Official: Baku Climate Action Week brings together around 2,500 participants

Around 2,500 participants are attending Baku Climate Action Week 2026 (BCAW 2026), Azerbaijani Presidential Representative for Climate Issues Mukhtar Babayev said at the event's opening on September 7.

Babayev highlighted the significance of holding the two climate events in parallel, stressing that the format reflects Azerbaijan’s continued commitment to advancing the outcomes of COP29, Caliber.Az reports.

“We are grateful to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan and the UNFCCC Secretariat for their close cooperation and dedicated work in bringing Climate Week 4th to Baku to Azerbaijan. Together, these two platforms have brought around 2500 participants to Baku this week. Together, hosting them in parallel is not a coincidence. It reflects the continuity of Azerbaijan's climate policy and our commitment to carry the momentum of COP 29 forward from negotiations to implementation and from commitments to practical actions,” Babayev noted.

He noted that recent assessments warn that exceeding the 1.5-degree warming threshold is becoming increasingly inevitable, while emphasising that every fraction of a degree matters.

“Heat, droughts, floods, wildfires, water stress, growing pressure on food systems, health and infrastructure. Climate change is no longer something people experience through scientific reports and future projections. We see it, we feel it, and increasingly we pay for it for the most vulnerable countries, especially small island developing states and the least developed countries. The stakes are even higher. A single disaster can destroy homes, infrastructure and years of development in a matter of hours,” he stressed.

According to the minister, ahead of COP31, an Azerbaijani delegation will visit Tuvalu and several other Pacific islands as part of the Pre-COP process to hear directly about their realities and priorities.

“For them, adaptation is about protecting lives, livelihoods and the future of entire communities. Recent disasters affecting communities in Nepal and China, as well as other parts of the world, remind us once again of the growing human and economic cost of extreme events,” Babaev said.

He noted that nearly 12,000 weather-, climate- and water-related disasters over the past decades have claimed more than 2 million lives and caused economic losses exceeding $4.3 trillion.

Against this backdrop, Babaev said developing countries will need more than $300 billion annually for adaptation by 2035, while international financial flows remain only a small fraction of what is required. At the same time, global military spending is approaching $3 trillion a year, although every dollar invested in resilient infrastructure can generate around $4 in benefits.

By Jeyhun Aghazada