Mukhtar Babayev is COP29 President and Special Representative of the President of Azerbaijan for Climate Issues. COP has entered “late-stage multilateralism”. We have already agreed the processes, targets and mechanisms to guide action. The system is now fully operational, resilient and delivering results. Success today depends less on what new things all countries agree and more on what individual actors achieve. And we are in a race against the clock, so there is a desperate need for speed. This will require new modes of working, rather than repeating the lumbering mechanisms of generations past. Our conversations at COP30 confirmed to us that the will and energy is there in bundles. It now needs to be directed. On finance, there is much to do. At COP29 we set the Baku Finance Goal to scale up support for the developing world to $1.3 trillion per year by 2035. This was no small ask. Dec 12, 2025 News As Paris Agreement enters tougher era, new alliances urged to step up With global consensus over climate action faltering on the accord’s 10th anniversary, experts say “coalitions of the willing” should move faster and with more ambition Read more Dec 11, 2025 News As the Paris Agreement turns 10, what has it achieved? A decade since the deal was adopted, climate experts say it is working to cut emissions, spur action and reduce the projected temperature rise – but not as fast as we need it to Read more Dec 11, 2025 Nature Funding for protected areas fell in 2024, threatening global nature target While developed countries are expected to deliver $6bn by 2030 to protect a third of the planet’s land and sea ecosystems, a new report shows they are far off track Read more We are trying to intervene in the normal functioning of the world economy and channel the forces of global finance. Success will require great political will, sustained focus, and relentless action from all of us – the private sector, central banks, financial institutions, and everyone in between. But while the problems are easy to identify, the solutions are often missing. Efforts to reform the global financial system have been disjointed and the COP process needed a new framework to engage with actors outside our normal systems. More room for creativity outside negotiations In recognition of the need to try something new, countries mandated the Azerbaijani and Brazilian COP Presidencies to produce the Baku-to-Belém Roadmap to $1.3 trillion to set out the next steps. This was an innovative format, outside the negotiations and therefore given a free hand to be more creative. We opened the process to everyone. And while we promised that we would not be prescriptive, we were clear that we would be fearless at providing an honest look at a wide range of options. Countries have warmly welcomed the approach, and we were pleased to see the Roadmap recognised in COP30’s Global Mutirão decision. In Belém, they told us that while they don’t necessarily agree with every line, they still see the value of the exercise and want to build on it. This is a radical change from the normal process where we argue over every word and comma of each formal text. Practical next steps The Roadmap can act as a focal point and a coherent reference framework that incorporates existing initiatives. It identifies key action fronts and thematic priorities. And it concludes with practical short-term steps to guide early implementation. Many of these were designed to address the problems that COP presidencies have seen firsthand – lack of consistent data and reporting, uncertainty about forward projections, silos and a lack of continuity and interoperability between different processes. But we must acknowledge that this exercise has made some feel uneasy. They have feared that by broadening our focus, we are providing cover for governments not to fulfill their traditional responsibilities. And it is unacceptable that we have indeed seen cases of donors cutting funds and expecting the private sector to fill the gap. Donors must deliver in full So as we set out the Roadmap for all to follow, we have a duty to be unequivocal with governments. The COP29 negotiations to agree on the historic target for $300 billion per year in public funds by 2035 were hard. Now, there can be no excuses. We asked vulnerable communities to accept the limits of how much support they could expect. In equal measure, we insist that donors deliver in full, with developed countries taking the lead. COP30 fails to land deal on fossil fuel transition but triples finance for climate adaptation Too often, when we set a target for everyone, no one steps up, as collective responsibility undermines individual accountability. That must change. And in the Roadmap we have asked developed countries to work together on a delivery plan that explains how they will meet the $300 billion per year climate finance goal. Innovative approaches needed Late-stage multilateralism demands that we are ready to innovate with our processes. They did well to get us this far and they need to be preserved. But we also need to think outside the box on how we deliver the aims and objectives that we have set ourselves. COP30 showed that there is an appetite for new approaches and new ideas. The Baku-to-Belém Roadmap could be a template for one such evolution of the COP process. Now we need other ideas, more creativity and real-world action to show that this template can work. The COP29 Presidency will continue to work with everyone to find new solutions, scale promising initiatives and deliver on the promises we have all made. 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