It has been an event of sorts, for some it was a beacon of hope, while for some it was an utter failure. While people and representatives are free to make their own opinion, but every coin has two sides. In Jain philosophy there’s a concept of “Syatwad” that advocates that there could be seven different perspectives of looking at anything in this world and all of them could be correct simultaneously. Thus, everyone can have their opinion and in spite of they being ironical or event appearing to be opposite, they all can be correct and we should have the courage to accept and appreciate other’s opinions as well. We also had mixed experience during the event, but compared to COP28: Dubai, this was relatively a low-key affair. Smaller venue, lesser crowd, higher security, high restrictions, much more compact and lesser participation. But we ended up achieving much more. Starting from media interview to presentation in both the zones (Blue & Green), Exploring the third zone (innovation zone), participating in side events, interaction with academia, and corporates as well as country representatives from across the globe.
Day-1
The US elections were on top of the mind for the opening speech, with Trump’s “drill baby drill” phrase being used to create ripples in the Climate Action fraternity. But, frankly speaking, that’s just politics. The most consistent feature of the president-elect is his unpredictability. If he realises that he’s going wrong, he doesn’t mind taking a U-turn. Moreover, promising money to COP, and funding two conflicts to create war, is anyways no better for the environment anyways. So, the hope is still there, the rest is all speculation. As we said earlier, COP needs a “path & pace correction”, moving from “emission focus” to “sequestration focus”! The sooner they realize it, the better it is for the world.
Day -2
I understand that the post is delayed. I’m literally posting at the end of Day 3, but as the engagement grows, it’ll be tough to post on the same day. It’s a happening event, the visitors get divided into Blue Zone, Green Zone and side events.
The security arrangements are much tougher than COP28, even for the Green Zone, which is usually open to all public. In Dubai, even without an invitation, you could get the pass right at the gate of Green Zone, but it isn’t the same at Baku. Even if you have the invite and a confirmation number, you can’t enter the green zone until your passport details are not shared with the registration desk. So, what happens to those who are unable to join in? The side events come to rescue their travel. On 12th November, 2024, we’ve had the following side events –
1. Achieving transformative climate action through gender responsive, rights-based economic approaches
2. Transition Away from Fossil Fuels: Technology & Market - Based instruments for Net-Zero Actions
3. Innovations to maximize tropical forests’ contribution to climate change mitigation and adaptation
4. What can Migrants and Displaced Persons bring to the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage?
5. Decarbonization beyond the value chain: navigating between carbon credits and climate contributions
6. Climate Science: key take aways in 2024
7. A message from the Frozen World – the Global Impact of a Changing Cryosphere
8. Carbon Dioxide Removal: Considerations for Responsible Deployment on Land and Ocean
9. Towards real, people-led, gender just solutions
10. Raising the ambition of urban climate action through multilevel governance
11. Designing for Quality and Equity in Clean Cooking Carbon Projects
12. Sovereign Wealth Impact: Powering Finance for the SDGs
13. New Horizons in Methane-Emissions Abatement
14. Fostering Climate Adaptation and Resilience in Small Island States and Beyond
15. New Forest Economies: Subnational Government Strategies, REDD+, & Local Engagement
16. Leveraging blended finance: catalyzing sustainable investments for global impact
17. Making Climate Finance Work for Climate Action in Agriculture and Food Security
Now tell me, with so many events happenings, you meet hundreds of people, who are all sustainability professionals belonging to the same tribe. So, would you call it day utilized or wasted? So, the bottom line is, when you go with positive bent of mind, you can actually take advantage of the hurdles as well and make it and asset for yourself. That’s a learning from Day-2 of Baku.
Day -3
Very exciting day today, full of meetings, symposiums and focused discussions.
1. Key reports of the Standing Committee on Finance for COP29
2. Driving Gender-just Energy Transition through Financing and Capacity Building in the Global South
3. Trade and investment policies to advance climate ambition and sustainable development
4. Scaling up Nature Finance and Enterprise in the Amazon Basin and Beyond
5. Artificial Intelligence solutions to enable rapid scale up of Renewable Energy
6. Transformational Adaptation
7. Supporting Indigenous-Peoples led solutions to climate change and loss and damage
8. Ensuring Integrity in the Voluntary Carbon Market
9. Open access activity data and digital tools to help countries and other stakeholders meet their ETF
10. Unlocking the potential for financing methane mitigation from solid waste for the NDCs and beyond
11. Innovation Ecosystems for Climate Action: Digital Technologies, Industrial Solutions, and Governance
12. Scaling up climate action in fragile states: what are the hurdles and how to overcome them?
13. Innovative Pathways for Emission Reduction: Perspectives from NGOs, Government and Private Sector
14. Tackling Corruption: A Missing Piece in the Climate Finance Agenda
15. Fully funded, fair, fast, and feminist phase-out of fossil fuels in the United States
16. Recognizing Net Zero Ambition and Accelerating Progress
The teething troubles have been sorted out. Met some wonderful people doing great work in the environment sector from carbon capture to waste management to governance to finance. This is a platform to showcase the good work, unfortunately all people working on ground are not able to afford taking a stall here, because they’re working for saving the planet, and not making money.
