Governments must embrace Fossil-Free Zones as they head to COP31

Irene Vélez Torres is the former Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development (2025-2026) and former Minister of Mines and Energy (2022-2023) of Colombia. Hon. Ralph Regenvanu is Vanuatu’s Minister of Climate Change, Adaptation, Meteorology and Geo-Hazards, and Energy.

Governments will gather next week in Antalya, Türkiye, for COP31, this year’s United Nations climate summit. Three years ago, at the same summit in Dubai, nearly every country on Earth agreed, for the first time, to work toward transitioning energy systems away from fossil fuels.

There is still no agreement on how to do it or where to start. One of us governed a fossil fuel producing-country in the Amazon; the other serves a Pacific Island state that has never extracted a barrel of oil. We have both tried to answer that question from inside our governments, and we want to share what we learned with the ministers who will try next.

Fossil-free zones are an ambitious step

Neither of our countries is rich. In 2024, fossil fuels still met more than three-quarters of Colombia’s energy demand, and coal and oil revenue help pay for schools and hospitals. In Vanuatu, children in Port Vila are still studying in tents three years after the last cyclone destroyed their classrooms.

We both took on the just transition challenge from vulnerable positions, with little support from the countries that bear the responsibility to act first and fastest. Still, we chose to lead with ambition.

This year’s events have made the case to phase out fossil fuels even clearer. When the Strait of Hormuz was effectively closed in February, the world suffered what the head of the International Energy Agency called the largest energy supply shock in history.

The resultant energy crisis is what pushed countries in Santa Marta, 57 total countries representing nearly half the world’s GDP and approximately 20% of the global fossil fuel supply, to work toward a managed, equitable, and just transition away from fossil fuels.

The ongoing global energy shock has laid bare the limitations of our current system and that the persistent reliance on fossil fuels is unsustainable, for both people and planet.

In this vein, we have been clear on our stance that a healthy forest and a healthy ocean are not assets waiting to be drilled. That is why we have advocated strongly for Fossil Free Zones, or protected places where a government decides that oil, gas, and coal will never be extracted because what lives there is worth more left intact. It turns a vague global promise made in Dubai into a concrete line on the ground, or on the sea.

Lessons from Colombia and the Pacific

Colombia’s lesson: start where the numbers are clearest. In August, Colombia declared nearly 500,000 square kilometers of the Amazon, roughly 42 percent of the country, permanently closed to new mining, oil, and gas. It is the largest terrestrial Fossil Free Zone on the planet.

Earth Insight found that drilling there would create billions of dollars in stranded assets while doing almost nothing for energy security. The decision was built with Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendant communities, and campesinos, and backed by the largest investment in the region’s history in forest-based economies. A decision made with communities, rather than for them, grows deep roots.

**Vanuatu’s lesson: replace the fuel, not just refuse to drill. **From Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands in the west to Hawaii in the east, no fossil fuels are extracted, though vast reserves may lie beneath the seabed and pressures from industry destroy that grow.

However, Pacific nations do not want to dig them up, and making renewables the cheapest option, and securing the political commitments to protect these areas, means they will never have to. Vanuatu aims for 100 percent renewable electricity by 2030 and is on track to meet this goal in nearly every sector. Across its islands, small solar and hydro systems are built with public funds, run by local businesses, and welcomed by communities.

The shared lesson: small countries scale together. Pacific leaders have agreed to pool their efforts on renewable energy across the region. In April, Pacific Climate Ministers adopted the Tassiriki Call for a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific. At the Santa Marta Conference, they proposed the world’s first fossil fuel-free marine zone, an ambition we will carry to the Second Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels in Tuvalu next July.

Building momentum to move past challenges

We will be honest about the risks. Colombia’s new government has pledged to revive oil and gas exploration, and a ministerial resolution is relatively easy to overturn. Indeed, extractive interests have already driven the incoming government to revoke this protection just two months after taking office.

That is why this cannot remain the experiment of a few countries. Vanuatu has championed a “multilateralism from the margins,” which is how it won the International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion confirming that granting fossil fuel licenses can breach states’ legal obligations to protect the climate system. Decisions like ours endure when others make them too. Mexico and Guatemala have already walked similar paths, but more need to follow.

COP31 is the moment for more countries to join in these commitments, providing pathways toward the change we need. Any government can advance its transition away from fossil fuels by creating a Fossil Free Zone with tools it already holds: protected areas, Indigenous land titles, land and ocean planning, and energy licensing rules.

The just transition will reshape our forests and oceans either way. The only question is whether nature guides it or pays the price. Colombia and the Pacific Islands have drawn our lines. At COP31, we hope others will draw theirs.

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