COP29 Agrees International Carbon Market Standards

The following is a transcript of remarks made at a press conference on Day 2 of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP29) in Baku, Azerbaijan on 12 November 2024. Remarks are listed in order that they were made: Yalchin Rafiyev, COP29 Lead Negotiator, Simon Stiell, UN Climate Change Executive Secretary, and Nigar Arpadarai, Climate Change High-Level Champion for COP29.

Remarks from Yalchin Rafiyev, COP29 Lead Negotiator

Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends,

It is a pleasure to welcome you all here to Baku and we are excited to talk to you about our plan for COP29.

The COP President Mukhtar Babayev sends his apologies for not being able to join us this morning.

I am delighted to be joined by friends and colleagues, UNFCCC Executive Secretary, Simon Stiell, the COP29 High-Level Champion, Nigar Arpadarai…

Colleagues,

COP29 is a defining moment for multilateral climate action.

We have already made progress during the year.

But there is much to be delivered during COP29 and we have complex issues to address.

We have worked intensively over the last days and hours to ensure that we can adopt the agenda on the first day.

We have many significant priorities that the world is counting on us to deliver and we could not afford delay.

We are delighted to say that we passed this first test and we got to work.

Colleagues, yesterday we already secured critical progress on one of our key priorities – Article 6.

Last month we hosted a meeting of the supervisory body for Article 6.4 in Baku.

At that meeting, standards were proposed for how international carbon crediting projects will work.

We built support for these standards at Pre-COP and worked intensively to lay the foundations for early endorsement.

Yesterday, Parties reached consensus on the standards for Article 6.4 and a dynamic mechanism to update them.

This is a critical step towards concluding Article 6 negotiations.

This will be a game-changing tool to direct resources to the developing world and help us save up to 250 billion dollars a year when implementing our climate plans.

We are grateful to all Parties who have come to COP29 ready to show flexibility, collaborate, and reach agreement.

We are seeing an unprecedented level of enthusiasm and determination on Article 6.

Colleagues, following years of stalemate, the breakthroughs in Baku have now begun.

But there is much more to deliver.

Today and tomorrow we will host the leader-level summit.

This will be opened by the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, His Excellency, Mr. Ilham Aliyev.

It is a crucial opportunity for global leaders to speak up and step up.

The world is waiting to see them and eager to hear from them.

Leaders cannot miss this opportunity to send a strong signal of our collective commitment to confront the climate crisis.

We also need them to provide clear direction and mandates for their negotiators at COP29.

We will address mitigation with a leader-level dialogue hosted by the COP29 Presidency and the International Energy Agency.

This follows the calls to action that we have jointly published yesterday and will be an important opportunity to take them forward.

And later in the day we will co-host a summit on methane with the United States and China.

We will also host the leaders of international financial institutions.

They have a special role to mobilise climate finance and we have engaged with them throughout the year.

We are now delighted to welcome them in Baku to make an important contribution.

And we will continue to work with them and their shareholders to ensure that they continue the climate finance reform agenda.

We will also take historic steps to get the Fund for Loss and Damage up and running.

Today, we will sign the hosting, trustee and contributor agreements that will turn the pledges into concrete funding.

This will allow support to start flowing in 2025.

Ladies and gentlemen,

We are grateful for everyone who has made the effort to be here as part of this global effort.

Success does not depend on one country alone – it requires all of us.

Everyone must focus on how they can play their part to contribute to our global efforts.

We now look forward to answering your questions.

Thank you.

Remarks from Simon Stiell, UN Climate Change Executive Secretary

So firstly – let me thank you for being here. Your reporting plays a vital part of our process and what you communicate, how you articulate, what is taking place in these halls – which can often be abstract to many out there – your ability to communicate that in language that is understood is of great importance to our process.

So we have news from last night on Article 6. I’ll come back to that, but I want to start with a few broader remarks about this COP and its context.

The IEA predicts two trillion dollars will be invested in clean energy and infrastructure this year alone.

And that’s remarkable, but it’s only a fraction of the global economy. And the vast majority of it concentrates in just a few big markets.

Climate investment must flow to where it’s needed most, to save and improve lives and livelihoods of billions of people all around the world.

