WASHINGTON (AP) — The man who will lead climate talks at the United Nations next November sees the negotiations as a key link in international efforts to curb pollution. global warming.
The conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, must be based on last year’s successful deal to move away from fossil fuels, said Mukhtar Babayev, Azerbaijan’s environment minister who will chair the conference of talks known as COP29 this fall. And this fall’s meeting should help pave the way for countries to come together in 2025 on strengthened plans to combat heat-trapping gases, Babayev said.
Baku is the ideal place to find common ground on how rich countries can provide financial aid to poorer countries that generally do not contribute as much to warming but suffer more from climate change, Babayev said in a statement. 30-minute interview with the Associated Press during the press conference. Embassy of Azerbaijan in Washington.
“We must consider all possible actions or activities to bring the parties closer to each other,” Babayev said. “We see Baku as a bridge between the developing and developed world. »
But it is a bridge under construction.
Most past climate negotiations – called Conferences of the Parties or COPs – have required years of planning. But due to the geopolitics of Eastern Europe, world leaders could not agree well in advance on where COP29 would take place. This is essential because the host country holds the presidency and sets the agenda.
Baku was chosen last Decemberwith its selection as part of the peace agreement between warring Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Babayev will not officially take charge of the negotiations until November 11, the date of the opening of COP29 in Baku. The success of climate negotiations often depends on months or years of work by presidents-designate such as Babayev, who travel and work to forge the skeleton of agreements and alliances.
“We only had 10 months to prepare,” Babayev said. Azerbaijan recently chose a venue, the large Olympic stadium in Baku, to try to accommodate the approximately 85,000 people who attend these conferences. “A lot of things are unclear at the moment but I think that by this year everything will be more or less clear.”
Babayev said his team continues to gather information, meet people and make connections, but has not yet set specific goals for the conference.
But there is an overall goal: more financial help to enable developing countries to transition to cleaner energy systems and cope with the additional heat, floods, storms and droughts made worse by climate change.
“The agenda is to invite all donors to at least increase their contribution to developing countries,” Babayev said. “Because with climate change, we are faced with all these impacts on a daily basis. »
Babayev pointed outside this week to Washington’s sunny, muggy weather, which was 78 degrees (25.6 degrees Celsius), 8 degrees (4.4 degrees Celsius) warmer than normal. He said Baku currently had similar temperatures, also well above normal. Look at Dubai, which hosted climate talks last year, and its devastating floods this weekwhich Kazakhstan and other countries also felt, he said.
Babaev emphasized in early February in Baku where the temperature reached a record 24 degrees Celsius (75 degrees Fahrenheit), which exceeded February’s old record by 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit): “This is not normal. This is not normal.”
Babayev, 56, was in Washington for the World Bank Spring Meetings, the International Monetary Fund and other powerful financial institutions. He and his team mainly collected information. UN Climate Secretary Simon Stiell last week called on these financial institutions to make radical changes, including debt relief for poor countries, to help combat warming and its impacts.
But Babayev is interested in another group: the private sector of banks, investment funds, etc.
“We call on the private sector to be very active and responsible about this and to be ready not to delay offers, proposals for climate financing,” Babayev said.
Like the current The President of the COP, Sultan al-Jaber of Dubai, who is the CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, Babayev worked for many years in Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil company. Activists and academics have long denounced the influence of the oil industry – one of the main sources of heat transfer gas – in these UN negotiations and this intensified last year when it was led by an oil tanker. But al Jaber and Babayev said their industry connections are more helpful in bringing companies to the table and moving things forward.
Babayev said he also hoped that Baku — where the world’s first oil fields were developed in 1846 and Azerbaijan dominated world oil production in 1899 – can show how this “oil and gas country of the past” can show the world a green path through its efforts to increase renewable energy, particularly wind power .
But over the past ten years, Azerbaijan has increased its carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels by 13%, according to data from scientists at Global Carbon Project.
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