The 2024 UN Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC COP29), held in November in Baku, Azerbaijan, marked a critical moment in the global climate agenda. As the world navigates intensifying environmental challenges, the summit brought together leaders, negotiators, and experts to push forward commitments on climate finance, adaptation, and mitigation.
At the center of these efforts was Mukhtar Babayev, COP29 president and Special Representative of the President of Azerbaijan for Climate Issues, whose supervision of the process has been defined by a focus on unity, ambition, and practical implementation.
In the lead-up to COP30 set to take place in Brazil, Babayev visited Addis Ababa to participate in the Second African Climate Summit. He underscored the importance of Africa’s role in the climate conversation, both as a region disproportionately affected by climate impacts and as a continent with vast potential for clean energy transformation. In his engagements, he urged nations to accelerate investment in climate solutions, strengthen multilateral cooperation, and ensure that promises made in previous summits translate into tangible action.
With a career rooted in environmental stewardship and a clear vision for collaborative action during his August 2025 visit, Babayev sat down with The Reporter’s Sisay Sahlu and discussed the state of global climate negotiations. The conversation explored the progress achieved since COP29, the pressing challenges that remain, and the strategic priorities shaping the road to COP30. From climate finance to the role of the private sector, Babayev offered open insights into the opportunities and obstacles facing the international community. EXCERPTS:
The Reporter: Brazil is preparing to host COP30. The UN climate summit has been taking place annually for three decades. What has been achieved in that time? Climate financing remains a key unresolved issue. What is your take on this?
Mukhtar Babayev: When we speak about climate change and what the impact of climate change is for the developing world, to the African continent, and how we can manage it, we can at least to do our best from the COP presidency’s point of view to assist the developing world in the fight against climate change. We’ve made a lot of changes in our understanding of how to move in the year since COP29 because there are a lot of geopolitical changes now in the world.
And from the beginning, the previous COPs adopted a lot of very important decisions for climate change, especially on how people need to fight climate change and how countries need to support this multilateral process because it is so important now to support multilateral approaches. Unfortunately, new challenges in the world have caused a little turbulence in this understanding. For us, it’s very important to have all countries on board, all countries to be together to continue the climate agenda.
A lot of big and very positive decisions were made during previous COPs, but unfortunately, the performance or how we perform these obligations, how we perform these decisions is a big question. Unfortunately, if we go to history and look at how many decisions were adopted and how they were implemented, we will see, unfortunately, a not-so-attractive picture. Most of the decisions were not performed or not implemented, not completed, and it is another very important period for us to hold on and to call the countries to perform these obligations, to prevent any regression.
It is so important now to be here, to be in Addis, to be in Africa, which has less emissions than other parts of the world, but also big potential. We need to think about how to transition or to move this potential to have more access for electricity, more development, more prosperity, and at the same time to unite the continent and the countries around the clean energy and possible green ideas on the continent. That’s why we are here in Addis, so that we can discuss with our partners about what we can do together.
Recently, many have expressed concern over the actions of the developed world, particularly regarding the delivery of their financial pledges. At the same time, multilateralism appears to be under pressure and is failing to resolve global issues as effectively hoped. This has become especially evident since President Trump came to power, when the dynamics seemed to shift. How is this situation affecting the fight against climate change?
I don’t want to think that the multilateral process is failing, but I think it is under huge pressure. You are right. [There has been] a lot of turbulence after the different approaches from the different countries, especially, as you mentioned, the United States position regarding the withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and possible other geopolitical factors. Yes, we are under a lot of pressure. And this pressure is not only that the countries cannot agree regarding very tangible and very important targets. But now we are talking about climate finance, about how to finance green energy, how to finance development on the continent, but we need big financial resources for that. The situation has changed a little bit from last year and previous years.
If you see that, if you look at the picture of the financial resources scheme or possible increasing or restructuring, we see that today the world is paying more for military; for defense. NATO countries have decided to increase financial investment in the military, for defense, to five percent of GDP. It is billions of dollars.
Last year, we decided in Baku to contribute annually 300 billion dollars for development from donors. This is now under big pressure and the performance is under big pressure, because countries, especially donor countries, need to decide how to accumulate this money and correctly allocate for the strategic targets.
In our understanding, COP29’s position is to prevent possible regression from the decisions made in Baku last year. And unfortunately we understand there is only one pocket. If countries decide to allocate more towards defense issues, it means that climate finance is possibly under pressure.
And it’s risky for non-performance of the obligations made in Baku. That’s why now, together with the COP30 team, we are working very closely to talk with the donor countries, to international financial institutions, Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs), to the private sector, to be ambitious, to be strong in the decisions made in 2024.
The issue of climate change has been at the center of global discussion, perhaps more than any other topic. Yet countries and political leaders continue to prioritize building strong defenses and allocating huge budgets to military spending, despite the equally urgent crisis of worsening climate impacts. We are witnessing severe drought in the Horn of Africa, devastating floods in Pakistan, India, the United States, and many other nations, wildfires in North America and Europe, and increasingly hotter, drier seasons with rising temperatures worldwide. Can we truly say the world is as concerned about climate change as it is about defense and military preparedness, and that it is investing in climate action at the same scale? Why are countries failing to meet their climate commitments? Is the reason primarily political, economic, or both?
No, I think a lot of geopolitical factors now play an important role. And more and more conflicts, more and more wars on the planet. If you compare the last years, you will see that this year is a peak of conflicts, peak of wars.
