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Nigar Hasanova

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Azerbaijan will put pollution, water shortages, and the need to help poorer countries reach their hands on clean technology at the top of the agenda when it hosts Cop29 later this year.

Azernews reports that this has been told by the Azerbaijani Ambassador to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Elin Suleymanov, in his interview with Britain's The National.

The Ambassador said Cop29 could “go beyond” the world’s main 1.5°C target and into wider environmental issues such as water shortages, which affect Central Asia and the Middle East.

“The shrinking Caspian Sea is among the regional hazards Azerbaijan wants to give a higher profile. While finance for the developing world will be one focus, giving it access to key technology is a higher priority. The talks could emphasise that conflicts such as the Israel-Gaza and Ukraine wars have an environmental cost,” he said.

Suleymanov believes the Baku summit can be more than a “finance Cop” that bridges the gap to Cop 30 in Brazil.

“There will probably be some focus on the financing issues, but I think more than financing, what we need to look at is technology transfer, in which poorer countries are given access to state-of-the-art clean tech,” he noted.

“Technology transfer is even more important because it enables developing nations to be more self-sufficient and advanced,” he added. “If we could make some breakthroughs on technology transfer, that would be a very important milestone contribution.

The summit hosts plan to draw on the experience of previous climate talks, such as Cop26 in Britain.

Also of great interest to Azerbaijan is tackling pollution left over from Soviet heavy industry and preventing water shortages linked to dwindling supplies from the Caspian Sea.

The virtual disappearance of the Aral Sea, a once-thriving fishing lake replaced by a bleak desert, offers the region a stark warning of what can happen when water is mismanaged. Azerbaijan wants to raise the profile of these issues at Cop29.

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