Baku, Nov 11 (Representative) The 29th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP29) will start on Monday in Baku, and about 80 heads of state and government will take part in it. The event will be attended, in particular, by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, European Council President Charles Michel, Secretary of State of the Holy See Cardinal Pietro Parolin. Russia will be represented at this event by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin. COP29 is one of the most important platforms where global climate policy will be discussed. Participating countries will hold talks on reducing the effects of climate change and accelerating the energy transition. COP29 is being positioned as a “financial COP” as countries will be given a new global target for climate finance. As the crisis deepens, the actual amount of climate finance currently needed by developing countries is estimated to be between $500 billion and $1 trillion per year. According to the conference’s organizing committee, one of the key initiatives on the COP29 agenda is the creation of a Climate Finance Action Fund.
“This fund is expected to play an important role in addressing the existing gaps in climate finance,” the COP29 organizing committee said in a response to a request from RIA Novosti. Earlier, Azerbaijani Deputy Energy Minister and COP 29 CEO Elnur Soltanov said that Baku had sent invitations to all countries, including Armenia, to participate. Recently, Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Vahan Kostanyan told a briefing for journalists that Yerevan had not yet decided whether to participate in the COP29 conference, which would be held in Baku. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev noted back in the summer of this year that holding this conference would be “another great success for the country and the people.” Thanks to the COP, “everyone in the world will see once again” that the agenda of oil and gas Azerbaijan is linked to green energy, the president said. In connection with the climate summit in Azerbaijan, the authorities postponed the date of parliamentary elections scheduled for November 2024. As a result, they were held a month earlier, in September. Earlier, the COP was held in the United Arab Emirates (2023), Egypt (2022) and Scotland (2021).