Azerbaijan Hands Over COP Presidency to Brazil

At the opening of COP30 in Belém, COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev issued a powerful call for countries to deliver on past promises from previous COPs.

Babayev made the call as he handed over the COP Presidency to Brazil and the COP30 President, Ambassador André Corrêa do Lago, The Caspian Post reports, citing COP29.az.

The speech underscored Azerbaijan’s continued engagement as it calls for the delivery of the historic Baku Finance Goal, agreed at COP29 last year. He noted that the world had moved into “a decade that demands delivery, not debate,” and that “these were collective agreements, but delivery depends on individual acts - country by country.”

On climate finance, the President put a spotlight on three essential milestones that define the next ten years of international support for developing countries:

• Doubling adaptation finance by 2025, which was described as “urgent”;
• Tripling the outflows of the UN climate funds by 2030;
• Mobilising at least $300 billion per year by 2035.

The COP29 President also highlighted that this comes at a critical moment as countries are submitting their latest climate plans. “Countries cannot cut emissions or protect communities if they cannot count on capital”, he said.

“A changing world is no excuse for backtracking,” he added. “We already knew that the world was changing when we agreed the goal. Many used these changes to justify not going further. They cannot be used again as a reason for not meeting commitments.”

The COP29 social media channels also published a symbolic and figurative “invoice”, detailing the recent pledges.

The President warned that backtracking in the first year of implementation would “undermine the entire process.” But he also offered a positive vision ahead of the two-week summit, and noted that “by fulfilling past promises, we restore faith in the system. We prove that building more agreements is not in vain. We dismantle the distrust that we have seen too often. And we restore COP’s sense of purpose.”