COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev emphasized the urgent need for collective action to address climate threats to mountain ecosystems and vulnerable communities at the opening of Sagarmatha Sambaad that kicked off in Kathmandu on Friday.
Highlighting Azerbaijan’s leadership as the first COP host from a mountainous region, Babayev outlined key achievements from Baku, including the Baku Finance Goal—a historic 300 billion annual climate finance pledge by 2035.
He warned of dire consequences from melting glaciers, citing Azerbaijan’s 20% glacier loss since 2018, and urged nations to deliver on adaptation plans and funding promises. The Baku-to-Belem Roadmap, developed with Brazil, aims to scale climate finance to $1.3 trillion annually by 2035.
Babayev praised Nepal’s role in elevating mountain issues and called for sustained global focus, citing 2025 as the UN’s International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation. “No country is immune; we must act in solidarity,” he concluded.
The Sagarmatha Sambaad continues through Saturday, with leaders discussing strategies for mountain resilience ahead of COP30 in Belem.
Full text:
Sagarmatha Sambad: A Global Dialogue on Climate Change, Mountains and the Future of Humanity
Opening Ceremony Speech by COP29 President, Mukhtar Babayev
0950-1005
Friday, 16 May 2025 Kathmandu
Excellencies, distinguishes guests, ladies and gentlemen, It is an honour to join you all for the opportunity to address this critical issue of climate change, mountains and the future of humanity.
I must express my deepest gratitude to the leadership of the government of Nepal and the Right Honourable Prime Minister K. P. Sharma Oli.
And I must also thank the Honourable Foreign Minister Dr. Arzu Rana Deuba for her efforts to gather us all together.
People in many parts of the world often think of mountain communities as far away and isolated.
They do not see how the issues that affect these distant places also affect them.
But our understanding of the climate crisis is growing.
We are now seeing how we are all connected.
And we are recognising the need for collective action. From the Andes to the Alps, two billion people rely on mountain water from glaciers for their day-to-day needs.
Melting glaciers and ice sheets are causing sea levels to rise at alarming rates.
This is a risk to 10 percent of the world’s population that lives in coastal areas from South Asia to Sub-Saharan Africa.
It threatens the very existence of small island states in the Pacific and the Caribbean.
And disruptions in mountain ecology have major social and even geopolitical consequences.
In Kathmandu we can see the pressure climate change puts on water infrastructure.
As permafrost thaws, we see damage to roads and buildings in remote communities.
And in the states around the Himalayas, we see how climate change can upset the sensitive balance between powers.
Melting glaciers also cause a dangerous positive feedback loop.
As ice melts, less light is reflected, so more heat is absorbed, and more ice melts.
We need everyone to understand the urgency of this problem and work together to address them.
We need to prevent these changes where possible.
And we need to adapt to them where needed.
In Azerbaijan and the Caucuses, we know these issues well.
In only 7 years, we have lost almost 20 percent of our glaciers.
They could disappear totally by 2050.
Our river levels are already falling.
We have less water for our people and our agriculture.
This is a real risk to human health and economic development. It could undermine the progress that we have achieved in recent decades.
With the guidance and support of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, His Excellency Ilham Aliyev, we undertook the responsibility of bringing the world to Baku for COP29.
This is because the President understood that we have a moral duty and a clear interest to act.
He knew that for global challenges, we need global action.
The multilateral system is not always perfect.
But it has delivered many benefits.
And it is essential for making progress.
Within the COP process, mountains have been rising up the agenda.
In the Global Stocktake in at COP28 in Dubai, we encouraged integrated and multi-sectoral solutions to protect and restore mountain environments.
We held an expert dialogue on mountains and climate change in June last year at the Bonn Climate Conference.
And we are working to agree indicators on adaptation for mountain ecosystems under the Global Goal on Adaptation.
Azerbaijan was the first country from our region to host COP.
We were also one of the few countries with mountain zones to ever hold the conference.
We understood that we had a responsibility to represent these communities and the highlight the issues they face on the world stage.
We knew that we had to deliver results.
First, we wanted to enhance ambitions.
We got over 70 countries to endorse the COP29 Declaration on Water for Climate Action.
They resolved to promote partnership and dialogue, strengthen scientific understanding, and enhance waterrelated climate policies.
And we launched the Baku Dialogue on Water for Climate Action to ensure COP-to-COP continuity and regional cooperation.
This Dialogue will develop actionable pathways for early warning systems, climate-resilient infrastructure, and scaling nature-based solutions, amongst other outcomes.
We invite everyone to join the Declaration and the Dialogue.
We will hold a preliminary meeting in Bonn this June before the first meeting of the Dialogue platform at COP30 in Belem.