Government and intergovernmental discussions happen in the Blue Zone, at least these people working on ground should get a place in the Green Zone. Or maybe create a White Zone from COP30, so that these wonderful works could be showcased and replicated across the globe. We’ve maximized the foot prints of pollution, now is the time to globalize the footprints of restoration too.
Met some good corporates from Azerbaijan, Saudi ad UAE, all keen to diversify towards NbS, which was a good surprise. In fact, even an industrial training institute was affirmative to add a course on NbS to their curriculum, which was quite unexpected. Met a few Environment Ministers from African Union too, who were keen on restoration of natural resources.
Day -4
A very happening day, full of professional, emotional, physical and mental roller-coaster rides.
The day started with a wonderful session on “Cooling the heat: Enhancing Energy Efficiency of Refrigeration and Cooling Sector”, followed by another session on “Drive climate ambition and finance”, then came a session on "Climate Finance for Fast Action", then came " Climate Technologies: Impact Stories", another on "Invest in Soil Health". Some sessions were happening parallelly too, fortunately we had a team of three. Side-by-side were also reaching out to MoEFCC to help us get through the Blue Zone badge for our session with Towards Healthy, Inclusive and Sustainable Food Systems: Agroecology, Soil Health, and Healthy Diets, organized by Coalition of Action 4 Soil Health (CA4SH), CIFOR-ICRAF, Agroecology Coalition, Youth in Agroecology and Restoration Network (YARN), The Indigenous Partnership for Agrobiodiversity and Food Sovereignty (TIP).
Also met a power company from Romania and explained our perspective of green energy, and how to make large scale solar plants and age-old hydro-power dam reservoirs more sustainable. After which we had to rush to Climate Action Innovation Hub for specialized events focused upon —Sustainable Innovation Forum 2024, Hydrogen Transition Summit and Agri-Food Systems Summit at Baku Mariott Boulevard.
The next hop was COP29 Flagship Friday Evening Event - Climate Finance & Innovation: Adaptation & Resilience, held at Ganjlik Plaza, 95 Ataturk Avenue, Baku, which was yet another experience. Wonderful people, great deliberations, interesting discussions and serious business propositions. It was organized by AIM (not Atal Innovation Mission) but Azerbaijan Innovation Markaz, something like Startup India, back home.
Finally, the business day was over after this. Had dinner at Nizami street and concluded the day.
Day -5
The day started with Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) hosted event, the second Edition of CEEW Leaders’ Dialogue, on the sidelines of COP29, held at Hyatt Regency, Baku.
The dialogue hosted thought-provoking conversations with domain experts including Dr Arunabha Ghosh, Founder-CEO, CEEW, who deliberated on Accelerating the low-carbon drive of Bharat towards Viksit Bharat, followed by an elaborate panel discussion on Trillions for billions: Setting financing for development back on track. The second panel discussed upon the subject of “One size does not fit all: Crafting bespoke national energy transition plans”. Later we had deliberation on Water matters: Valuing sustainable and resilient water infrastructure, moderate by Nitin Bassi, Senior Programme Lead – Sustainable Water, CEEW, after which we had to rush back to green zone for a presentation.
At the green zone, we had an opportunity to interact with the teams of “Viveka Company Creation Program”, “Innovation and Digital Development Agency” of Azerbaijan (an initiative of Azerbaijan Innovation Center or the Azerbaijan Innovation Markazi, inaugurated on 2nd October, 2024 to boost up the startup ecosystem in the country) and a lot of sustainability startups being nurtured by Viveka, because “Viveka Company Creation Program” is a unique program for startups that want to advance from the early stage to the MVP, i.e. the minimum viable product stage. These startups were primarily from Azerbaijan, Turkey and Kazakhstan.
The startups included precision agriculture domain to Water treatment, oil sludge treatment, irrigation with AI integration and many other sustainability domain technologies.
