COP29 SUMMIT: Prof Yunus leaves for Azerbaijan today

Chief Adviser Prof Muhammad Yunus will be leaving for Baku, Azerbaijan, today to attend the UN’s biggest climate conference, COP29, which is seen as a pivotal opportunity to accelerate action to tackle the ongoing climate crisis.

Global leaders and diplomats from across the world will descend on the capital Baku for the annual climate summit to discuss how to avoid increasing threats from climate change in a place that was one of the birthplaces of the oil industry.

Prof Yunus will lead a small delegation and attend more than 10 high-level events that will be addressed by global leaders from around 200 countries.

The 29th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP29) will be held from November 11-22.

However, Prof Yunus will attend the world leaders’ summit scheduled for November 12-13 and will return home on November 14.

Foreign Minister Md Touhid Hossain, who is now visiting Saudi Arabia, will be joining the Bangladesh delegation from there.

“We will be focusing on our priorities that include net zero emission, climate financing, loss and Damage fund, climate adaptation, technology for renewable energy, etc,” a foreign ministry official told this correspondent yesterday.

Environment, Forest and Climate Change Adviser Syeda Rizwana Hasan, who will be joining the summit on November 17, stressed the urgent need for global unity in tackling climate change.

Rizwana will urge developed countries to fulfil their climate finance commitments and provide technological support to nations most vulnerable to climate impacts.

“It’s time that developed nations uphold their commitments to support the most affected countries,” she told UNB, highlighting the disproportionate challenges faced by vulnerable nations like Bangladesh.

With global temperatures hitting record highs, and extreme weather events affecting people around the globe, COP29 will bring together leaders from governments, businesses, and civil society to advance concrete solutions to the defining issue of our time.

A key focus of COP29 will be on finance, as trillions of dollars are required for countries to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect lives and livelihoods from the worsening impacts of climate change.

The conference will also be a key moment for countries to present their updated national climate action plans under the Paris Agreement, which are due by early 2025. If done right, these plans would limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and double as investment plans advancing the Sustainable Development Goals.

The COP29 is being held at a time when US President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team has prepared executive orders and proclamations that would withdraw the US from the Paris Climate Agreement and open up western lands for drilling and mining, reported The New York Times on Friday.

Trump, during his earlier tenure in 2020, also formally withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement, making the US the first nation in the world to do so.

Climate and international relations experts have expressed concerns that the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement that was signed in 2015 is bad news for countries like Bangladesh that remain at the forefront of the climate crisis.

Between 2000 and 2019, Bangladesh experienced 185 extreme weather events, making it the seventh most vulnerable country to climate change.

During COP15 in Copenhagen, a global fund was promised, in which developed countries were supposed to deposit $100 billion a year to help underdeveloped nations battle climate change.

Now, as COP29 is preparing to get underway, even the first $100 billion has not been raised.

A foreign ministry official said Bangladesh will strongly present the argument why more funding for Bangladesh was crucial.

“It is because the country has been facing increasing levels of climatic events that are affecting millions of people every year—call it salinity intrusion, flood, cyclones, tidal surges, or drought,” the official added.