ONE UN - Climate-Resilient Cities and Communities along the Caspian Sea - Unlocking Vertical Climate Finance for Urban Adaptation (WUF13)

Okay.
Good afternoon, Distinguished delegations.
Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, dear friends, dear colleagues, thank you very much for being here with us on this what we look forward to be a very exciting an hour and a half of discussions around the issue of climate resilient cities and communities across the Caspian region unlocking finance for urban adaptation.
The name suggests itself that it's going to be a very important discussion with very interesting points of view shared.
Before we begin our panel, we have the honor to have Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources represented by the First Deputy Minister, Mr.
Karim Smadzada.
Very nice to meet you, sir.
It's my first time to greet you.
I'm very pleased to meet you on this occasion, and we would be honored if you took the stage and shared with us your greeting remarks.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Dear participants, ladies and gentlemen, I warmly welcome you to this high level event dedicated to increasing financing for climate change adaptation for sustainable cities and communities in the Caspian region.
First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to the United Nations Environment Program, the Human Sates Program, and the International Organization for immigration, as well as other partners and all participants for their support in organizing this event.
The topic of our discussion, England faces environmental issues alongside economic security, social welfare, public health, and urban planning.
Climate change is now being observed by everyone regardless of social status and its impacts or becomes more so with each coming year.
Like many regions of the world, the Caspian Basin is one of the areas with high sensitivity to climate change.
Rising temperatures, declining water resources, prolonged periods of land degradation, biodiversity loss, and increasing extreme weather events are creating new challenges for the countries of the region.
I would especially like to emphasize that in recent years, the decline in the water level of the Caspian Sea has already become a serious environmental threat.
This process directly affects coastal ecosystems as well as urban infrastructure, fisheries, logistic, tourism, and living condition of millions people.
The change observed in the level of Caspian Sea once again demonstrate that the countries of the region must implement adaptation measures more quickly in a coordinated manner and on scientific basis.
For Azerbijan, the Caspian Sea is strategic resources, but at the same time, it's also an ecological heritage and a sensitive natural system.
In this regard, our country is putting forward important initiatives at both of national and regional levels.
Under the leadership of the president of the Republic of Azerbajan, His Excellency, Mr.
Ihamliv, green development and climate resilient transformation have become among the national priorities of the country.
In recent years, significant programs have been implemented in Azerbijan in areas such as environmental protection, water resource management, transition of green energy, and strengthening urban resilience.
The Declaration of the liberated territories as a green energy zone.
The implementation of smart city smart wage approach the expansion of greening programs, the development of renewable energy projects, the improvement of waste management system, and the expansion of early warning system throughout the country are important components of this policy.
At the same time, alongside government institutions, civil society organizations are also play an important role in protecting the Caspian Sea and strengthening environmental sustainability.
In particular, I would like to highlight the activities of the IDEA Public Union.
Coastal cleanup campaigns, awareness raising activities aimed at protecting the marine ecosystem, bio diversity conversation initiatives and project related to the protection of Caspian seal carried out these ideas support are of special importance in increasing environmental responsibility in the region.
Such initiatives are good examples of cooperation between government, civil society, and international partners.
At the same time, I would also like to note that our country attached special importance to international cooperation in the field of climate change adaptation.
Project implemented jointly with UN agencies, global financial mechanisms, multiliterial development banks and other partners serve their strengthen national capacity and apply practical solutions.
Dear colleagues, the environmental process taking place in the Caspian Basin make the shared responsibility and cooperation of the region's country even more important.
In this regard, joint activities under the Convention on the Protection of the man environmental in the Caspian Sea as well as expansion of the bilateral cooperation with Caspian literal states, the strengthening of information and experience exchange, the promotion of joint scientific research, and the development of region adaptation initiatives are of the particular significance.
I'm confident that today's discussions will make an important contribution to further strengthening regional cooperation toward building climate, resilent cities and communities in the Caspian regions, promoting initiatives, approach in urban adaptation and mobilizing climate finance more effectively.
Azerbijan will continue to contribute to supporting joint initiatives in climate change, immigration, and adaptation together with regional and international partners.