Enabling every country to take strong climate action is 100 per cent in all countries’ interests, even the largest and wealthiest.

Why? Because the climate crisis is fast becoming an economy-killer.

Unless all countries can slash emissions deeply, every country and every household will be hammered even harder than they currently are. We will be living in a permanent inflationary nightmare.

And this is not some far-off risk. The climate crisis is a cost-of-living crisis right now in every economy across the planet.

As climate disasters hit supply chains and food production harder each week, climate action is global inflation insurance.

So, on the NCQG I say to all nations – let’s get a good result. Billions of people cannot afford their governments to leave COP29 without having a strong outcome on finance.

And it’s not only about averting disaster, bolder climate actions are a recipe for stronger economies, more jobs and equality, less pollution, better health, and more secure energy supply.

New national climate plans – NDCs – due from next year will be vital. We’ll all be talking more about those as we go through this COP.

And the quality of those NDC submissions is of greatest importance.

So to Article 6. Last night, Parties agreed strong standards for a centralized carbon market under the UN.

There’s more work to do, but this is a good start – the product of over 10 years of work within the process.

Colleagues – you are masters of making complex things understandable, so let me say on Article 6 – this is not some bit of arcane UN bureaucracy.

When operational, these carbon markets will help countries implement their climate plans faster and cheaper, driving down emissions.

We are a long way from halving emissions this decade, but wins on carbon markets here at COP29 will help us get back in that race.

We must ensure that developing countries benefit from new flows of finance.

There is more work to do on Article 6, and the process allows for all perspectives to continue to be heard.

And there is a huge amount of work to do at the COP more broadly, to ensure it delivers the strongest of outcomes.

Many of you have been reporting on the climate implications of political events in the last weeks. I’ll just say this.

Our process is strong, it’s robust, and it will endure. After all, global cooperation is the only way humanity survives global warming. It’s only through that engagement, only through that cooperation that we’re going to get through this crisis.

And our process is delivering concrete results, even though they are not quick enough and need to accelerate.

But we have a huge amount of work to do, to ensure COP29 delivers strong outcomes again, especially on climate finance.

I thank you.

Remarks from Nigar Arpadarai, Climate Change High-Level Champion for COP29

Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests.

I would like to welcome you in Baku. Some of you that are traveling here from your countries, we are really excited to be able to work closely with you.

My role is the role of UN Climate Change High-Level Champion.  And in this role, together with my colleague Razan Al Mubarak and with Marrakech Partnership, we are trying to bring the voices of non-state actors to the process, because we strongly believe that we are speaking about the global climate action, and we need everyone on board.

So dear friends, climate change is not a distant threat.

Climate is changing. We see it, we feel it, we can measure it. And it means that we need whole of society approach to handle this issue. Not only whole of society approach, but also whole of global community approach. We have tried our best to work very closely this year, throughout all these months with non-state actors, with civil society, with philanthropy organizations, with private sector, with academia, with young people, to make sure that they are being part of this process.

And our main goal was to build this inclusive platform. And I’m happy to announce today that we will also, within the framework of our COP 29, as a presidency, we will be hosting a business investment and philanthropy climate platform for the first time, fully in the Blue Zone, and it will be happening on 14th of November. We need private sector to be part of this overall conversation.

So for us, it’s a very good moment to have private sector and philanthropies, asset owners coming together and addressing the the challenges that we all have. And so far, we have already have more than 1,000 people registered for the forum. We have a number of events that we will be doing for the private sector. Also another subject that we have tried to focus our attention on is the SMEs is the green transition of small and medium enterprises, because we want to make sure that SMEs are not surviving this green transition, but they are shaping this green transition. So one of the campaigns that we’ve been working on is climate proofing SMEs, and I’m happy to share that already 35 collaborators having 65 million SMEs in their networks joined us.

And we plan to continue this effort in the future.

So throughout the summit, we will launch multiple initiatives as part of the COP 29 Action Agenda, and the government of Azerbaijan will make national announcements at different points throughout the conference. And we believe that together, we can turn this immense challenge into the opportunity. We need to see the opportunities and we need to showcase to the private sector, especially these opportunities.

So, dear friends, we will be here and I think that we will be meeting each other regularly. So thank you very much for your help.