"I Will Be At The COP":  John Kerry On Azerbaijan's Role In Climate Action, Expectations From COP29, Human Rights

Former Secretary Of State John Kerry might have officially stepped down as President Joe Biden's first Climate Envoy, but he isn’t going anywhere... "I will be at the COP...  I’ve talked to President [ilham] Aliyev and talked about some of [the] things we can help with, and as a private citizen I still expect to be deeply involved," Secretary Kerry announced on Tuesday, TURAN's Washington correspondent reports.

Speaking to reporters at the State Department's Washington Foreign Press Center, the top U.S. climate negotiator, who recently decided to hand over as climate envoy to another veteran White House adviser John Podesta, made it clear that he would still be committed to the effort to tackle global warming.

"In November of 2020, when President-elect Biden called me about this job, he was, at the time, determined to earn back with appropriate humility America’s credibility, and to work with all countries – the world’s largest emitters particularly – in order to raise ambition and deal with this global crisis," he recalled.

Currently, he said, 7 million people are dying around the world every year because of pollution, because of bad air quality. "That’s greenhouse gas pollution, folks. We know what we have to do. It’s the burning of fossil fuel and not capturing it, the emissions, that is the problem," the veteran diplomat said.

He went on to add, "We don’t need a new algorithm defined; we don’t need a rocket scientist to define what’s the problem. We know what the problem is; it’s simple. It’s us, the choices we make about how we light our homes, our factories, power our vehicles, and so forth.  And we have new technologies available now to avoid this crisis if we choose to do so."

When asked by TURAN's correspondent what the good outcome for the upcoming Baku summit would look like, Kerry said, the expectations of the next COP are actually defined already to some degree by the UAE Consensus, a historic agreement to transition away from fossil fuels.

He went on to elaborate, "The next COP is going to be largely focused on finance – not exclusively, but finance will be the big challenge.  Because the 100 billion annual donation language has expired, will expire, so now we need the successor on 100 billion.  And the question will be:  Will the donor base to that process grow?  Will other countries that could be capable of providing more income and more donation – will they, in fact, step up and help to accelerate this transition?"

Secondly, he said, there will obviously be further expectations and considerations regarding the new impact fund, the fund that’s been created to try to deal with the negative impacts and was stood up, appropriately, and everybody agreed to what it should be in the UAE Consensus.  "And now that has to be given life even further in Baku," he emphasized.

Kerry also added that the COP needs to embrace the full breadth of the UAE Consensus and make sure that that is really being implemented by countries.

"And then finally, new NDCs )national determined contributions)  are due next February, one year from now. You don’t begin to work on those when you get to Baku.  You have to be working on those now so people can really begin to realize that you’re ready to take this where it needs to go coming February of next year with the new NDCs.  And that’s really critical for everybody. Those are the key things," he concluded.

TURAN also asked Secretary Kerry about growing concerns over the host country Azerbaijan's human rights records.  "Every country has high expectations about how people will be treated, and the United States raises those issues consistently in our diplomacy," he said in response.

"And I’m sure that we and other countries will continue to do as much as we can to create reality in the words “fair, orderly, and equitable.”  Those are very important concepts to be applied to how people will be treated," he concluded.