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Climate finance moves to the top of the Cop29 agenda

The world is still a long way from raising the $2 trillion-plus needed annually to achieve climate goals

Cop29 climate finance Cop29
The need for billions of dollars for climate finance is set to be a major issue at Cop29 in Baku, as it was at Cop28 in Dubai

Azerbaijan has moved climate finance to the top of the agenda as it prepares to host the Cop29 summit in Baku in just five months’ time.

But the Cop presidency, and the world, has a big challenge ahead to meet the staggering cost of combatting global warming.

That was the clear message from the Shusha Global Media Forum, held in the capital of the “recovered territories” of Karabakh which have been under the control of Baku since military action against Armenian-backed forces in 2022.

The theme of the forum – the second to be held in Shusha – was “unmasking false narratives and confronting false information”. Many of the sessions focused on the threats of “fake news” and AI to international news gathering and reporting.



Some 300 journalists, media executives and academics attended the forum, with an overwhelming representation from the “Global South”, who heard calls to end “media colonialism” in the news industry.  

But the subtext, and the subject of briefings from senior officials during the two-day event, was to update global climate and energy agencies on the progress Baku has made in formulating a practical agenda for UN-sponsored Cop29.

They hope this will build on the “UAE consensus” achieved in Dubai last year, and make serious progress towards meeting the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit global warming.

In a three-hour question and answer session with media on the eve of the forum, president Ilham Aliyev confirmed the setting up of a $500 million fund to to invest in environmentally-friendly projects with an initial contribution from Socar, the state oil company. Other energy companies are invited to take part.

“We are committed to leading by example,” said Aliyev.

The fund, to be administered by a secretariat in Baku, is a relatively small but significant step towards raising the enormous financial resources needed to tackle climate change. Last year in Dubai, the “loss and damage” fund agreed several years ago finally became operational.

While some NGOs dispute that the fund has reached its $100 billion target, the OECD recently estimated that the loss and damage fund now stood at $116 billion.

But even these significant sums were put into stark contrast by Elnur Soltanov, CEO of Cop29, in a closing address to the forum. “The main issue of Cop29 will be how to increase from the $100 billion. Finance is the most important issue for us,” he said.

He cited estimates from Simon Stiell, the UN climate change executive secretary, that the developing world, excluding China, requires $2.4 trillion of investment per annum to achieve its climate change goals, both for mitigating the effects of global warming and adapting to an inevitably warmer world.

In the face of such enormous requirements, much will depend on Azerbaijan’s ability to marshal resources from the developed world, and from other hydrocarbon producing countries, in the “action agenda” of the Cop29 presidency in the run-up to November.

‘Cop of Truce’

The forum was significant in other ways too. Baku has attempted to portray Cop29 as a “Cop of Truce”, even requesting a ceasefire in hostilities in Ukraine, Gaza and other global conflicts for the two-week duration of the Cop.

Hikmet Hajiyev, foreign policy adviser to President Aliyev, revealed that Armenia had been formally invited by Azerbaijan to attend Cop. That is an achievement in itself given the lack of a peace treaty and diplomatic relations between the two countries.

“Now is the time for the government of Armenia to decide,” he said.

He also said that, with the war against Armenia over, Baku was rethinking its role in the world as a leading force within of the Non-Aligned Movement and the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation, as well as international bodies like Opec+ and the European Political Community.

Azerbaijan is leading a campaign to “decolonise” some Pacific regions that has sparked angry words with France, traditionally a backer of Armenia.  

Staging a successful global Cop gathering would be a major step towards realising these new global ambitions.

But there are still significant hurdles to overcome before Azerbaijan can claim success – and the need for billions of dollars of investment in energy transition and climate change action is at the heart of it.

Frank Kane is Editor-at-Large of AGBI and an award-winning business journalist. He acts as a consultant to the Ministry of Energy of Saudi Arabia and is a media adviser to First Abu Dhabi Bank of the UAE

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