The following is a transcript of remarks made by UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell at the closing of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP29) in Baku, Azerbaijan, on 24 November 2024.

Excellencies, Delegates, Colleagues, Friends,

I want to start by thanking the Presidency for all they have done to enable the finance COP here in Baku.

It has been a difficult journey, but we've delivered a deal.

This new finance goal is an insurance policy for humanity, amid worsening climate impacts hitting every country. But like any insurance policy – it only works – if premiums are paid in full, and on time. Promises must be kept, to protect billions of lives. 

This deal will keep the clean energy boom growing, helping all countries to share in its huge benefits: more jobs, stronger growth, cheaper and cleaner energy for all. 

We needed this to be an enabling COP - one which helped translate the pledges of COP28 into real-world outcomes to protect people, prosperity, and the planet.

And that’s what we have made possible. 

At COP28 the world agreed to triple renewables. At COP29 we tripled climate finance, and countries will work to mobilize much, much more.

At COP28 the world agreed to boost climate resilience. COP29 will help finance real protections for those on the frontlines, especially the most vulnerable.

COP29 also reached global agreement on carbon markets, after almost a decade of hard work, where several previous COPs were not able to get this done. 

No country got everything they wanted, and we leave Baku with a mountain of work to do. 

The many other issues we need to progress may not be headlines but they are lifelines for billions of people.

So this is no time for victory laps, we need to set our sights and redouble our efforts on the road to Belém.

Even so, we've shown the UN Paris Agreement is delivering, but governments still need to pick up the pace.

Let’s not forget, without this UN-convened global cooperation, we'd be headed towards 5 degrees of global warming.  

But we are still a long way off course. Bold new climate plans on the way to Belém will be crucial to getting us back in the race. They must embed the targets we agreed in Dubai, including to rapidly ramp up renewables, transition away from fossil fuels, and transform societies, making them more resilient. 

Whole of economy, whole of society plans are crucial.

We've seen clear signals from two G20 countries – UK and Brazil – because stronger climate actions are entirely in the interests of their economies and their people.  

Friends – progress here in Baku has been hard won.

I pay tribute to all those who worked around the clock. Even if you didn’t get everything you sought, what you delivered will make billions of lives safer and better. 

To those of you who have joined from civil society – your work helps our process make progress. Today we set a new goal, and you will be vital in ensuring that the goal is fulfilled.

To the staff of the Secretariat, you have been stretched beyond belief, and yet time and again, you stood and delivered, so that tens of thousands of people from almost 200 countries could come together and take global climate efforts forward.  I have never seen a harder working group of people, that steady the ship when times get tough.

Excellencies, friends, we still have a very long road ahead of us, but here in Baku we took another important step forward.

The UN Paris Agreement is humanity’s life-raft; there is nothing else. So here in Baku and all of the countries represented here in the room we are taking that journey forward together.  

I thank you.