Azerbaijan proposes to convert consensus reached at COP28 into concrete solutions

Azerbaijan is taking bold steps to overcome the challenges of climate change, President Ilham Aliyev said in his welcome message to participants of the two-day Pre-COP29 conference opening today in Baku.

‘We are successfully realizing our socio-economic priority ‘clean environment and green development’ at the national level. Azerbaijan has declared 2024 as the ‘Year of Solidarity of the Green World’. Our rich wind and solar energy potential allows us to promote our renewable energy program. Karabakh and Eastern Zangezur, liberated from occupation and declared as ‘green energy’ zones, have enough renewable energy sources,’ Aliyev emphasized.

At the same time, he pointed to the ‘slanderous campaign launched in some media structures’ to ‘tarnish Azerbaijan's image’.

‘These attempts are in vain and will not keep us from fulfilling our noble mission to fight the negative consequences of climate change,’ Aliyev's address said.

At COP29 in Baku, it is important to support the consensus reached at the previous conference in the UAE, and in particular, on accumulating and using annually USD 1 trillion to address climate problems of developing and especially island states, Mukhtar Babayev, COP29 President-designate, Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources of Azerbaijan, said at the opening of Pre-COP29.

According to him, discussions within the framework of Pre-COP29 will help to make progress on such important issues as:  ‘New Collective Quantitative Objective’; clarification of issues on the formation of an international Loss and Damage Response Fund; the Green Climate Fund, and others.

‘Climate finance will be among the main issues at the consultations, Pre-COP and during COP29 itself,’ Babayev said.

National plans for climate commitments, which will be submitted by February 2025, will identify real steps to reduce greenhouse and non-greenhouse gas emissions.

‘We believe that all political differences should be put aside for the sake of a bright climate future,’ Babayev said, expressing confidence that ’this will be supported by all COP29 participants.’

Financing is one of the most important elements in the fight against climate change, said Simon Steele, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

At COP29, a new collective climate finance target should provide the means to realize the consensus reached in the UAE, UAE Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology and CEO of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) Sultan bin Ahmed Al Jaber said.

‘We must ensure that funds are allocated to the most vulnerable population to help them build climate resilience and recover,’ he said.

UN Under-Secretary-General Amina Jane Mohammed said there was a need to halt further temperature rises.

‘Further temperature rise could lead to global disasters. We must close the financial gap by raising the voices of developing countries and international financial institutions. COP29 must translate claims and commitments into results,’ she said.