COP29's First Day Wraps Up With Azerbaijan's Victory - Financial Times

(MENAFN- Trend News Agency) BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 12. The world's leading media outlets have written about the first major success achieved on the first day of the 29th session of the conference of the Parties to the UN Framework convention on Climate Change (COP29) in Baku - reaching consensus on standards for creating carbon dioxide emission credits, the article of the financial Times said, Trend reports.

“The COP29 climate summit agreed to launch multi-billion-dollar carbon markets governed by UN emissions rules. Despite the election of Donald trump last week, countries are trying to demonstrate that the fight against climate change will continue. Progress in the first negotiations has prompted COP29 to adopt rules in global markets for trading instruments that reflect carbon emissions levels.

Carbon trading will be a victory for Azerbaijan, which is pursuing COP29 ahead of tough negotiations on other forms of finance. It can help big polluters reduce their emissions and raise some of the money that developing countries will need to adapt to the effects of climate change.”

This was "a rare bright moment of cooperation and progress at COP29," the influential British publication quoted Fitri Woolandry, an analyst at carbon data provider Waite, as saying.

“At the two-week COP29 climate summit, countries on Monday authorized carbon quality standards needed to launch a U.N.-backed global carbon market that will finance projects to cut greenhouse gas emissions,” the article by Reuters journalists Virginia Furness and Kate Abnett noted.

The green light was given by an early agreement on the first day of the UN conference in Baku.“Although Donald Trump's victory in the U.S. election has lowered expectations, governments are committed to signing a climate finance agreement.”

The article, citing Mexican climate scientist Juan Carlos Bruno, now a consultant to Abatable, notes that carbon credits theoretically allow countries or companies anywhere on the planet to pay for projects that reduce CO2 emissions or remove them from the atmosphere and use the credits generated from those projects to offset their own emissions.
Reuters notes that the International Emissions Trading Association, a working group that supports global carbon markets, has stressed that total trading in the U.N.-backed market could generate $250 billion a year by 2030 and reduce production by 5 billion metric tons of carbon each year.

According to Bloomberg correspondent John Ainger, climate negotiators made progress on the first day of the COP29 climate summit by agreeing on rules for a global carbon market run by the United Nations. The article emphasizes:“Supporters argue that the new market will be the gold standard for emissions trading, paving the way for billions of dollars in financing for emissions reduction projects in the developing world. The purchasers, mostly from wealthy countries, will be able to meet their climate goals with credits from projects that reduce pollution.

The rules, dubbed“Article 6.4” after initial proposals under the 2015 Paris Agreement, dictate how countries trade carbon credits through a UN-administered market.

The Guardian quotes COP29 president Mukhtar Babayev in a published article about this important agreement: "We welcome this positive moment. It is a spirit of compromise for the success of all our discussions in Baku.”
The article says, "Carbon markets are a polarizing force in climate policy. Advocates of this consensus say it will help channel critical funds to save the planet. Efforts to harmonize carbon market rules, known in the language of the COP as Article 6."

To note, the 29th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP29), which will run until November 22, opened on November 11 at the Baku Olympic Stadium.

The event is the largest organized by Azerbaijan to date and is the first time the region has hosted the event in Azerbaijan. Within COP29, the highest-level event - the summit of world leaders on climate action - will be held on November 12–13.

The main expectation from COP29 is to agree on a fair and ambitious New Collective Quantitative Goal (NCQG) on climate finance. The COP29 chairmanship has launched 14 initiatives that include linkages between climate action and the Sustainable Development Goals, including green energy corridors, green energy storage, harmony for climate resilience, clean hydrogen, methane reduction in organic waste, action on green digital technologies, and other topics.

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