Baku Climate Action Week focuses on business ahead of COP29

The Baku Climate Action Week kicked off in Azerbaijan’s capital of Baku with governments, businesses and climate activists meeting to prepare and address the issues featured in the COP19 UN summit in November.

The week long event, which runs from 30 September to 4 October aims to bring together a diverse range of policymakers, private sector leaders, sustainability experts and civil society representatives.

Representatives from Azerbaijan are pushing for more climate finance as part of the Paris Agreement, which was signed in 2015 by world leaders aiming to prevent global temperatures from rising more than 1.5C.

“That is really for us, make or break issue, because without finance, climate finance and new finance, all the entire global climate architecture may not be what we see today. So for us, finance is really what keeps [the] Paris agreement together,” said Elnur Soltanov, Chief Executive Officer of COP29, Azerbaijan’s Deputy Minister of Energy.

Panelists include workers in the fossil fuel industry, such as British Petroleum and the Azerbaijan state oil company, with organisers saying they wanted to bring a diverse set of people to the table.

“Unless we make climate action pay and profitable, we are going to be facing a lot of difficulties in terms of fighting and tackling climate crisis,” Soltanov said.

This year’s summit follows another record-breaking summer and autumn of heatwaves and devastating storms.

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