I wish you all successful and productivity discussions.
Thank you for attention.
Thank you, First Deputy Minister for your encouraging words and for greeting this meeting.
Dear colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, let me first maybe introduce myself.
My name is Mahiraliv.
I will be your half moderator, half entertainer for today's session, and many of you know me in this room as the head of the Tehran Convention Secretariat.
And I'm very grateful to First Deputy Minister for mentioning the work that the countries of the Caspian region carry out under the Tehran Convention, which is indeed a very important piece of work.
And we have something very special prepared for you in the first half of today's panel.
It's a conversation of two outstanding leaders in the world of environmental management, urban planning, international relations.
They both come from Nairobi, which some would consider the capital of environmental movement and sustainability.
We are very privileged to get in our session today, the Under Secretary-General Madam Anna Claude Rosbach, the General Director of UN Habitat.
Her Excellency, Assistant Secretary-General, Madame Elizabeth Mrema, Deputy Executive Director of the UN Environment Program.
When If you get to sit between these two outstanding ladies, you should make a wish because it doesn't happen that often.
And since we have this unique opportunity, we hope that you would exchange your mind, you would exchange your thoughts on the issues of climate resilience and bringing your global view global perspective, zooming in in the Caspian region.
And maybe helping us to set our panel further on identifying specific issues of seeking for climate finance and overall sustainability.
I will step down not to bother you anymore, and ladies and gentlemen, please meet our discussion.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, our entertainer, for the afternoon.
We are very entertained.
Thank you so much.
Your Excellency, Deputy Minister of ecology and nature authorities, Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen.
It is a pleasure for me to be in this discussion today.
Of course, the Caspian Region is our brother host for this W urban forum, so we have to make justice for that.
Also, we are, sisters from Nairobi and UNAP and UN Habitat, they have been born together more or less, and we work closely together.
But we discussed climate, Elizabeth.
Usually, there's a lot on the media, a lot of the press and we have conversations here, the W forum and major UN conferences.
Pretty much from the global perspective.
So we all understand the challenges and the pressures that we are facing right now.
More recently, especially through the cops in the last year, let's say, four editions, four to five editions, we have increasingly discussed this nexus of urban development, urban planning, housing, and climate change, right? I think this is an ongoing discussion.
And also, we're going to have for the first time very soon, an IPCC report that is focused on cities.
Yeah.
But, um, How can we think, you know, how can we land or translate this global discussion for this region, for the Caspian region? And we are now embarking on this project together to work here, UN Habitat, UNAP, IOM, and this is the way we should work as the UN system.
But how do you see it landing? Why it's important to talk about urban environment nexus for this region? Thank you very much, Anna Claude.
Allow me to also say thank you to the First Deputy Minister for being with us, other distinguished ministers, delegates, colleagues, participants here.
Going straight to the question and particularly for this region, first, we need to know that the Caspian Sea water level is really going down and shrinking.
Almost literally 6 centimeters every year or 30 centimeters already since 2020.
That's alarming by itself.
I don't want to say it's because only of climate change because when we look at the sea and particularly urbanization, climate change is one.
But we know the more urbanization, the more forest disappears, the more impacts also on the land.
Personally, I always say we cannot have climate solutions without looking at other environmental solutions because each has an impact negatively or positively on the other.
Clearly, particularly for urbanization, The moment we increase, expand our cities, expand our urban area, there are other those natural resources which tend then to disappear or to shrink.
Not only that and by doing so, it means also agricultural production shrinks.
And one may say this is not climate only, but has an impact also on climate because if the trees disappear, the forest shrinks, the rain gets less, and then of course, when there's drought, we'll say it's climate change.
But climate change happens as a result of something.
We need to connect all these environmental challenges, environmental pressures when we deal with urban.
And environment knows no border in terms of whether it's pollution, whether it's nature, biodiversity loss, or now we are seeing the water crisis because of the level of the water which is shrinking.
You know, as it shrinks, it affects the economy, it affects the fisheries, vulnerable communities, which depends on the sea, because now the water has shrunk and they cannot fish.
