About a month ago I was invited by the nascent Fins Initiative to attend and contribute to their project during COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan. Having been observing the “commitments” and “talks” for a few years I was curious to actually witness these in person at the yearly Conference Of Parties.
As many of us are aware, the convention has been held in different countries for the last 29 years. Resulting in many treaties, agreements, negotiations and so on. The most celebrated and well known was the Paris Agreement signed in 2015 that had the goal of limiting temperature rise to 1.5°C– and which no country is on track to meet 9 years later.
Many boycotted Baku calling on the hypocrisy of a petrol-state hosting the climate talks. However, my main takeaway from my Azerbaijani week was just that, in my opinion Azerbaijan itself is the country that benefitted the most from this year’s summit.
Over 60,000 delegates from around the world flew into Baku to attend COP29. Most conversations are held in the Blue Zone, where a special “political” pass is needed, and no commoner or civilian is allowed to enter. I went to the Blue Zone only one day, invited by the Azerbaijani delegation. The energy was chaotic and intense. There are pavilions for panel discussions as well as big conference rooms and of course the many break-out stalls that are rumoured to host back-door deals for fossil fuel lobbyists to mingle with high-level diplomats.
The Fins Initiative that I participated in was hosting a pavilion in the Green Zone, the area open to the public where mainly Azerbaijani and Brazilian funded pavilions and NGOs hosted panels, talks, and exhibitions. I was told Brazil was overtly present at COP29 because they are hosting COP30 and therefore needed to show what they’re working on from now.
The streets of Baku were mysteriously quiet for the two weeks of COP. With dedicated buses taking you to and from the blue/green zones into the city center. Rumor has it that the government incentivized locals to work remotely for those two weeks, in order to easily host the biggest influx of tourism in the country’s recent history.
Despite the controversies behind COP29, I find that its biggest win was exactly that it was held in a country with little environmental track record. All of a sudden, the environment was on its agenda, and as I met more and more Azerbaijanis I listened to how COP was making being “green” cool as well as opening up funding for local organisations and engaging eco talks in the school curriculums.
This made me wonder, does a country really need 60,000 international delegates, politicians and fossil fuel lobbyists to encourage conscious development? Wouldn’t a local version of COP have a larger impact on the community? Couldn’t a country-specific COP actually make a bigger difference? I’m Italian, and sometimes I feel like I know more about the environmental movement happening in remote areas of the world than I do of what’s happening in my home country. I would love to partake in an Italian-led COP that invited all of the cool organisations (governmental and non) as well as businesses, leaders, entrepreneurs and everyone in between to talk about their contributions to a more eco-friendly society. I feel that when the conference is hyper-local, the chances for impact are amplified. Imagine this: you’re an impact investor and your next-door neighbour has a bio-gas start-up. Do you really need to fly across the world to meet each other?
So, in terms of my personal experience at COP29 I’m happy and satisfied to say that Fins Initiative did have a large local impact. Fins was the only pavilion focused on ocean conservation and as it was founded by two local Azerbaijanis they knew that they needed to stir the curiosity of their fellow Bakunians that have had few experiences with the deep blue. To do this they brought a large installation of a dead sperm whale on the Baku Boulevard. This ensured that our talks were consistently well-attended by locals and hopefully inspired a future generation of marine biologists in the land-locked country of Azerbaijan.
