU, and several significant fossil fuel producers, including Canada, Norway, Brazil, Nigeria, Mexico, and Colombia itself, along with COP 31 co-hosts Australia and Türkiye.

Santa Marta marked a clear shift from ambition setting to the harder implementation challenges of managing fossil fuel decline: strengthening economic resilience, restructuring fiscal systems, and building diversified clean energy pathways. It did not seek a negotiated outcome. Rather, it was designed as a complement to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process—an implementation-focused space for those already ready to move forward and a coalition of the willing operating at a level of ambition the formal process has not yet reached.

The conference agreed on three thematic workstreams to take this agenda forward. Each one speaks to live debates at SB 64 and offers a basis for pushing ambition higher in Bonn and at COP 31.

Workstream 1: National and regional transition roadmaps

The first workstream focuses on designing national and regional fossil fuel transition roadmaps. Santa Marta identified this as a core area of forward work, with support from the NDC Partnership and the Science Panel on the Global Energy Transition. This workstream is the most direct point of contact between Santa Marta and Brazil’s COP 30 Presidency process. The Brazilian COP 30 Presidency’s Roadmap and the Santa Marta Conference together offer avenues to progress the necessary global cooperation on TAFF roadmaps this year. 

The question for Bonn is how to ensure that, as this work gets underway, it raises the bar for what the wider UNFCCC membership is prepared to commit to—including the more than 130 countries that were not in Santa Marta.

 

Parties that are releasing national TAFF roadmaps—such as France and Brazil—could signal that this implementation work has standing within the Paris Agreement framework through decisions under the transparency negotiations or through decisions recognizing national TAFF roadmaps as delivering on paragraph 36 of the COP 30 Mutirão decision. National TAFF roadmaps are not a parallel track to NDCs and long-term low-emission development strategies; they are a means of delivering on them. As countries develop and implement them, that work can naturally generate the kind of implementation evidence that should feed into the second global stocktake (GST 2) process in 2028, ensuring that countries doing the work get credit for it, and that others feel the pull to follow.

The roadmap workstream also connects directly to the just transition work programme. SB 64 is expected to recommend a draft decision on the operationalization of the Just Transition Mechanism for adoption at COP 31. The just transition work programme and national TAFF roadmap processes should not be seen as separate tracks—they are mutually reinforcing. Just transition safeguards are most meaningful when embedded in the same nationally determined contribution (NDC) and investment planning cycles as decisions on fossil fuel decline, so that decisions on fossil fuel decline are planned alongside the measures to support affected workers, communities, regions, and households. Bonn can help give direction on how they can come together in practice.

Workstream 2: Financial reform and transition investment

The second workstream will address the economic conditions that underlie fossil fuel dependence—including fossil fuel subsidy reform, unlocking transition investment, overcoming barriers such as conventional investor–state dispute settlement arrangements, and managing debt constraints that trap countries in fossil fuel dependence. IISD will support this work.

The momentum built in Santa Marta around financial reform speaks directly to some of the most contested debates at SB 64. The ongoing effort to operationalize the roadmap to USD 1.3 trillion in climate finance, the Veredas dialogue on Article 2.1(c) on aligning financial flows, and persistent discussions on developed countries’ climate finance obligations under Article 9.1 are all live agenda items at Bonn. Progress on fossil fuel subsidy reform, investment barriers, and debt constraints—the core focus of this workstream—shapes the economic conditions in which those finance discussions take place. 

Santa Marta does not resolve the finance debates at Bonn, but it changes the political context in which they take place. A growing bloc of countries taking practical steps to reform fiscal systems and remove barriers to transition investment shifts the terms of the debate.

 

Workstream 3: Producer–consumer cooperation and trade

The third workstream will focus on connecting fossil fuel-producing and consuming nations to reshape trade systems toward decarbonization and green commerce, building alignment on fossil fuel transition, and challenging the logic that currently incentivizes extraction. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development will assist with this workstream.

This kind of producer–consumer cooperation is precisely the territory that Article 6.8 of the Paris Agreement was designed to enable—non-market, cooperative approaches that help parties implement their NDCs through finance, technology transfer, and capacity building. Article 6.8 remains underutilized, but it offers the legal architecture for formalizing the kinds of producer–consumer cooperation that the Santa Marta process is beginning to develop. However, it’s the negotiating parties who will debate whether this interpretation can be utilized.

There is nonetheless a case for caution about pushing these workstreams prematurely into formal UNFCCC negotiating text. The experience of recent COPs suggests that once issues like subsidy reform or trade system redesign enter that space, pressure to accommodate the most resistant parties tends to dilute rather than advance ambition. Santa Marta's energy comes precisely from operating outside that dynamic.

The more productive path is to let these workstreams broaden the Santa Marta coalition itself—by expanding the number of countries publishing national TAFF roadmaps and engaged in fiscal reform, subsidy phase-out, and producer–consumer cooperation—so that when these issues do surface in formal UNFCCC negotiations, the political weight behind them is simply harder to resist. That gradual accumulation of political weight is precisely how the Santa Marta process was designed to work.

Santa Marta’s Role in Raising Ambition: Complementarity in practice

The Santa Marta process was always designed to support, not undermine, the UNFCCC. The conference’s final outcome document is explicit on this: the conference report will be handed to the COP 30 Presidency to inform its roadmap, shared ahead of SB 64, and formally presented at London Climate Action Week. In coordination with the UN Secretary-General’s team, it will also be shared during New York Climate Week. Incoming COP presidencies will work to align the conference’s outcomes with the Global Climate Action Agenda and to channel them toward GST 2.

This is complementarity in practice—and it is a form of ambition raising. 

The willingness of 57 countries to implement the transition away from fossil fuels, placed on the table in rooms where ambition is negotiated, changes what is politically possible.

 

For the more than 130 countries that were not in Santa Marta, Bonn is an opportunity to see what is achievable—and to consider joining a process that is building real momentum. A second conference is planned for 2027 in Tuvalu, ensuring continuity and a growing track record.

Bonn is the first test of whether that momentum translates into higher ambition in the formal process—through transparency decisions that recognize TAFF roadmap work, the Presidency's signalling on sequencing, the just transition discussions, and the finance agenda, where Santa Marta countries are now better placed to argue for stronger commitments. How much of that ambition gap closes in Bonn will set the tone for what is achievable at COP 31.

Photo credit: IISD/ENB - Kiara Worth