It affects tourism, so it literally affects the economy of the region.
And the ports itself then cannot handle the ships.
Again, it's an economy of the region.
So when we look at all these factors, both affecting the people and the sea itself, but as the result of the positive developments.
With increased population, we cannot say we should not urbanize.
We should not say we cannot increase the cities.
They become inevitable.
But how environmentally sustainable are we able to create the growth of the urban while also taking into account how environmental consideration can be part and parcel of the urbanization process from the beginning and not at the end.
Yeah.
So what you're saying, Elizabeth, is that, cities grew, we urbanize in many parts of the world, I mean, also here in this region, and what's happening here connects to what's happening in many other places.
Actually, we occupy much we grow more in territory than we grow in population.
That's the reality, at least 50% more.
And the big question, Mark is, do we need to do that, right? Can we think urbanization and perhaps this is the message that you are sharing across in a different way or from the beginning, or as we expand urbanization.
Uh, land ends, the supply of land ends, and land is a critical natural resource.
The way we have been expanding our metropolitan areas everywhere has affected the source of water.
We have droughts in many metropolitan cities, in many urban centers today has affected, well, the impact of climate events, if you think about rains and floodings, landslides, but even fires, right? So we are actually literally, extra consuming our nature, putting extra pressure on nature and environment.
And it's not the climate.
I mean, we are actually generating a dynamic that is affecting the climate, and now we have to react.
To react to climate.
But thinking about cities and communities and here in this region, I think you mentioned several items already, how it's affecting the fisheries, how it's affecting well, the socioeconomic, how it's affecting the environment here.
But what worries you more here? Because we are working on this project together.
What we need to preserve here what is so important, so relevant, not only for the region, right, but for the planet.
Yeah.
Thank you very much, Anna Claude.
Important question again.
What do we need to do and hopefully to do better.
We are not short of tools.
We are not short of construction codes, rules, and regulations, even at national level, many exist, but I think we are all challenged with the level of implementation and enforcement of those tools to ensure that as the cities grow and particularly as buildings and construction continues, then these regulations, frameworks are also being followed.
Because that's where then we can be able to incorporate those challenges in the designing stage itself.
Many times we forget ourselves.
We come in and especially when it comes to climate issues, environment issues after the fact.
The building has already stood up.
While we need the cooling of the building, the energy consumption because of the heating, what materials would have been used to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions.
We know that 4% of global carbon dioxide emission is from buildings.
So which means our buildings now need to have that already in mind.
Otherwise, then we come later after the fact, and we are not going to demolish buildings which already the human population would be living on them because then we create another disaster.
So I think our innovative measures now is to learn from the past, to be able then to ensure that our cities grow taking into account already what materials are being used? Are they sustainable? Are they reducing the energy consumption or even the choice of energy? Is it still fossil fuel or something else? These are issues we need to build.
Yes, we are putting a building here.
They are already indigenous trees.
We don't want to lose the indigenous trees.
What do we do? So to build from the design, I think is the key lesson we should learn.
And of course, as the population increases, there's also a pressure to catch up with that population and many times, it's not that we are not ready, but we are also always finding ourselves running against time because of the other factors which are beyond us as entities.
Yeah, and we are dealing with unforeseen scenarios, actually, and this is, I think the double challenge that we have right now.
I believe that one critical part is how we build in the future and how we urbanize in the future and how to minimize the risks of building in ways that will A affect the nature or B, expose the population and leave the population at risk.
The new urban agenda that we are celebrating this year, ten years of the new urban agenda, there is a principle of, um, the social and ecological function of the land.
I like this principle a lot and many countries have embedded this principle in their legislation, meaning that land needs to work for the people and for the nature.
But the second aspect that I think we need to be attentive of, Elizabeth, is how to mitigate the risk.
Since we are talking in the region, about the region, about this nexus, I cannot avoid to mention the excessive rain that happened two days ago here.
Because what I heard from our host is that please correct me if I'm wrong.
I heard this data.
It rained 400 times the year average in one day or something like that.
