BAKU, Azerbaijan, October 14. PreCop has provided a strong platform to begin negotiations ahead of COP29, EU Commissioner for Climate Action Wopke Hoekstra said, Trend reports.
He made the statement speaking during the "Global Perspectives" lecture series at ADA University. The meeting was organized by the Center of Excellence in European Studies at the Institute for Development and Diplomacy at ADA.
"There is a lot of work to be done ahead of COP29. Not only do we need to build confidence in the consensus reached at COP28 in Dubai, but we also need to make it more concrete. PreCop has been a good start for the negotiations," Hoekstra remarked.
He further emphasized the need for greater global efforts to transition away from fossil fuels to mitigate the harmful effects of global warming.
"It’s important to shift towards green energy. Over time, we need to phase out gas, as it is a fossil fuel. We must reduce our dependency on it.
“The green transition and adaptation to climate impacts require more financial investments, which means more public funding will be needed. However, public funding alone may not be enough to tackle the scale of the upcoming challenges. Additionally, the collected funds must be prioritized for the countries that need the most assistance," Hoekstra added.
On October 10-11, an event called Pre-COP took place in Azerbaijan. Each Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is preceded by a preparatory meeting known as Pre-COP, which is held about a month before the conference begins. The purpose of this meeting is to provide a selected group of countries with an informal setting to discuss and exchange views on some key political aspects of the negotiations in order to offer, as much as possible, political recommendations for future negotiations.
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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