Ireland and the tiny Pacific nation of Tuvalu will co-host an international conference next July with countries that have pledged to speed up the end of oil, gas and coal.
The second International Conference on the Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels will take place in the Pacific, with a pre-conference event to be held in Ireland in the spring.
It follows the inaugural transition conference co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands that 57 countries attended last April.
The initiative stemmed from last year’s UN climate summit, Cop30, after countries were left frustrated at the slow pace of negotiations and the lack of time-lined commitment to ending fossil fuel use and the climate-changing carbon pollution it causes.
Delegations from Ireland and Tuvalu met at a side event during the UN General Assembly in New York on Thursday night to formalise the arrangement.
Tuvalu has a population of just 11,000 people who are living on a remote archipelago at risk of being submerged by rising sea levels.
Next year’s conference is expected to take place on one of the larger Pacific islands, with possibly some ceremonial events in Tuvalu, as the country does not have infrastructure to host the several thousand attendees expected.
Exact dates have not yet been announced but after Thursday’s meeting, the delegations said they agreed a shared goal.
Working under a Pathways to Delivery theme, they said their aim was to identify what is preventing countries from transitioning away from fossil fuels and work to remove those barriers.
Minister of State at the Department of Climate Timmy Dooley said Ireland was honoured to co-host the event.
“The transition away from fossil fuels and towards clean energy is now inevitable and we must collectively plan for it,” he said.
“It is crucial that the second conference moves from discussions to implementation. What are the barriers that impede countries’ ability to transition and how do we address them?”
Tuvalu’s prime minister, Feleti Penitala Teo, urged countries supporting the initiative to begin preparing their own input.
“Come with an idea, an initiative, finance, technology or expertise that can help another country move forward,” he said.
The conference has support from the UN’s climate agency, and the initiative will be promoted at the Cop31 climate summit in Turkey in November.
The hope is that progress by countries that want to move faster on ridding the world of fossil fuel use will feed into the wider Cop process.
The annual Cops only directly addressed the need to phase out fossil fuels in the last few years.
Cop agreements, which are heavily influenced by countries that produce oil, gas and coal, must be unanimous and have left open-ended the question of when fossil fuel use might end.