It’s hard not be sceptical when COP29 was first announced to be in Baku, capital of Azerbiajan – a country known for it’s dependence on oil, called the ‘Black City’ from the smoke and soot of the factories and refineries. It was made worse by hints of oil deals happening, and even within the opening speech byAzerbiajan President Ilham Aliye calling oil a ‘gift of the gods’.
The President of COP29 Mukhtar Babayev has worked in various roles for the Azerbaijan state-owned oil company SOCAR since the 1990s, also acts as Azerbiajani Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources and in his COP29 opening speech identifies the urgency, accepting that we could be looking at 3 degrees of warming.
COP 29 may be ‘all talk’ and ‘no longer fit for purpose‘, but there is a change in what they are talking about – not just justifying the need for action, but that finally the link between economic sense and climate action is being recognised (if less acted on). Where catastophes don’t seem to drive change, ‘economic sense’ may just be the tipping arguement to drive ‘world economies’ to at least move away from the cliff edge. Topics so far have included:
- Climate action in agriculture is essential to ensure available and affordable food for all
- “Transformational NDCs are not optional – they are opportunities no country can miss”: Simon Stiell
- Decarbonizing the transport sector can unlock more jobs, better health and sustainable growth
- National Adaptation Plans: key to unleash the transformative power of resilience & protect communities and economies
- A reminder of the need to triple renewable energy & double energy efficiency
- Exploring the economic opportunities of net-zero transitions
- Unlocking the vast benefits of bold climate action: NDC events at COP29
The annual COPs may not yet inspire much ‘hope’ in terms of actions – personal action may feel enough, but bringing people together is needed, and if there is a grain of hope at COPs that’s great, but there is also hope in meeting the genuinely inspiring campaigners on the ground at the Global Day of Action, and in the workshops with young people leading to it.
