THE history of fossil fuel industry has come full circle. The climate summit begins on Nov 11 in Baku, Azerbaijan, which was one of the first major centres of commercial oil extraction during the Industrial Revolution. Nobel Prize founder Alfred Nobel and his brothers made their money by establishing Branobel, which became one of the largest oil producers in Baku. It introduced several technological innovations including the first oil pipeline in Russia, and railway and commercial shipping lines to facilitate oil transportation. Climate leaders from across the world will congregate in Baku at COP29 to agree on global financial targets and to tackle the ever-increasing ecological footprint of the Nobel brothers’ technological innovations.

A complex agenda awaits Pakistan’s delegation at the upcoming climate summit. It is structured around two main pillars, both central to Pakistan’s climate resilience and economic development: first, enhancing ambition with an emphasis on deep, rapid, and sustained emission reductions to keep the global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius; second, enabling action by mobilising the finances necessary for reducing climate emissions, adaptation, and addressing loss and damage.

Both pillars are mutually reinforcing, and progress in one supports advancements in the other. COP29 is an opportunity to showcase how Pakistan is setting high-ambition climate targets and where and how we can become a destination for international climate finance. Our climate challenges are spread over a diverse ecosystem that can potentially offer a wide range of opportunities to pilot innovative climate solutions.

The main components of how COP29 plans to tackle climate finance include: i) the........

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