The 79th session of the UN General Assembly has featured a High-Level Forum on Climate Transparency in New York at the initiative of Azerbaijan, the presiding country of COP29, AzVision.az reports.
The event gathered high-ranking officials from nearly 80 countries and international organizations.
The main goal of the forum was to support the process of preparing Biennial Transparency Reports (BTRs), a key component of the Enhanced Transparency Framework (ETF) under the Paris Agreement, and to strengthen cooperation in this area between partner countries, donor organizations, and other stakeholders.
COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev highlighted the importance of climate transparency in his opening remarks, informing participants about the work undertaken by the COP29 presidency on this issue and outlining future action plans.
He noted that the BTRs, which will be presented for the first time this year, play a vital role in objectively assessing progress in climate change efforts.
Babayev also emphasized the importance of training workshops organized in Baku and other regions worldwide under the COP29 presidency in cooperation with the UNFCCC Secretariat and other partners for the development of BTRs.
The event included a presentation of the Baku Global Climate Transparency Platform (BTP), which is considered a key legacy of COP29 on climate transparency and aims to build trust between countries and enhance capacity in developing BTRs.
COP29 Chief Negotiator Yalchin Rafiyev stressed in his speech that the BTP will become an important platform for global climate transparency.
He highlighted that the main goal of the BTP is to foster trust among participating states and support developing countries in creating and improving BTRs, continuing the transparency agenda beyond COP29, and promoting universal participation in the ETF.
During the event, Kazakhstan's Presidential Adviser and Special Representative on International Environmental Cooperation Zulfiya Suleimanova and Italy’s Special Envoy on Climate Change Francesco Corvaro presented a roadmap for climate transparency and BTRs, along with upcoming action plans.
The event's panel discussions featured speeches by ministers and deputy ministers from Japan, Egypt, Samoa, the US, Türkiye, Switzerland, Germany, France, Georgia, and Hungary, along with lead climate negotiators and representatives of the UN, UNDP, UNEP, and the OECD.
They emphasized the importance of the COP29 presidency’s contribution to climate transparency and expressed their support for the BTP.
This November, Azerbaijan will host COP29. This decision was made at the COP28 plenary meeting held in Dubai on December 11 last year. Baku will become the center of the world and will receive about 70–80,000 foreign guests.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is an agreement signed at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992 to prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system. COP—the Conference of the Parties—is the highest legislative body overseeing the implementation of the Framework Convention on Climate Change. There are 198 countries that are parties to the Convention. Unless the parties agree otherwise, the COP is held annually. The first COP event took place in March 1995 in Germany's Berlin with its secretariat in Bonn.
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