And this is, I mean, who could foresee that? We planned this whole city here, the WUF city.
It in this scenario of no heavy rain at this time of the year, this type of rain and so on.
We needed to be resilient.
We needed to change our plans.
Thank you all for bearing with us.
At this critical moment yesterday, together with our hosts, we teamed up.
We quickly reacted and we did.
Here we are.
But yeah, we have to deal with the but environment as well, because things are going to happen.
I think this is where our tools that you mentioned at the beginning, our tools on urban planning, integrated housing, and so on, can be combined through your tools of the building of the construction materials and all that air quality, or tools that UNP has mobility, et cetera, so that protection of the nature of the environment so that we can plan better, and connect the climate action plans with the urban plans and so on.
Hopefully we can do that through our projects here.
And more other projects to come in, but Claudio Cities and nature work together, just as I have underlined at the beginning, and they work together to build that resilience or climate resilience.
How can we make it work together? We need the cities, we need nature.
Yeah.
We can't say one is more important than the other.
How do we bring that together? Yeah.
I 2050, we're going to have 70% of the population living in cities.
I usually say, Elizabeth, if we want to protect nature, I think Inger says that as well.
We need to protect people.
You have to protect People will be increasingly more in cities.
Urban plans that are people oriented, people in nature oriented, that respect the social and ecological function of the land.
Thinking smartly about densification, compact cities working with local communities, with local governments, I think these are the ways to go because there's a lot of local knowledge, local wisdom, especially if we talk about the construction materials, the indigenous practices and so on, Africa, here, all over the place we find.
I think this is the way to go, incorporating the perspectives in how we plan the city, how we build, and working closely with the local stakeholders because the challenge is global, but at the end of the day, who is suffering from heat, from flooding from flying Yeah.
We have to close the conversation.
It's so nice.
Why don't you keep talking.
We are ready to continue.
Thank you so much, Elizabeth.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Distinguished Under Secretary-General, Assistant Secretary-General.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
We conventionally called this session a fireplace talk, and this proves to be that there is indeed there is a lot of need for this kind of fireplace talk.
And unfortunately, time is extremely limited and we're very grateful for our speakers to find time in a very tight schedule to come and spend this time with us because The conversations like this, they help us identify some keywords that stay with us.
I've been taking some notes and learning from our past and integrating environmental considerations into our building infrastructure in the materials that we do not have to go and retrofit afterwards.
All this planning, are the issues that can unroll into strategies and specific planning and working with local knowledge, as Ann Claudius said in her almost final remarks, are all elements of the sketches that can help us connect those dots and make it into the big planning picture.
So next panel that we have in mind will hopefully look exactly into that.
How do we plan? How do we draw that picture and make sure that today's challenges of urban settlement, of environmental challenges, climate adaptation and building resilience are all thought through, integrated, and supported by finance.
It is my pleasure and honor to invite the next panel speakers to take their seats at this podium.
His Excellency, Mr.
Ralph Achief Deputy Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources.
Ralph, Madam, please.
Mr.
Norio Saito, Senior Director, Asian Development Bank.
Mr.
Saito, thank you for being with us.
Miss Rana Sarer Director, Climate Action Division of IOM.
And our very dear old friend forever, miss Katia Shaffer, in the regional advisor from Unhabitat.
Katia.
Thank you very much for being with us.
It's Katia and I, we were in Astana recently at several panels, so we seem to be chasing each other, but that's always mutually welcome.
Dear panel members, thank you very much again for finding time to be with us here today.
And the I can hear from you what do you have in mind.
Maybe you would like to make a statement or if you would have a form of conversation, I'm here to entertain it either way.
But to begin this discussion, I would like to invite Rothman, you to take the floor and maybe share with us the government's vision on how the issues of planning and environmental sustainability should be strengthening the Caspian region, please.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Madera, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests.
Climate changes and its effects are already seen and can be very, very tangible here in the Caspian region, same as in the whole world globally.
We can see how the water level is shrinking in the Caspian Sea, the urbanization affects to the cities, especially as the level of the Caspian Sea is affecting to the whole region and formulates challenges for all Caspian literal countries.
