Greta Thunberg Underestimates Real Balance Of Needs, Capabilities - COP29 Participant

(MENAFN- Trend News Agency) BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 13. Swedish eco-activist Greta Thunberg, who held a protest in central Tbilisi against COP29, underestimates the real balance of needs and capabilities, Special Representative of the President of Russia for Relations with International Organizations to Achieve Sustainable Development Goals Boris Titov said during the conference in Baku today, Trend reports.

"The choice of Azerbaijan as the host of the 2024 UN Climate Change Conference (COP29) is absolutely justified, as climate issues should be discussed precisely in oil-producing countries. Greta is far from economics, so she underestimates the real balance of needs and capabilities," Titov pointed out.

He mentioned that fossil resources will continue to play a global role for a long time, and pretending they must be abandoned at any cost immediately is, at least, unproductive.

"In Russia, we are generally dissatisfied with reducing the green agenda to a narrow economic formula of 'urgent rejection of carbon fuel plus penalties for those who do not give it up quickly enough.' This trend has emerged through the efforts of Western countries since the Paris Agreement," Titov added.

According to him, Russia has one of the 'greenest' energy systems globally, combining gas, nuclear, and hydropower generation.

"Therefore, an immediate and large-scale abandonment of traditional technologies is not just economically unfeasible for us – it's unjustified in fact.

We have already contributed to the global fight against warming and will continue to do so. The global community has long needed to shift its focus in the climate fight. Anthropogenic factors account for only a small portion of greenhouse gas emissions, with natural factors having a much greater impact.

Emissions reduction and greenhouse gas absorption can be achieved not only by restructuring industry. Forests and water surfaces contribute significantly, and such projects should be appropriately valued within a truly fair international carbon market that has yet to be created," he concluded.

To note, the 29th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP29) started in Baku on November 11. 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 in the climate system.

The acronym COP (Conference of Parties) stands for“Conference of Parties” and is the highest legislative body overseeing the implementation of the Framework Convention on Climate Change.

A total of 198 countries are Parties to the Convention. Unless the parties decide otherwise, the COP is held annually. The first COP event took place in March 1995 in Berlin, and its secretariat is located in Bonn.

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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