More than 50 countries have agreed to work on trade measures aimed at cutting demand for fossil fuels, among a series of proposed steps to drive down the production and use of coal, oil and gas.
The first international conference on shifting away from fossil fuels also pledged to expose how much participant nations each support or subsidise the planet-warming fuels, and to work on financial reforms to tackle what organisers called the fiscal, debt and subsidy “traps” that lock countries into fossil fuels.
“We decided that the transition away from fossil fuels could no longer remain a slogan but must become a concrete political and collective endeavour,” said Irene Vélez Torres, environment minister of Colombia, which co-hosted the six-day gathering with the Netherlands at the coastal city of Santa Marta.