Mukhtar Babayev is the COP29 President and Special Representative of the President of Azerbaijan for Climate Issues.
Last year, the multilateralist’s task was challenging but clear. At the annual UN climate conference COP29 in Baku, we had to land a deal on the first-ever negotiated climate finance goal to support the developing world.
As international negotiations go, it was perhaps one of the most complex and contentious. We needed 198 countries to agree on something as sensitive as cold hard cash, all amidst global headwinds of wars, economic woes, and a wave of elections.
It was by no means easy, but we got there. We agreed the historic Baku Finance Goal to mobilise $300 billion a year by 2035, the largest ever commitment to come from a UN process. This goal set the benchmark for how we will support each other through the second decade after the Paris Agreement. It was not everything to everyone, and it was never going to be the mechanism to fund all climate action.
But as the COP29 Presidency, Azerbaijan pushed it to be as ambitious as possible. We knew that we needed it locked in place before delegates left Baku, or we may never have agreed anything.
The task for the multilateralist in 2025 is very different. Things never happen the same way twice.
UN, Germany say tackling climate crisis is path to economic and national security
Coalition of the willing
At the Petersberg Climate Dialogue in Berlin, the first major climate ministerial meeting since Baku, attendees were clear in their recognition of both the challenges facing the multilateral system and their desire to protect it. The question for all of us follows: how do committed climate actors make this happen? What tangible steps must the coalition of the willing take in 2025 to preserve and reinforce the best and only system of international cooperation on climate change?
First of all, we need to back Brazil. As the incoming Presidency, they will host us in Belem and we need to follow their leadership. They have presented their vision of “mutirão”, whereby a community comes together to work on a shared task. They have set out priorities for the negotiations on important topics.
This includes ensuring a just transition for communities that leaves no one behind, measuring how we adapt to the impacts of a warming world, and coming together to discuss how we best implement the First Global Stocktake, the report card agreed two years ago in Dubai. Successful outcomes to these negotiations will be critical indicators that the world is still willing and able to find common ground.
Brazil’s COP30 president: Climate summits must move from words to real action
But this year the multilateral system is about more than everyone coming out of a room with an agreed piece of paper. The Brazilian Presidency is giving us crystal clear direction that the measure of the health of international efforts to address the climate crisis is implementation.
One by one, we all need to step up and make sure that our own actions match our words. Following the first calendar year of average temperatures 1.5C above pre-industrial times, this is more urgent than obsessing about new words.
Concern about climate investment
So, let’s start with some of the words we agreed in Baku. In Berlin, we heard both developed and developing countries say that we need to deliver on the Baku Finance Goal, and hold ourselves to account for the promises that we have made.
However, amidst competing global priorities, there is already clear anxiety about the direction of travel on climate investment. The Baku Finance Goal was a collective commitment, and everyone must make sure it is delivered. We need countries to recognise the concern of frontline communities and set out clear plans for contributing their fair share to the $300 billion target by 2035. For any country that wants to preserve and reinforce the multilateral process, this is an essential place to start.
UK aid budget cuts threaten climate finance pledge to vulnerable nations, experts warn
Next, we need to turn to words first set down ten years ago in Paris. Central to that seminal agreement was the need for each country to determine its own contribution to climate action in a bottom-up approach. The sum of these national plans was intended to reach the ultimate goals of a safe and resilient world. The next generation of these plans, known as “Nationally Determined Contributions” (NDC), are now due.
Everyone now has a responsibility to reach for the highest possible ambition and offer the best of themselves. Each NDC matters. Every dollar counts. This year, the future of the multilateral process to address the climate crisis will depend on how individual countries answer this call to action.
The post How to reinforce the multilateral climate system in 2025: Step up, one by one appeared first on Climate Home News.
How to reinforce the multilateral climate system in 2025: Step up, one by one
The case shows that climate change is a fundamental human rights violation—and the victory of Bonaire, a Dutch territory, could open the door for similar lawsuits globally.
From our collaborating partner Living on Earth, public radio’s environmental news magazine, an interview by Paloma Beltran with Greenpeace Netherlands campaigner Eefje de Kroon.
A Tiny Caribbean Island Sued the Netherlands Over Climate Change, and Won
Climate Change
Greenpeace organisations to appeal USD $345 million court judgment in Energy Transfer’s intimidation lawsuit
SYDNEY, Saturday 28 February 2026 — Greenpeace International and Greenpeace organisations in the US announce they will seek a new trial and, if necessary, appeal the decision with the North Dakota Supreme Court following a North Dakota District Court judgment today awarding Energy Transfer (ET) USD $345 million.
ET’s SLAPP suit remains a blatant attempt to silence free speech, erase Indigenous leadership of the Standing Rock movement, and punish solidarity with peaceful resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline. Greenpeace International will also continue to seek damages for ET’s bullying lawsuits under EU anti-SLAPP legislation in the Netherlands.
