Baku’s Climate Moment: From Global Promises to Real Action Before COP31

As Climate Week 4 puts implementation, finance and accountability at the centre of the global climate debate, Azerbaijan is trying to build a bridge from the commitments of Baku to the delivery expected in Antalya

Dr. MARYAM ADLI from Baku

For years, the international climate process has been remarkably good at producing promises. Governments have announced targets, negotiated agreements, submitted plans and repeated their commitment to a safer planet. Yet outside the conference rooms, the climate crisis has continued to move faster than diplomacy. Heatwaves are becoming more dangerous, floods more destructive, droughts more persistent and the economic costs of climate disruption more difficult to ignore. The central question facing the world is therefore no longer simply what governments are prepared to promise. It is whether those promises can actually be implemented.

Baku’s Climate Moment: From Global Promises to Real Action Before COP31

That question has been at the heart of Baku Climate Week 4, held in Azerbaijan from September 7 to 11, 2026, as the international climate community moves towards COP31 in Antalya, Türkiye. The UNFCCC describes the Baku gathering as part of a wider effort to translate climate commitments into real-world solutions, while its programme places a strong emphasis on implementation, delivery and practical action.

For Azerbaijan, the significance of Baku Climate Week goes beyond hosting another international climate meeting. Baku is attempting to maintain momentum between the climate diplomacy of COP29 and the next major negotiating moment in Antalya. The emerging message is simple but consequential: the world has spent decades negotiating the architecture of climate action; it now has to demonstrate that the architecture can deliver.

That shift is important because the climate crisis does not wait for diplomatic calendars. A family facing a failed harvest does not experience a delayed climate pledge as a political inconvenience. A coastal community threatened by rising seas does not benefit from another declaration unless money, technology and infrastructure reach the ground. A city suffering through extreme heat needs cooling, reliable electricity, water and resilient public infrastructure, not another promise that emissions will eventually decline.

This is why implementation has become the defining word of Baku Climate Week.

The discussions have brought governments, businesses, cities, financial institutions, academics and civil society into a common conversation about how climate commitments can be converted into projects that are technically possible, financially viable and capable of being measured. The Implementation Forum has focused particularly on the practical relationship between financial planning, investment and results. That emphasis reflects a growing realization that climate action cannot remain separated from economic decision-making. A climate target without an investment plan is little more than an aspiration.

For developing countries, the question of finance is even more fundamental.

Many of the nations most vulnerable to climate change are also those with the least financial capacity to adapt. Small Island Developing States and Least Developed Countries can face enormous costs from storms, rising seas, droughts, food insecurity and damaged infrastructure while contributing comparatively little to the historical accumulation of greenhouse gases. Their challenge is not simply to become greener. They must build resilience while still meeting basic development needs.

Writer in the event at Baku

Access to climate finance therefore remains one of the most important tests of international climate justice. Money pledged but inaccessible, delayed or trapped behind complicated procedures cannot protect a village from a flood or rebuild a hospital after a cyclone. Baku’s emphasis on improving access to finance for vulnerable countries is consequently more than a technical matter of international financial architecture. It is a question of fairness.

The same principle applies to adaptation. For too long, climate politics has tended to place mitigation — reducing emissions — at the centre of the conversation, while communities already experiencing climate impacts have struggled to secure adequate resources for adaptation. Baku’s focus on resilience, practical solutions and climate-ready communities reflects the reality that mitigation and adaptation can no longer be treated as separate worlds.

Water has emerged as another important connection. Climate change is fundamentally a water crisis as much as it is an atmospheric one. Too much water can destroy homes and crops through floods; too little can devastate agriculture and drinking-water supplies. Melting glaciers, changing rainfall patterns, groundwater depletion and deteriorating watersheds are already transforming the relationship between communities and water. Bringing water management into climate policy is therefore essential, particularly for regions such as South Asia where rivers, agriculture, cities and ecosystems are deeply interconnected.

Industrial decarbonisation presents a different but equally difficult challenge. Construction, steel, cement and other heavy industries cannot simply disappear; they are essential to modern economies and to the infrastructure needed for development. The challenge is to transform how these industries operate. That requires cleaner energy, technological innovation, more efficient production, alternative materials, investment and, increasingly, a circular approach in which resources remain in productive use for longer instead of being extracted, consumed and discarded.

The circular economy discussion in Baku is therefore significant. It offers a way of thinking about climate action that extends beyond energy. Waste, materials, manufacturing, construction and consumption are all connected to the climate question. A world that continuously extracts raw materials, manufactures disposable products and sends mountains of waste to landfills cannot claim to be on a sustainable path simply because it installs more renewable-energy capacity.

But implementation requires something else: trust.

