Azerbaijan to host pre-COP29 conference focused on climate action

Azerbaijan’s capital Baku will host the UN Preliminary Climate Change Conference 2024 (Pre-COP29) on October 10-11.

The conference is themed "Enhancing Ambition and Ensuring Action", the event organisers said, Caliber.Az reports via local media.

The opening ceremony will feature prominent attendees, including COP29 President-Designate Mukhtar Babayev, COP28 President Sultan Al Jaber; Deputy Secretary-General of the UN Amina J. Mohammed, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Simon Stiell, and Chair of the UNFCCC’s Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) Nabeel Munir.

Panel discussions will focus on strategies to achieve successful outcomes for COP29. The event will take place over two days at the Heydar Aliyev Centre.

The 29th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP29) will be held in Azerbaijan this November. This decision was made at the COP28 plenary session in Dubai on December 11, 2023. 

During two weeks, Baku will become a global hub, welcoming around 70,000 to 80,000 international guests. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is an agreement signed at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992, aimed at preventing dangerous human interference with the climate system. 

The abbreviation COP means "Conference of the Parties" and refers to the highest decision-making body responsible for overseeing the implementation of the UNFCCC. The Convention has 198 member states. Unless otherwise decided by the parties, the COP is held annually. The first COP event was held in Berlin in March 1995, and its secretariat is based in Bonn.

By Naila Huseynova