COP29 Presidency convenes Ministerial meeting on sidelines of UN General Assembly marking a significant escalation of political engagement to break through negotiating deadlock

The COP29 Presidency will convene today a ministerial dialogue on the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) on climate finance on the sidelines of the 79th United Nations General Assembly. This meeting marks a significant escalation of the NCQG negotiations to the political level, reflecting the COP29 Presidency's commitment to delivering a fair and ambitious outcome at COP29 in Baku this November.

The dialogue, chaired by COP29 President-Designate Mukhtar Babayev, is expected to bring together high-level representatives from a broad range of countries, including the chairs of negotiating groups. It will provide a platform for direct engagement on key political issues to advance deliberations on the NCQG, which is set to be agreed at COP29.

Ahead of the meeting, Mr. Babayev said, “Negotiations to agree a fair and ambitious new climate finance goal are entering their critical final stage. The COP29 Presidency is intensively building bridges between the political leaders who must overcome the most difficult issues to land a deal at COP29. These are complex negotiations – if they were easy, they would have been resolved already – and ministers will succeed or fail together. The eyes of the world are now upon them in expectation that they deliver climate finance so that we can enhance ambition and enable action.”

“We can only prevent the climate crisis from decimating all economies - including the largest and wealthiest - if every country has the means to take much stronger climate actions, slashing emissions and building resilient communities and supply chains. That's why an ambitious new climate finance goal at COP29 must be core business for every government.  The world will be watching, and expecting governments to stand and deliver at COP29, under the Presidency of Azerbaijan,” said Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change ahead of Friday’s meeting.

Azerbaijan has repeatedly stated that agreeing a fair and ambitious NCQG is the top negotiating priority of its COP29 Presidency. Now, in the stage in which work on the technical track has almost finished and more intensified political engagement and guidance is needed, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan Jeyhun Bayramov is expected to deliver a keynote address to the gathered Parties that includes a strong call for the importance of finding common ground and delivering the NCQG this year in Baku.

The high-level dialogue is part of a series of engagements planned by the COP29 Presidency to intensify momentum on the NCQG. The Presidency announced that it will also convene an informal Heads of Delegation meeting on October 8th in Baku, to be followed by the formal High-Level Ministerial Dialogue on the NCQG on October 9th, and Pre-COP on October 10-11th.

The COP29 Presidency has also recently appointed Ministers Yasmine Fouad of Egypt and Chris Bowen of Australia as the Ministerial Pairs on the NCQG, and tasked them to start informal political consultations on this topic. This is while the technical Ad Hoc Work Programme co-chairs prepare to publish a substantive framework for a draft negotiating text in the coming weeks.

The COP29 Presidency also confirmed its intention to raise the NCQG in all available multilateral forums, including the upcoming World Bank Annual Meetings, as part of its strategy to build consensus and drive progress on the Presidency’s top negotiating priority.