BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 14. As part of COP29 in Baku, Trend News Agency proudly presents COP for Hope, a special project offering an unparalleled platform to hear from world leaders and trailblazers in politics, economics, science, and ecology, all united by a shared commitment to addressing today’s pressing climate challenges.
Today, we are honored to speak with Dr. Gil Proaktor, Senior manager of climate change division at Israel’s Ministry of Environmental Protection.
In an exclusive interview with Trend on the sidelines of COP29, Proaktor noted that overall, he sees a huge effort and amazing work that the Azerbaijani government did.
“The event has been organized extremely well. This is an amazing effort. It is already a very successful event and we think that the Azerbaijani presidency is doing a great job. We hope that it will enable different delegates to eventually to come up with a good agreement and good decisions on the most important issues related to climate change,” he said.
Proaktor believes that certainly, one of the most pressing issues is coming up to a system in which developing countries are able to get the means to implement ambitious Nationally Determined Commitments (NDCs).
“I think it's extremely important, because we want to globally reduce emissions and meet the target between 1.5 and 2 degrees. We must increase the effort to ensure that we don't exceed the 2 degrees threshold. This is absolutely critical. Also, we would like to see a successful conclusion of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. These rules are extremely important and provide flexibility and will enable also to unlock private funding for emissions reduction projects,” he added.
Further, Proaktor pointed out that obviously, small island and least developed countries bear the brunt of climate change.
“Small island nations are really at the highest risk and some of them will even lose and are losing their homes, their ability to live in their countries. So there must be a concrete decision to limit at the end of the day the temperature, because this is the root cause for the increase in the sea level and therefore the damage that is caused to small island nations,” he said.
Proaktor believes that there have to be also solutions that will enable to assist those countries because they bear the brunt of climate change.
“That could also be in the form technology transfer, knowledge transfer, knowledge sharing. Adaptation is extremely important. In that sense, Israel is doing a lot of work on adaptation, is also leading in many technologies with regard to adaptation, clean water access, agriculture and food security. Knowledge and technology transfer and assistance is paramount in that sense,” he said.
Proaktor thinks Israel has got important roles with regard to developing the next solution.
“Israel is a world hub for clean technologies, clean solutions. Representatives of a lot of different companies from Israel are here. We try to foster a lot of cooperation between Israeli companies and companies in other countries, and obviously between the governments. Israel has got a lot to offer with regard to solutions, water scarcity, energy, transport, and so on,” he concluded.