We understand that the adaptation of the uh climate issues is not just a bunch of the issues.
It is also related to the urbanization, to the planning of the coastal areas, environmental security, diversity, infrastructure.
All of these issues are covered, and this is directly related to the quality of the life of the Caspian region from the standpoint, stands as special center of the world.
It's the biggest, the water basin globally.
It's a very unique global ecosystem since it is a closed basin, the fluctuations in the sea levels of the Caspian Sea, the pace that it develops with, it requires a very systematic, a very thoroughly thought approach to this.
It's not only about the hydrometrology, it's a more expanded social, economic, and urban resilient matter.
That process is affecting the ecosystems to the coastal infrastructure and the safety, the port and the transport logistics, as well as the city settlements has very long term living impact to this.
From that standpoint, the main approach should be basically, focused on the on the ways how can we adapt? Risks should be determined in advance.
The decisions made should be based on a very accurate data and information.
That's why a principal issue here is that the Caspian decisions should not be based on the episodic observations.
They should be based and substantiated with the very long standing approaches and observations.
Another very important issue is that the coastal cities in the Caspian Sea, they have a risk of the adaptation of the climate changes, and here we do not deal with the new buildings.
We speak about the drainage system, the rehabilitation, the management of the rainwaters, the planning of the territories and territories based on the risks, expansion of the green zones.
This is one of the main priorities.
And one of the gaps is, of course, shown at the preconception stage of the projects.
We have some idealistic concepts, but not all of them are fully ready for the expansion, for the development by the international financial institutions.
We do need additional resources and technical support for this, and it is one of the main issues for us.
Adaptive measures should be taken going forward.
If at local levels, institutional resources are not sufficient, the resources that will be allocated also would create additional challenges.
And in order to cope with these challenges, we cannot upon only one financial sources.
We need a cooperation between the intergovernmental institutions, financial institutions, investment foundations, et cetera, all of them should work together.
The mixed financing approach is creating very important opportunities through the pilot projects and technical assistance in Azerbaijan.
The climate resilient communities Project is one of the practical examples and such projects should not be carried out not only at the national level, but also can be used for the international regional Caspian cooperation because the issues that region countries are facing with a also is challenged by these limitations.
The regional cooperation should be also expanded.
Joint projects should be developed and expanded and kicked off technical mechanisms should be developed.
The plan and foundations could be also further developed for the next as going forward.
In this direction already there are certain regional platforms which could be used more efficiently in the country, in the region and the Tehran Convention on the protection of the Caspian Sea, prevention of the pollution and the protection of the biodiversity could be used and is used as the main framework.
Along with that, bilateral and multilateral cooperation should be also continued.
Modeling should be applied through the compelling practical solutions.
These platforms they have very high potential and they have access for the regional, they should be directed to the regional corporation.
Dear colleagues, at the end, I would like to say that the Caspian, the climate resilient urban financial gaps should not be evaluated only as financial gaps.
This is mainly about the financial technology.
Institutional coordination, unique one vision which should be used for the real resilient cities around the Caspian Sea.
Thank you very much for your attention.
Key point you spoke about the important infrastructure that needs to be built and the importance of cooperation in the region where issues are similar across the Caspian Sea.
And clearly and you mentioned that in your speech that this requires a lot of resources.
Investments need to come into this region and the right forms of investments.
So in this context, moving on now to the next issue of climate finance as the name suggests, I would like to address you, Mr.
Saito You represent the Asian Development Bank.
You're the only banker among us in this panel.
So maybe you'd have to answer on behalf of all bankers as I ask this question, how to raise resources for this? What's your perspective? What is it that we can understand in approaching the fundraising in the proper way, please? Thank you so much and good afternoon.
Thank you so much for giving us an opportunity to this very important session.
I'm Norio Site.
I'm the Senior Director of the Water and Urban Development Sector Office, and our Sector offices focus is really on SDG six and SDG 11.
So it's really great to be here in the 13th World Urban Forum.
