Azerbaijan climate talks to focus on enhancing ambition, enabling action amid rising temperature

As temperatures continue to break records almost as quickly as making them, and virtually every country experiencing extreme and unusual weather events, Azerbaijan as hosts of the annual UN climate talks are focusing on enhancing ambition and enabling action. In an 11-page letter, Azerbaijan’s Minister for Ecology and Natural Resources and COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev lays out the Azerbaijani presidency’s vision, priorities and plans for the climate talks to be held in Baku in November. In his first formal letter to governments as COP29 President, Babayev called on all governments and stakeholders to step up not just with promises of more ambitious climate action but with means to implement and enable transitioning ambition to action.

Elucidating on Azerbaijan’s vision of the twin mutually reinforcing pillars of enhancing ambition and enabling action, Babayev identified an agreement on the amount of money that developed countries will make available to developing countries each year to tackle climate change as COP 29 presidency’s “top negotiating priority”. At the 2015 climate meet in Paris, countries agreed to set a new climate finance target replacing the $100 billion a year by 2025.

Acknowledging the uncertainty arising from the record number of national elections being held this year, particularly in major economies, and the geopolitical tensions dominating the world, the Azerbaijani minister stressed that these challenges “must not distract from the imperative to collaborate” in addressing the “greatest transnational challenge” confronting humanity.

Elucidating on Azerbaijan’s vision for COP29, Babayev described “enhancing ambition, enabling action” as the two mutually reinforcing pillars—“progress on each sends a strong signal in support of the other”.

Enhancing ambition will require countries to take climate action that incorporates the outcomes of the global stocktake and the roadmap agreed to in Dubai last year. Azerbaijan has called on all countries to “signal their determination to act with ambition” through their domestic climate plans—Nationally Determined Contributions and National Adaptation Plans—and the submission of the Biennial Transparency Reports.

The COP29 president stressed that the enhanced ambition must be enabled by action, and that requires putting in place the means of implementation and support – finance, technology and capacity building – and the wider enabling conditions at a national, regional and global level spanning across all stakeholders. This will require an annual climate finance goal, or the new collective quantified goal (NCQG) as it is known in the UN climate parlance, that is “adequate to the urgency and scale of the problem, taking into account the needs and priorities of developing countries.” Finalising the rules for operationalising carbon markets or Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, “long overdue priority” is another goal for enabling action. Strengthening multilateral financial institutions and climate funds will also be an important contribution to creating the international enabling environment for success, and we are working towards fully mobilising the private sector and philanthropy for climate action,” wrote Babayev. The COP29 has also called on countries to act swiftly on loss and damage including finalising decisions on the Loss and Damage Fund. “COP29 will be essential to delivering the means of implementation and support, and ensuring that everyone reaches for the highest possible ambition reflecting equity and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in the light of different national circumstances,” the letter states.Calling on all countries to work together, Babayev wrote, “we have to be steadfast in our determination to fulfil past promises, deliver on our mandates, and build on the process so that it can address the urgency and scale of the crisis.”

The COP29 president’s message that climate change is “not a future risk but a real and present danger to billions” was reiterated by UN climate chief Simon Stiell.

In a message from the Caribbean island of Carriacou, Grenada that was “totally destroyed” by Hurricane Beryl, the earliest category five storm on record in the Atlantic, Stiell said “from the largest and most developed nation to the smallest and most vulnerable. Whether it’s my home island of Carriacou, the United States, India, Kenya or any country on earth – what happens in the next three months, the next three years to the families still living under a tarpaulin, still in debt to the bank for a home that no longer stands, as the next brutal storm, flood or wildfire approaches, fueled by the climate crisis. ”

The UN climate chief, who served as a senior minister in the Grenada government till 2022, called on governments to prioritise climate action, “if governments everywhere don’t step up, every economy and 8 billion people will be facing this blunt force trauma head on, on a continuous basis”.