We look forward to seeing you all there.
Next, finance was at the centre of the COP29 Presidency’s vision to enable action.
We brought stakeholders together to mobilise money for mountain communities.
We hosted the Asian Development Bank, the Green Climate Fund, governments, development partners, and the private sector to launch the Glaciers to Farms initiative.
This project will mobilise up to 3.5 billion dollars for investments in water, agriculture, and communities threatened by glacial melt and fragile mountain regions.
We also got the Fund responding to the Loss and Damage up and running.
The Fund now has an executive director who opens an office, get a bank account, hires staff, and starts approving projects.
This will be a critical resource to support communities that face irreversible consequences from glacial melt.
But we knew we had to go even further.
The COP29 Presidency’s top negotiating objective was a new climate finance goal to support the developing world for the next ten years.
It was never going to be easy.
Under the UN we had never set out to establish a goal like this.
We had to bridge divides on the interlinked issues of structure, contributors, and quantum.
And we saw a clear demand for strong qualitative elements that would help reshape the global financial architecture.
It was a complex negotiation where nothing was agreed until everything was agreed.
As anyone who has climbed Sagarmatha knows, the wind blows strongest on the top of the mountain.
It would get tough as we entered the final stages. But we were determined to reach our objective.
And in the very final moments we landed a deal on the Baku Finance Goal.
This tripled the previous goal with a pledge to mobilise at least 300 billion dollars per year to the developing world by 2035.
This is the largest ever financial goal to come from a UN process, turning billions into trillions.
It will send a strong signal to financial markets.
Provide greater certainty for long-term planning.
Help build trust and momentum for collective action.
And set a benchmark to hold us all to account.
But most critically, it will fund action.
It will catalyse finance for more clean energy projects.
This will reduce emissions to help prevent the worst effects of
climate change on mountain regions.
It will mobilise public money for climate-resilient infrastructure.
And it will help to support communities that face irreversible
loss and damage.
Colleagues,
We understand that the goal was not everything for everyone.
The COP29 Presidency pushed for the highest possible level of ambition.
But we were realistic that the public sector could not deliver the full scope of the developing world’s needs.
That is why we included the call for all actors to step up.
And countries tasked the Azerbaijani and Brazilian COP Presidencies to set out the Baku-to-Belem Roadmap for how we could reach 1.3 trillion dollars a year by 2035.
We must now focus on implementation.
The COP29 Presidency will remain active to ensure that donors
deliver their promises.
We will hold governments to account to make sure that they mobilise the 300 billion dollars they pledged in Baku.
We are calling on them to make early progress on past promises. This means doubling adaptation funding by the end of this year compared to 2019 levels.
And it means tripling the outflows from official UN climate funds by 2030.
For example, this includes more resources for the Green Climate Fund that supported the Glaciers to Farms initiative at COP29.
Next, we are in a critical year to enhance ambition in national climate plans.
We need to deliver the plans for how we will reduce emissions, known as Nationally Determined Contributions.
We want everyone to produce National Adaptation Plans for how we will prepare for the consequences of climate change.
And as we set out in the COP29 Declaration on Water for Climate Action, we encourage everyone to integrate water into these plans and climate policies.
As a developing country, Azerbaijan understands how challenging it can be to develop these plans.
We have worked with the UN Secretary General and the whole UN system to make sure that support is available for everyone who needs it.
We hope that countries will take advantage of it.
We also want to remind everyone of the benefits of producing these plans.
Because these plans can serve as green lights for green investment.
Setting targets and timelines, highlighting priority sectors and industries, and demonstrating government commitment to action will send strong signals.
These signals will attract and guide investment from both international donors and the private sector.
They can be a useful roadmap for how we deploy the 300 billion dollars a year that was pledged in Baku.
Ladies and gentlemen, In a world full of distractions and competing priorities, we need to maintain focus and momentum.
Azerbaijan is committed to playing its role to keep climate action high on the international agenda.
We have seen encouraging signs from many committed climate actors.
But we have also seen attention falling amongst others.
So we need to keep up the work.
The UN General Assembly designated 2025 as the international year of glaciers’ preservation to raise awareness And we are deeply grateful to the Government of Nepal for contributing to this mission by organising today’s gathering.
These efforts remind us all of the communities that we have a responsibility to serve and protect.
Dear friends,
When we brought everyone to Baku for COP29, we called on them to act under the slogan of solidarity.
This is because we understood that climate change affects everyone.
No country can insulate itself from its impacts.
And everyone has a responsibility act.
We need to think of the hundreds of millions of people in mountain communities.
We need to think of the billions of people who are affected by what happens in them.
And once again, we need to move forward in solidarity for a green world.
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