Climate summit COP29 has kicked off in Baku, Azerbaijan. The historic conference is addressing the need for increased climate collaboration and rise of extreme climate events across the world, particularly the ‘Global South’.
The venue for the summit is a huge, labyrinth-like temporary structure at Baku Olympic Stadium – a slightly confusing name for a location that has never hosted an Olympic event. Programme manager at nonprofit Oil Change International Collin Rees, who has attended 10 previous COP meetings, commented that the venue is “one of the best I’ve seen at COP. “There’s actually food available, it’s well-laid out, and there’s actually enough space to work,” he noted, “which is not always the case.”
The conversations are even more dramatic than the location in Azerbaijan’s capital. Executive director of Climate Action Network Tasneem Essop was heard calling for the “down payment of a very large debt – a down payment of $5tn [per year].” Essop continued: “We know the debt is much larger, but $5tn is what we come here to demand.”
Making his proclamation, the climate activist was wearing a lanyard with the words “Global North, pay up!! $5 trillion!” According to Essop and his collaborators, the rich nations of the ‘Global North’ prospered by the burning of fossil fuels and now need to pay back a debt to poorer nations who suffer climate events like heatwaves, floods and storms fuelled by their industrial progress.
Mukhtar Babayev, the summit’s president-elect, called the event a “moment of truth”: “Colleagues, we are on a road to ruin,” he announced. “Cop29 is a moment of truth for the Paris Agreement. It will test our commitment to the multilateral climate system. We must now demonstrate that we are prepared to meet the goals we have set ourselves.
The president of COP28 Sultan Al Jaber offered some warm words for the summit: “We accomplished what many thought was impossible … History will judge us by our actions, not by our words.” Critics are unhappy with Al Jaber’s presence at the summit, given his position as CEO of UAE national oil company Adnoc. The UAE’s national pledges are rated as “critically insufficient” by Climate Action Tracker.
