Azerbaijan said COP29 (short for the 29th Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) was “litmus test” for the effective implementation of the 2015 Paris Agreement and for global climate action and cooperation.

In a first of its kind initiative, Azerbaijan, host of this year’s climate change conference COP29 in November, has reached out to all the countries through a public letter asking them to enhance their climate actions as it tries hard to deliver a keenly awaited deal to scale up the flow of financial resources from the developed countries.

Referring to the two ongoing wars, Azerbaijan said the world must not get distracted by the “growing geopolitical tensions and uncertainty in the international environment” and continue to focus on addressing “climate change as the greatest transnational challenge of the century”.

Hosts of climate conferences vigorously engage with other countries through the year to forge a consensus on important issues but it is usually done through bilateral or multilateral meetings. It is the first time that a host nation, which also presides over the conference, has issued out an open letter, explaining in detail how it wants to conduct the conference and highlighting the important issues that need resolution.

COP29 has to deliver an important deal on finance, being referred to as a New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) on finance, that would ensure availability of greater amounts of money to enable climate actions worldwide. The most contentious part of this deal is an agreement over a new amount of money that developed countries must provide as financial support to developing countries. Developed countries are under an obligation to mobilise at least US$ 100 billion every year from the year 2020 onwards, a target that they have never met. The 2015 Paris Agreement requires an upward revision of this US$ 100 billion figure after 2025. This new amount has to be agreed upon at COP29 in Baku, the Azerbaijan capital, but there are wide divergences on this right now.

Estimates suggest that the requirement of the developing countries are now in trillions of dollars every year. India, and some other countries, has suggested that developed countries must commit to increasing the US $100 billion figure to at least US$ 1 trillion.