And on one hand, we understand that the country is trying to protect themselves from these risks, geopolitical risks, from the wars, from the conflicts. But at the same time, the climate change issues, climate change impacts are growing more and more important and more and more risks are coming to the map. And it is so important for us, in this position, to have all the countries be more ambitious and confirm the ambitions demonstrated in past years.
We have very good results from the previous COPs, especially regarding energy transition, energy efficiency, alternative energy sources, and climate finance, Article 6, the decision made in Baku, carbon market and others.
We have a lot of things, a lot of decisions made. Now is the time for implementation.
What actions are needed?
It is time to act now. And as I mentioned, from previous COPs, a lot of decisions were made. This year is the year of implementation. And we need to think about how to build this strategy of performance, strategy of implementation. And each country needs to perform their obligations. When we are talking about multilateralism, sometimes we misunderstand what each country needs to do. Together we can move. Each country has its own role. And now it is very important that each country needs to understand what they need to do, at least to contribute to the whole process.
The United States has been a major international financier in the fight against climate change. However, under the leadership of President Donald Trump, the US withdrew from the Paris Agreement. What has been the impact of this decision, and how do you evaluate its overall effect?
Now we are working together with our Brazilian friends, hosting COP30. We have started to work on the Baku-Belém roadmap to increase climate finance to 1.3 trillion dollars a year by 2035. We need to build this roadmap and to build this picture of how the contributors will participate, how to invite more and more actors to the climate finance process. And in this case, we are looking not only at public sources from donor countries, but also expectations from the private sector.
And here, you are absolutely right that the US is a big country, a big emitter [of greenhouse gases], and at the same time a big source of financing. We need to consider other sources. We need to think about what will happen if the US withdraws; the system will stop.
We need to think about the other resources we can invite to the process of finance. And in this case, the private sector is a main source of possible financial resources.
Apart from external financing sources, how are domestic financial resources being mobilized in the developing world both at the government level and within the private sector?
During the forum here in Addis Ababa, we discussed this issue with the different ministers. A lot of regional programs could be developed and performed in Africa. I think it is a very good chance for the continent to perform the regional projects, not only country by country, but separately.
Potentially, it will provide more efficiency, something like synergy. An investment of one dollar will be more efficient. It is a very good time to cooperate on the basis of good projects. But international support is very important in this case, from the capacity-building point of view, and economic, expert, and financial support. It is not possible to consider all these processes separately. We need to think about how to make it into one process for maximum efficiency.
How are climate experts and leaders like you working with multinational companies and industries, particularly those responsible for the largest share of global greenhouse gas emissions, to push for change and foster cooperation?
We have had chances to meet with hundreds of partners, hundreds of companies from all over the world during our [Azerbaijan’s] term of presidency. We have very good partners from the private sector. A lot of big companies have adopted the green policy and green strategy in their development programs for many, many years.
And they are very strong in their strategy to invest in the green transition to clean energy. They are very strong in their policy and they support a lot of processes started in previous years. And they possibly postpone some programs, but the strategy is the same to develop the green programs, green technologies, clean energy and other green transition issues.
Regarding the three essential strategies for addressing the impacts of climate change: mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage, how is the African continent responding?
African countries are very vulnerable, and we have witnessed a lot of disasters, a lot of climate change impacts on the continent. It is very important to assist the countries to reconstruct, to rehabilitate, to at least to finance or to compensate part of the expenses coming from the climate change impacts and disasters. A loss and damage fund was created in 2022 in Sharm el-Sheikh and now in Baku we have already adopted necessity regulations. All programs have been confirmed by the communities, and this fund is already operationalized.
Yesterday, I met with the executive director of the fund and we discussed how to implement the projects and requests coming from different countries. They have built very good contact with the possible recipients, and they will start to consider this financial support to the countries. I think this work will be very transparent. I understand that the money is not enough. There we need to call on all possible partners, all possible donors to increase their contributions to the loss and damage fund.
Because huge damages are coming from climate change now and already the accumulated financial resources in the fund are not enough to compensate even a little part of this damage. That’s why we need to work with the possible countries, partners, and private sector and all possible other sources to increase our financial resources in loss and damage.
Ethiopia recently hosted the Second African Climate Summit. What is your view on Ethiopia’s role in advancing solutions to the climate crisis?
We are here for the second African climate summit. During each visit, we see real changes in the region. And Ethiopia is a leader in the continent on climate issues, in clean energy transition, and clean energy programs. I think Ethiopia, Kenya and other countries are leaders in their respective regions. That’s why we hope that this second climate forum in Addis will play a big role in consolidating these activities around Ethiopia and other countries.
Ethiopian government officials have expressed interest in hosting one of the upcoming COP meetings. What is your position on this, and how would you support Ethiopia’s bid?
Ethiopia is the candidate for COP 32. I think Ethiopia has very good chances to be the host country for COP32, but the continent will decide. But I think in the face of Ethiopia, today the African continent, has a very good leader in the fight against climate change.
What kind of support can be expected from you?
We have worked a lot with the Ethiopian government, NGOs, and the private sector, and we can use our experience in this process to at least cooperate and support the Ethiopian teams to do it.
On the journey toward transitioning to renewable energy, how do you assess the progress in Africa as a whole, and in Ethiopia in particular? How is this transition unfolding?
There is big potential in Ethiopia in energy projects, and during the forum a lot of information was delivered to the community regarding the new renewable, new alternative renewable energy sources development in the region and especially in Ethiopia. Ethiopia is a source of energy for itself and for other countries also. That’s why today Ethiopia is playing a bigger role in the region as a leader in clean energy and possible green projects on the continent.
