Mukhtar Babayev is the COP29 President and Special Representative of the President of Azerbaijan for Climate Issues.

Last year, the multilateralist’s task was challenging but clear. At the annual UN climate conference COP29 in Baku, we had to land a deal on the first-ever negotiated climate finance goal to support the developing world.

As international negotiations go, it was perhaps one of the most complex and contentious. We needed 198 countries to agree on something as sensitive as cold hard cash, all amidst global headwinds of wars, economic woes, and a wave of elections.

It was by no means easy, but we got there. We agreed the historic Baku Finance Goal to mobilise $300 billion a year by 2035, the largest ever commitment to come from a UN process. This goal set the benchmark for how we will support each other through the second decade after the Paris Agreement. It was not everything to everyone, and it was never going to be the mechanism to fund all climate action.

But as the COP29 Presidency, Azerbaijan pushed it to be as ambitious as possible. We knew that we needed it locked in place before delegates left Baku, or we may never have agreed anything.
The task for the multilateralist in 2025 is very different. Things never happen the same way twice.

UN, Germany say tackling climate crisis is path to economic and national security

Coalition of the willing

At the Petersberg Climate Dialogue in Berlin, the first major climate ministerial meeting since Baku, attendees were clear in their recognition of both the challenges facing the multilateral system and their desire to protect it. The question for all of us follows: how do committed climate actors make this happen? What tangible steps must the coalition of the willing take in 2025 to preserve and reinforce the best and only system of international cooperation on climate change?

First of all, we need to back Brazil. As the incoming Presidency, they will host us in Belem and we need to follow their leadership. They have presented their vision of “mutirão”, whereby a community comes together to work on a shared task. They have set out priorities for the negotiations on important topics.

This includes ensuring a just transition for communities that leaves no one behind, measuring how we adapt to the impacts of a warming world, and coming together to discuss how we best implement the First Global Stocktake, the report card agreed two years ago in Dubai. Successful outcomes to these negotiations will be critical indicators that the world is still willing and able to find common ground.

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But this year the multilateral system is about more than everyone coming out of a room with an