The UN Climate Change Conference (COP) is an important platform for addressing global environmental issues, former Minister for the Protection of Natural Resources and Environment of Serbia, international consultant on ecology and climate change, Andjelka Mihajlov, told Report.

“MEAs COPs are not perfect instruments - but until now the best we have. So, we should start preparing for COP 29,” she noted.

According to her, the purpose of these conferences is to achieve consensus on critical climate issues and adopt an action plan to combat climate change. At the same time, the next COP, which will be held this year in Azerbaijan, should answer the question of how exactly this action plan should be implemented and financial mechanisms for this should be worked out.

The professor noted that in order to achieve consistency of actions and results, a willingness to listen to the arguments of the participants and a desire to reach an agreement is necessary, since the life of humanity is at stake, which is closely related to the environment and climate change.

As a scientific ecologist, Andjelka Mihajlov is convinced that political decisions should be based on scientific research.

“One of the most important Multilateral environmental agreements (MEA) is the UNFCCC- United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, with 28 COPs – Conference of the Parties (currently 198 countries), from 1997, to the latest one in December 2023 in Dubai.

However, I would like to underline - that the future wellbeing of human societies on a liveable planet depends on more than the "beginning of the end" of the fossil fuel era. To achieve the ultimate goal, we need to fundamentally rethink the value of natural resources and reassess their link to long-term human wellbeing (World Resource Forum),” she added.