Seven of our leaders from Mexico, Colombia, and the U.S. went to Santa Marta, Colombia for the First International Conference for Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels. This conference was proposed at COP30 (United Nations conference on climate change in Belem, Brazil, November 2025) when petro-states blocked the adoption of a plan to transition away from fossil fuels by the COP as a whole. 45 countries attended the Conference.
We attended as Sustaining All Life (SAL), and offered listening circles, workshops, and think-and-listen sessions.
Sustaining All Life primarily participated in the people’s counterpart—The People’s Summit for a Fossil Free Future. The People’s Summit website has a nice summary of the science and the current situation.
Some of our activities included:
- Climate Ribbon project: we greeted people inviting them to write their response to this question on a colored ribbon: What do you love and hope to never lose to climate chaos? Many people stopped and appreciated the chance to contribute to our project of listening to people think what they want to write on the ribbon, then collecting these ribbons and taking them to the United Nations COPs.
- Attending events and connecting with people: listening to different panels of people from different territories sharing their experiences from fighting against resource extractivism and exploitation in their lands (mainly fossil fuel and mining). The panelists were divided into three categories: communities which are under threat of getting their resources exploited, communities which are currently facing and fighting against the exploitation of their resources, and communities which have been able to stop resource extraction and exploitation and are in recovery
- Listening circles: At our booth, we offered Listening circles, provided information on SAL’s work and answered any questions people had about the handouts or our work as an organization. We also connected with people and discussed the possibility of offering listening circles at their events and training sessions so that their organizations could incorporate listening circles into their activities.
