Nigar Arpadarai at Baku Climate Action Week: Small Business, Skills and Finance Are Key For Growth and Resilience

Taking place from Monday, 29 September to Friday 3 October, Baku Climate Action Week gathering bring together ministers, experts, businesses, and civil society leaders to accelerate progress on climate commitments made during last year’s historic COP29, which Azerbaijan hosted.

It will include a series of high-level panels, implementation workshops, and interactive sessions focusing on climate mitigation, adaptation, and finance. Topics of focus will range from renewable energy deployment and sustainable urban development to climate-resilient agriculture and green investment strategies. Participants will have the opportunity to share best practices, forge partnerships, and explore innovative solutions to accelerate the implementation of national and international climate action.

Below are remarks delivered by Nigar Arpadarai, Climate High-Level Champion for COP29, on 29 September 2025 during the opening ceremony of at Baku Climate Action Week.

Excellencies, ministers, distinguished guests, friends – good morning!

It means a great deal to open this second Climate Action Week here in beautiful Baku, not only for the work we are here to do, but for what this place represents to me and so many others whose lives have been shaped by its landscapes and communities. A very warm welcome to all our international guests. Bakıya xoş gəlmisiniz! Welcome to Baku!

Last year Azerbaijan hosted COP29 and achieved historic decisions. Throughout this process, Azerbaijan took its role very seriously and acted as an honest broker, gained trust among all stakeholders and brought Parties closer, being a bridge between the developed world and the Global South. This is a remarkable achievement. We also managed to engage the non-State actor community, from cities and academia to small and medium enterprises.

Since becoming COP29’s Climate High-Level Champion, I’ve had the privilege of meeting all kinds of people from every corner of the world, and I’ve seen how many are now living with the consequences of climate disruption.

Farmers tell me they no longer trust the seasons. They don’t know when to plant or whether the harvest will come. Families who’ve lived for generations on the same land are questioning whether they can stay. Entire industries face upheaval without the skills or finance to adapt. Young people are feeling the weight of it all; watching the world shift around them.

And these aren’t just distant stories. They are the same realities faced here in Azerbaijan and across the region. In farmers struggling with drought, in water stress across the Kura-Aras basin, and in the retreat of the Caspian sea which, as we all know, is reshaping coastlines, threatening fisheries and altering ecosystems that communities depend on.

All of this is personal. Because in the end, what is climate, if not the conditions that make life possible? The air that fills our lungs. The water that makes everything grow. To act on climate is to protect the lives people are building now, and the futures they hope to secure.

The climate agenda is one of the largest efforts by humanity to design its own fate. And to do it through cooperation and adoption of behaviour standards that help us clean up and sustain our environment.

The climate agenda is obviously at crossroads. There are political pressures of all kinds, there are visible and invisible frictions.

But at the same time, for me it’s obvious that this agenda is as needed as ever and even more. Because as a universal mission it is a necessary alternative to sovereign egoism, to the new arms race and trade wars. It is about nations and non-State actors working together for a common goal. It is what we need. On top of that, we should have more private sector involvement. And we should do it across sectors and across different parts of the world.

But to engage the private sector we need to show them the future, we need to show them opportunities. And the best way to do it is to untap the private sectors’ own resources and talents. The climate agenda should come with technological breakthroughs. We must achieve the goals of the Climate Agenda via efficiency and progress as opposed to restrictions and prohibitions.

With clear policies that scale renewables, support resilient infrastructure and direct finance to where it’s most needed, millions of new jobs can be generated.

And that is why we begin here, on Day One, with a focus on two foundations that decide whether the future we are working for becomes real in people’s lives: enterprise and skills.

Because it is not policies or pledges alone that sustain societies, but jobs that carry dignity, communities that can withstand disruption, enterprises with the confidence to grow, and young people who can see a future they trust.

Small and medium enterprises are central to this. They employ most of the world’s people. They carry ingenuity and resilience, yet too often they struggle for finance and recognition. Recognising this, last year we launched the Climate-Proofing SMEs campaign, which I’m proud to say now brings together partners reaching almost 90 million small businesses worldwide, and why just last week we launched the second and third chapters of the SME Finance Sprint calling for major financial institutions to step up their support for SMEs in emerging economies.

To turn investment into opportunity, people need the skills to apply it, to adapt, and to create. That is why skills are the other foundation. The transition will not be shaped by experts alone but by teachers preparing students for industries yet to come, by farmers adapting to new conditions, by doctors protecting health, by builders and engineers designing resilient societies, and by entrepreneurs bringing forward new ideas.

Excellencies and colleagues, the tools are here. The finance is here. The knowledge is here. What matters now is how we choose to use them.

So may I offer a challenge. For this week, let us set aside the dates and deadlines and ask instead what can be done right now – for people already living with this crisis, for the families, farmers and workers whose future depends on choices made today.

And as we do so, let us also take the time to question our notions of growth, prosperity and resilience; to remind ourselves for whom we are doing this, and what must change if we are to protect people everywhere.

Thank you very much – and thank you for coming!