“Negative consequences of environmental pollution, land degradation and excessive exploitation of natural resources care almost everyone on our planet. Under the COP umbrella, Governments around the globe join forces to adequately respond to these challenges by ensuring political discussion and adopting relevant decisions. But the reason for my presence here today is to highlight or underline another, a bit less known approach to the protection of the environment and fighting climate change – the role of law enforcement agencies in climate action. I believe colleagues from the legal sphere will agree with me that, when we discuss significant challenges for the security of society and the role of law enforcement agencies, we rarely, if ever, refer to climate change. But we are confident that they also have an important role to play in this process,” said Kamran Aliyev, Azerbaijan’s Prosecutor General, as he addressed the opening ceremony of BCAW2025.
“Our source for such confidence is the political will and far-reaching vision of President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, for the green agenda, who defined environmental protection as one of the priorities. It guided us to the establishment of a new structure within the Prosecutor’s Office of Azerbaijan in 2020 - the Department of Non-Criminal Proceedings. The department protects the interests of the State and the society in proceedings beyond the criminal prosecution, implementing prosecutorial oversight on application of environmental legislation. But our efforts are not limited to the reforms at the national level. We recognize that no country or a single law enforcement agency can address environmental challenges that are often of a transnational character alone. Consequently we are dedicated to carry this to the international agenda.
Thus, during the COP 29 in Baku last year, the Prosecutor’s Office of Azerbaijan, in partnership with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, organized a high-level session on “Mobilizing Law Enforcement for Enhanced Climate Action” to increase awareness and mobilize resources of law enforcement agencies to counter environmental threats,” the Prosecutor General emphasized.
“Our joint efforts are now guided by the “Baku Call to Action” which connects Baku to Belem, Brazil. We plan to continue our active engagement in this respect and as a part of that will share our experience in a side event for the Heads of Prosecution Services organized within COP30 framework in Belem just in few weeks,” Kamran Aliyev added.