Mads Christensen, Greenpeace International Executive Director said: “Energy Transfer’s attempts to silence us are failing. Greenpeace International will continue to resist intimidation tactics. We will not be silenced. We will only get louder, joining our voices to those of our allies all around the world against the corporate polluters and billionaire oligarchs who prioritise profits over people and the planet.
“With hard-won freedoms under threat and the climate crisis accelerating, the stakes of this legal fight couldn’t be higher. Through appeals in the US and Greenpeace International’s groundbreaking anti-SLAPP case in the Netherlands, we are exploring every option to hold Energy Transfer accountable for multiple abusive lawsuits and show all power-hungry bullies that their attacks will only result in a stronger people-powered movement.”
The Court’s final judgment today rejects some of the jury verdict delivered in March 2025, but still awards hundreds of millions of dollars to ET without a sound basis in law. The Greenpeace defendants will continue to press their arguments that the US Constitution does not allow liability here, that ET did not present evidence to support its claims, that the Court admitted inflammatory and irrelevant evidence at trial and excluded other evidence supporting the defense, and that the jury pool in Mandan could not be impartial.[1][2]
ET’s back-to-back lawsuits against Greenpeace International and the US organisations Greenpeace USA (Greenpeace Inc.) and Greenpeace Fund are clear-cut examples of SLAPPs — lawsuits attempting to bury nonprofits and activists in legal fees, push them towards bankruptcy and ultimately silence dissent.[3] Greenpeace International, which is based in the Netherlands, is pursuing justice in Europe, with a suit against ET under Dutch law and the European Union’s new anti-SLAPP directive, a landmark test of the new legislation which could help set a powerful precedent against corporate bullying.[4]
Kate Smolski, Program Director at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “This is part of a worrying trend globally: fossil fuel corporations are increasingly using litigation to attack and silence ordinary people and groups using the law to challenge their polluting operations — and we’re not immune to these tactics here in Australia.
“Rulings like this have a chilling effect on democracy and public interest litigation — we must unite against these silencing tactics as bad for Australians and bad for our democracy. Our movement is stronger than any corporate bully, and grows even stronger when under attack.”
Energy Transfer’s SLAPPs are part of a wave of abusive lawsuits filed by Big Oil companies like Shell, Total, and ENI against Greenpeace entities in recent years.[3] A couple of these cases have been successfully stopped in their tracks. This includes Greenpeace France successfully defeating TotalEnergies’ SLAPP on 28 March 2024, and Greenpeace UK and Greenpeace International forcing Shell to back down from its SLAPP on 10 December 2024.
-ENDS-
Images available in Greenpeace Media Library
Notes:
[1] The judgment entered by North Dakota District Court Judge Gion follows a jury verdict finding Greenpeace entities liable for more than US$660 million on March 19, 2025. Judge Gion subsequently threw out several items from the jury’s verdict, reducing the total damages to approximately US$345 million.
[2] Public statements from the independent Trial Monitoring Committee
[3] Energy Transfer’s first lawsuit was filed in federal court in 2017 under the RICO Act – the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a US federal statute designed to prosecute mob activity. The case was dismissed in 2019, with the judge stating the evidence fell “far short” of what was needed to establish a RICO enterprise. The federal court did not decide on Energy Transfer’s claims based on state law, so Energy Transfer promptly filed a new case in a North Dakota state court with these and other state law claims.
[4] Greenpeace International sent a Notice of Liability to Energy Transfer on 23 July 2024, informing the pipeline giant of Greenpeace International’s intention to bring an anti-SLAPP lawsuit against the company in a Dutch Court. After Energy Transfer declined to accept liability on multiple occasions (September 2024, December 2024), Greenpeace International initiated the first test of the European Union’s anti-SLAPP Directive on 11 February 2025 by filing a lawsuit in Dutch court against Energy Transfer. The case was officially registered in the docket of the Court of Amsterdam on 2 July, 2025. Greenpeace International seeks to recover all damages and costs it has suffered as a result of Energy Transfers’s back-to-back, abusive lawsuits demanding hundreds of millions of dollars from Greenpeace International and the Greenpeace organisations in the US. The next hearing in the Court of Amsterdam is scheduled for 16 April, 2026.
Media contact:
Kate O’Callaghan on 0406 231 892 or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org
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In a new report that outlines a dozen high-risk pollutants given new life thanks to weakened, delayed or rescinded regulations, the Environmental Protection Network, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group of hundreds of former Environmental Protection Agency staff, warns that the EPA under President Donald Trump has abandoned the agency’s core mission of protecting people and the environment from preventable toxic exposures.
Former EPA Staff Detail Expanding Pollution Risks Under Trump
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Greenpeace organisations to appeal USD $345 million court judgment in Energy Transfer’s intimidation lawsuit
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