By Gary Cuneen, Seven Generations Ahead

November 11, 2024

While attending COP UN Climate Summits has multiple layers of experience including hope, excitement, disillusionment and disappointment, for Seven Generations Ahead it is always a pinnacle event to watch our youth as they enter the venue for the first time (Baku, Azerbaijan’s Olympic Stadium this year) and get their badges as official Observer Organization Youth Delegates. The issue of climate change is one they are passionate about and for them the experience of being with 80,000 people from close to 200 countries sharing their passion and commitment to resolve the climate crisis becomes a life-changing event. Our five youth this year (Poppy, Chloe, Carissa, Kola and Elora) from across the Chicago area have already immersed themselves in learning about key climate-related issues (COP29 goals and priorities; climate refugees and migration; soil health; and the focus of countries including Turkey, Thailand and China to name a few) and have already engaged country delegates, advocacy organizations and youth and the media including an interview on a local Azerbaijan television station. 

Last year’s COP28 President Sultan Al Jaber opened remarks today emphasizing that we should let positivity prevail during COP29 this year and that “we are what we do and not what we say.” COP29’s president designee was officially sworn in – H. E. Mukhtar Babayez, Minister of Ecology and Resources for the Republic of Azerbaijan – who emphasized in his welcome address that the world is headed toward a 3 degree Celsius increase in global temperature from pre-industrial levels (despite scientific consensus that we need to stay with a 1.5 degree Celsius increase) and that this increase would be catastrophic. He alluded to staggering climate change-induced weather events that this year alone have killed, injured and displaced millions of people, and that people are “suffering in the shadows and dying in the dark.” Climate Finance will be a big topic this year, which needs to be modernized, increased and accelerated.. Other goals Mr. Babayez alluded to include:

  • – Ratifying Article 6 – the International Carbon Trading Market
  • – Turning Loss & Damage pledge commitments (supporting developing countries most impacted by high GHG-emitting developed countries) into contributions
  • – The sharing of new technology development 
  • – 6x the amount of energy storage capacity that currently exists by 2030
  • – Climate change mitigation focus related to energy, food, transportation, soil health, waste reduction and education for every country

In closing Mr. Babayez stated that “We must do today what yesterday we thought was impossible…and that Azerbaijan through COP29 can build a bridge but everyone must walk across it…in fact we need to start running”. UNFCCC Executive Secretary Simon Stiell, who has become one of the most vocal and pointed orators at COP summits, emphasized that new climate finance goals must be agreed upon and implemented rapidly, and that we should “…dispense with the idea that climate finance is charity – in fact it is in the self-interest of every country on the planet.”