Governments must be able to demonstrate whether they are actually doing what they have promised. This is where transparency becomes increasingly important. The Paris Agreement’s Enhanced Transparency Framework and the Biennial Transparency Reports are becoming critical instruments for understanding what countries are doing, where progress is being made and where implementation is falling short. Baku Climate Week has provided a space for countries to strengthen their ability to prepare these reports and improve the quality of information available about climate action.

Transparency may sound bureaucratic, but its implications are profoundly political. Without credible information, citizens cannot hold governments accountable, investors cannot properly assess climate risks and international institutions cannot determine where support is most urgently required. A climate promise that cannot be measured is difficult to defend.

Mahabahu Correspondent displaying her Press Card at Baku

The same challenge extends to carbon markets and Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. International cooperation on carbon trading can potentially mobilize finance and reduce emissions, but only if environmental integrity, transparency and credible accounting are protected. Recent international discussions around carbon markets demonstrate how quickly this area is moving from theory toward practical investment decisions. Brazil, for example, is already exploring a bilateral carbon-market arrangement with China ahead of COP31.

Cities and local governments are equally important in this transition. National governments may negotiate climate agreements, but much of climate action ultimately happens somewhere else: in a city transport system, a municipal waste programme, a building code, a local energy project, a water network or a community adaptation plan. The distance between an international pledge and a neighbourhood is therefore one of the most important gaps the climate movement must close.

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This is particularly relevant for countries such as India, where climate vulnerability is experienced very differently from one region to another. The concerns of a coastal city in southern India are not identical to those of a flood-prone community in Assam, a drought-affected farming district in central India or a Himalayan settlement facing changing snowfall and landslide patterns. Climate implementation must therefore become increasingly local while remaining connected to national and international goals.

For Northeast India, this principle is crucial. Assam and the wider Northeast possess extraordinary ecological wealth but also face severe exposure to floods, erosion, landslides, changing rainfall and biodiversity loss. Climate finance that never reaches local governments and vulnerable communities will have limited meaning. Adaptation plans must eventually become functioning drainage systems, resilient agriculture, protected wetlands, safer housing, reliable public transport, renewable energy and stronger local institutions.

This is where Baku’s emerging “implementation” agenda becomes relevant far beyond Azerbaijan.

The world is approaching COP31 in Antalya with a climate system already under extraordinary pressure. The UN climate process itself is increasingly emphasizing the need to turn commitments into tangible outcomes rather than repeatedly adding another layer of political declarations.

Azerbaijan’s role in this transition is therefore potentially significant. Having hosted COP29 in Baku in 2024, Azerbaijan has an opportunity to use its diplomatic position to help carry the implementation conversation forward. Climate Week 4 has reinforced Baku’s role as a meeting point between the political commitments made in the climate process and the practical delivery expected before and beyond COP31.

The phrase “Baku to Antalya” consequently carries more meaning than a geographical journey. It represents a test of continuity. What begins in Baku must not disappear when delegates leave Azerbaijan. The ideas discussed, the investment pathways identified, the lessons from implementation and the needs of vulnerable countries must travel to Antalya and ultimately beyond the conference itself.

That is perhaps the most important lesson emerging from Baku Climate Week 4. Climate diplomacy cannot be judged only by the elegance of its language. It must increasingly be judged by what happens after the language is agreed.

Did emissions actually fall? Did a vulnerable community receive adaptation finance? Did a city become more resilient? Did an industrial facility decarbonise? Did a developing country gain access to affordable capital? Did a government’s transparency report reveal genuine progress? Did a climate project survive beyond its launch ceremony? Did the investment reach the people who needed it?

These are the questions that will determine whether the international climate process retains credibility.

The climate crisis has already moved beyond the stage at which humanity can afford endless postponement. The technologies are developing, the scientific evidence is overwhelming and many solutions are increasingly available. What remains profoundly difficult is implementation at the necessary speed and scale.

Baku has therefore placed its bet on delivery.

The coming months will reveal whether that emphasis can influence COP31 and, more importantly, whether governments, investors, industries, cities and communities are prepared to move with it. If Baku succeeds in helping transform climate promises into financeable projects, measurable action and transparent results, its importance will extend well beyond the five days of Climate Week.

The real journey from Baku to Antalya will not be measured in kilometres.

It will be measured in megawatts of clean energy installed, forests protected, industries transformed, cities made safer, farmers supported, communities adapted and finance finally reaching the people on the front line of the climate crisis.

That is the standard by which the next phase of global climate diplomacy should be judged.

Not by how many promises the world can make, but by how many it can finally keep.

Dr. Maryam Adli is the correspondent of Mahabahu in Baku, Azerbaijan

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