As governments debated the mechanics of phasing out fossil fuels at last week’s landmark conference in Santa Marta, a parallel and increasingly urgent conversation was taking place outside the official halls: who gets to lead the transition, and on whose terms.
Indigenous peoples and feminist movements issued a joint call during the First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels in Santa Marta, Colombia, warning that replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy means little if the extraction, land dispossession, and exclusion of affected communities continue under a different name. The conference, co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands from April 24 to 29, drew representatives from 57 countries and was accompanied by a People’s Summit organised by a coalition of more than 900 civil society organisations and networks.
At the centre of the civil society message was a challenge to what advocates are calling “green extractivism”: the expansion of mining for critical minerals such as lithium, cobalt, and copper needed for renewable energy infrastructure, often carried out on Indigenous and community land without meaningful consent. Indigenous leaders at the summit stressed that no climate or economic justice is possible without respect for their right to self-determination, Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), and legal protection of their territories. They warned that a transition that ignores these principles risks reproducing the very injustices it claims to address.
Dr. Mela Chiponda of Shine Collab, a global feminist network supporting women-led renewable energy initiatives, put the concern plainly: “There is no justice in a transition that replicates dispossession under a green label.”
Feminist organisations at the summit argued that the impacts of extractive industries fall disproportionately on women through loss of livelihoods, increased care work, and exposure to violence, and that these patterns are already repeating themselves in communities facing new mining pressure. In Zimbabwe’s Bikita district, a surge in lithium extraction has intensified pressure on community land and decision-making. Shine Collab’s response has been the Hanyanya Solar Project, a community-driven renewable energy initiative designed and led by women, which is providing clean energy access while building local knowledge of land rights and governance.
The example is cited not as an exception but as a model: decentralised, community-owned energy systems that build energy sovereignty rather than replicate dependence on external investors and corporations.
Both Indigenous and feminist movements are also calling for climate finance to reach communities directly, without restrictive intermediaries, and for reparative justice to be treated as a core component of any transition framework, not an afterthought. They rejected what they described as false solutions including carbon markets, geoengineering, and the framing of gas as a transitional fuel.
The outcomes of the Santa Marta conference will feed into the Brazilian-led process to develop a global fossil fuel phaseout roadmap ahead of COP31, scheduled for Turkey in November 2026. Whether the demands of frontline communities will shape that roadmap remains the central question.