Yeah, so I would like to touch upon a couple of issues.
The first point I would like to share is the key findings of ADB's Asian Water Development Outlook, which we published in December last year.
So this is a comprehensive assessment of 50 countries and economies in Asia and the Pacific.
From broad water security perspective, we identified five key dimensions, rural household water security, economic water security, urban water security, environmental water security, and water related disaster security.
And if you look at Central and Central and Western Asia region in general, there have been significant gains in the last 12 years, but still the progress is uneven and fragile.
And these are mainly because high system losses, aging assets, and limited efficiency gains.
These are putting water security gains at increasing risk.
And then of course, we need to think about climate and disaster risks.
They are rising faster than our readiness to respond.
So the region faces growing exposure to droughts, floods, and water viability, as we observed two days ago, while institutions and infrastructure have not kept pace, and there are increasing risks for cities and downstream users.
And also, this Asian water development outlook emphasizes that infrastructure alone is not sufficient.
Future water security gains will depend on better governance, stronger local institutions, efficiency improvements, and system management with increased focus on operation and maintenance.
So, secondly, I would like to share our regional initiative called the Glacier to Farms.
So this is, of course, not just about Caspian region, but Caspian region countries are included.
So this Glacier to Farms initiative was something that ADB launched during Cop 29 in Azerbijan about a month and a half year ago.
So this is a ten year regional climate adaptation program.
That intends to mobilize $3.5 billion over ten years, and we were able to secure 250 million from Green Climate Fund, concessional financing, and grant financing.
So this will address Grecial melt water viability, and climate risks across nine countries in Central West, Central Asia, and South Caucasus countries, including Azerbijan.
So this explicitly connects upstream Grecia risk diagnostics with downstream investments in water, agriculture, urban services, and health.
So this recognizes that glacier melt increasingly affects urban water security, wastewater systems, and flood risks in cities dependent on glacier fed basins.
So while this focus is on more on agriculture and rural livelihoods, but this has also major implications of focus on urban relevant intervention as well.
So for example, climate resilient urban water supply and sanitation, wastewater use and efficiency improvements, reduction of climate related service disruptions, and integration of climate risks into urban investment planning in glacier dependent basins.
So this financing and Ger to Farms is combined with ADB's own sovereign lending, concessional finance, and also blending mechanisms to deal adaptation investments, including those in urban water and social infrastructure.
So this will help attract private capital in urban adaptation agenda.
And now I would also like to touch upon some of the new interventions that ADB has started to work with Azerbaijan government.
One is about modernization of the urban water supply systems.
So November last year, we received a government request from the government of Azerbaijan to prepare priority investments addressing urban water security risks for Baku and Absilon Peninsula.
Arising from aging bark waterater infrastructure, high system losses, and increasing climate stress.
So we started to work with ATSA, the World State Water Resources agencies to prepare projects, and the project will improve efficient, resilient and sustainable water service delivery to Baku.
And the infrastructure investment would be combined with capacity building capacity strengthening of this ATSA, the state authority for implementation and long term system operations.
I probably also just one point is about the wastewater reuse.
In a water scarce country, I think we need to focus more on the use of treated wastewater.
And if you look at Azbjan particularly Baku, this Hobson wastewater treatment plant is a very important wastewater infrastructure, but there is an opportunity to turn this pollution liability into a reliable alternative water source that reduces pressure on pollution in the Caspian Sea, but also utilize that water resources as sustainable services for water supply for industry, agriculture, and other purposes.
So now ADB is supporting the government through Transaction Advisory Service to structure wastewater treatment modernization, and we propose some ideas for the government for further consideration.
But idea is really to utilize this opportunity to enhance the capacity, enhance the efficiency of the Hobson Wastewater Treatment Plan, which will help urban adaptation for this water security issue in Baku.
So just in conclusion, ADB stands ready to provide financing, technical assistance for capacity building, project preparation, and the policy reforms, and knowledge sharing so that this will also benefit Azerbijan and also the neighboring countries in this region.
Let me pause here.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Saito, for very insightful thoughts.
And you mentioned a few very interesting points, water security, climate disaster risks, and urban security risks and the adaptation to it.
So that brings me immediately to the consideration of human populations and people on the move.
So if you allow me to move to our distinguished Director of Climate Action Division of the organization on migration.
I am miss Ran Scher.
Can you share with us your perspective on migration, which the It's only when you understand the complexity of the matter, you understand that people are in the center of this.
It's not about the environment, it's not about nature, it's about people.
Please share with us your thoughts on this.
Thank you so much, Mr.
Moderator, Excellencies, distinguished panelists, partners, and colleagues and friends across the room.
Thank you so much for this important session.
And I think this session bring different angles to the room.
It brings the banks, it brings the governments, it bring the partners, which is extremely important.
And why it is important because it's very important when we tackle this problem, we tackle it from a holistic approach where we look into the cities, people at risk, people movement, but also climate finance and the solution, as Mr.
Deputy Minister mentioned.
And IDMC report for 2025 was clear, almost 30 million people has been moving in 2025 due to disaster, environmental degradation, and climate crisis.
It's almost equal to the number of people moving and displaced due to conflict.
But also last year in cop 30, the adaptation cost for developing country 2023-2035 is 365 billion per year to support the adaptation of the communities and it's a huge number.
It's a huge number because this number is not always easy.
That's why we have been working and I'm also very proud of Azerbijan and Cop 29 who've been very supportive to come with development principles where the integrated migration and displacement, understanding how migration and displacement is key aspect when it comes to climate crisis and movement.
Let me quote World Bank Director of Water, Mr.
S Rouge in one of his sessions.
He said, when crises happen, when water gets skirt and when flooding happen, droughts happen and climate crisis happen, people move from rural to urban.
But cities are overcrowded.
It doesn't have the service and water is getting shortage and people cannot still have access to livelihood, cannot take care of children and their families and the government cannot meet it all.
We have been working with government on national adaptation plan, integrating human mobility, migrants and displaced communities.
We've been working on a risk index climate displacement and basically tools to collect data using a Leveringsteins private sector academia, AI to know where is the areas of risk within the cities and how this will implicate host communities, further displacement, current migrants and displaced community.
But we don't stop there because we know that every movement has a story behind.
We've been going to the communities and the government to see the readiness.
And believe me, one of the key findings when we set national adaptation plan including human mobility, when we talk to the people, people don't move, but also 60 to 70% of the plan is just a plan because you couldn't access climate finance.
I'm so glad that Mr.
Norio from ADP is here with us and I'm so happy to hear all the things in place.
But I think you will agree with me that one of the key reasons that government couldn't access climate finance because they don't have the investment plans, they don't have the right data in place, and they don't have the bankable solution that meet the bank conditions or even the green vertical fund conditions.
When it comes to bankable solutions, scalable, innovative, have a whole of society approach can support migrants and evident by data.
This is what IOM has been doing.
We have been working on a climate mobility investment framework.
We've been creating tools to measure the economic and non economic loss.
We've been leveraging the data and bringing with us the private sector, the science and academia, and we've been helping governments to have an investment plans and bankable solution.
We have a great example in Asia, actually in Philippines and we're working with your bank to support the government of Philippines to access the fund.
But also we have a great example of adaptation fund, specifically on the Caspian Sea here in Azerbijan where I think the adaptation fund was able to bring the UNP, UN Habitat, and IOM together to work on a comprehensive approach and holistic approach.
We're not only looking at cities, but looking at cities, looking at environmental degradation, looking into displacement and migrant communities, which is showcase of the holistic approach we're talking about.
The program on building climate resilient cities and communities is a joint that looked into greening corridors, looked into water scarcity and looked into livelihood of the population.
I think this is the way to go.
Basically, if we looked into displacement communities away from host communities, it will fail.
If we looked at migrants away from the population affected, it will fail.
If we looked at it adaptation without looking into scalable sustainable solution, it will not work.
The idea exactly is the same idea of this panel is to bring all the bits and pieces together, provide the right data to talk about the story of the families who are moving and families who want to stay and come with scalable, innovative, sustainable solution for people to adapt, to stay, and to ensure their integrity and humanity and have the choice.
What happened to them in a climate crisis? What happened to them when they move from rural to cities, and how can we protect and support the cities for peoples livelihood and sustainability.
Thank you.
Every movement has a story behind.
I wrote it down, so said so eloquently.
And let's hope that our story will be the one of happy settlements, resilient and sustainable in Slack indeed.
Now, Katy will blame me that I always suffer lost in the panels where I moderate, but that's only because Katy, you're an expert on building partnerships.
So tell us, please, and the project that will be presented minutes from now, of course, you have the backbone of this project.
You're the mastermind and main author of this project.
And we've heard from different angles, government, partner institutions, UN agencies, banks.
Where do we glue this together? What's your experience? Share with us, please.
Thank you, mahi, and I'm delighted that I have more than 2 minutes to speak.
In the last panel, we had so much to discuss actually about the Caspian Sea region that the time became very scarce.
Actually, looking into the room, I see we're sitting at the shores of the Caspian Sea here in Baku, in the most populous and maybe most beautiful city of the Caspian Sea in Baku at the World Orban Forum number 13.
I'm really delighted to see this keen interest in this conversation.
Um Friends of the Caspian Sea, I would say, we are sitting here discussing how we can support actually the communities at the very local level.
Rana, as you so nicely pointed out, it is quite challenging to find sufficient funding to support communities at that level.
Plans are many.
You mentioned the national adaptation plan, but how to translate this into really tangible results at the local level is the key question.
Maia, the point of really partnering in this is absolutely key and really supporting the government in a in bringing different plans, different ideas and different partners together to move from the data to the policy and from the policy to the action.
I think is a circle that we all know tend to support here.
I would like to share the story, in fact, because those vertical funds and order you know, are not so easy to be developed.
They take a long time and you can only do this with persistence.
I think we stand here to show this has taken a long time, in fact, to anchor this, um, so called adaptation fund project here that focuses on communities and cities in Azerbijan to this very context.
I must say we started in 2019, today we are in 2026.
It took us quite a long time, but I was happy, in fact, to see that just before the Cop 29, this project was endorsed.
We started actually a really good trajectory um, towards WUF now here that, again, we are talking about the interlinkage of climate and urban development and impact on the ground.
And we have the opportunity with this adaptation fund to support the discussion on infrastructure, on biodiversity, but also on livelihoods.
I think the key focus is really to strengthen those most affected communities along the Azerbijani coast and building their resilience towards those climate shocks.
If I may just outline the four components that we have in the project, Azerbijan and my colleagues here in Azerbijan know that is starting to embark international urbanization policy because a The newly liberated areas, of course, have a different development trajectory than the eastern parts of the country or the northern parts or the coastal areas.
The project actually will look at an integrated coastal zone management plan that links the land with the sea and the buffer zone in between and so that this is not a leftover area, but we use this as an opportunity to develop these coastal areas.
We will also look at greening baku using brownfield sites like the old railway corridor to turn it into, let's say, a high line of Baku into a public space that brings greenery into this very densely, developed area and also connects the communities again with the coastal areas.
And we will look at early warning.
I think very important for agricultural production and, um, and the salination effect of these areas impact on livelihoods and also in At to really look at rainwater harvesting and how we can water green spaces in a secular way.
I think these are just, I think, small pilots that will hopefully inspire the way Azerbijan will tackle, um, the climate issues that also are faced in other locations, and as we talked also about scalability.
We are talking now about the climate issues along the coast, but they are existing in the whole Caspian Sea Basin, which is so important for the global climate dimension.
I would say, let's continue this conversation.
I'm delighted, in fact, to sit here with our colleagues from the Tehran Convention Secretariat and also IOM, Azerbaijanist as a starting point, we will continue in Kazakhstan and in Turkmenistan, hopefully, as well to have the very same conversation and to go to scale also in the literal states of the Caspian Sea.
I hope we will meet very soon with concrete impact discussions and stories.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, K and indeed.
That indeed.
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