Head of Academic Engagement, Dr Eldrid Herrington, spoke at an event at COP29 in Baku calling on academics for collaboration and evidence to support SMEs with climate-proofing. In this Q&A interview she discusses the campaign and the experience.
What motivated you to get involved with COP29, and how does it align with your work?
With academic colleagues, I developed a global academic evidence report in response to the High-Level Champion’s priority to climate proof small and medium enterprises (SMEs). I was kindly invited to speak at the Special Event alongside dozens of global experts on the subject, from SMEs to multinationals to NGOs to finance groups, and others.
My aim was to advocate for the value of academic evidence, particularly in times of crisis. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I served on the UK’s Urgent Public Health committee, advising on clinical research with real-world impacts. While business, finance, and law research differ from medicine, the principle of relying on independent, unbiased knowledge remains vital. Who creates, controls, funds, and owns knowledge?
My additional aims were to represent the academics who contributed evidence to our report as well as their ideas, to connect and share their knowledge with people in a position to act, to grow our network of experts, and to keep my eyes open, watch, listen, and learn.
Which session are you speaking at?
The event is called ‘High level multi-stakeholder roundtable on Small & Medium Enterprises (SMEs) as a driver of a just transition and a resilient green economy’. There are a small number of high-level events with the High-Level Champion (HLC), Nigar Arpadarai – for UK audiences, the equivalent of Nigel Topping for COP26 in Glasgow. These are in contradistinction to the thousands of side events by the hundreds of non-state actor groups that attend the COP. One of the two priorities she has identified for action is climate proofing SMEs, who can make up to 90% of companies in any given country. There are comparatively few resources to support action for these sizes of companies – which are enormously different in respect of size, sector, region. Nonetheless they face some shared challenges and opportunities and the HLC event highlighted these.
The group of speakers for the event was broad ranging, high level – executives from major multinationals such as Pepsi, Unilever, LinkedIn, and NGOs such as the We Mean Business Coalition as well as SMEs themselves; I represented a group of 50 academic contributors from all continents and presented a two-page report on the global academic evidence for what works, what doesn’t and why.
What preparation did you do ahead of the event?
I had the privilege of collaborating with exceptional individuals, including Stephen Davison at Cambridge Zero, who also serves as Universities Lead for the Climate Champions Team, and Chaseley Cameron and Ellen Hooper at the International Universities Climate Alliance, who mobilized academics for the report and coordinated its production alongside a colloquium. Contributions came from academics across 50 institutions, non-academic experts, and colleagues at the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, including Professor Jeff Sachs and Elena Crete. I also worked with Pamela Jouven and Natalie Shemwell from the SME Climate Hub, as well as Kate Coghlan and Claire Ng from the Centre for Climate Engagement. Finally, I benefited from the leadership of Rebecca Kershaw, the Climate Champions Team Business Engagement lead.
At the event, each of the 40 speakers had just one minute to speak. I was fortunate to present early, delivering my message in 50 seconds with 150 words. It had to be concise, impactful, and attention-grabbing. I briefly went off-script to elicit a laugh, which not only engaged the audience but also helped me gauge their attention. After the session, dozens of attendees approached me to discuss further and connect with our academic network and evidence base.
What was the key message you wanted to convey, and how was it received?
My key message was that academic evidence matters. To support this, we launched a global network of academic experts, an evidence base, and impact indicators. Ahead of COP30, we pledged to expand the network, enhance the evidence base, and collaborate on impact with partners both inside and outside the room at COP29.
I sensed that including academic evidence and networks was a new approach, generating significant interest in partnering with academics to improve and extend tools and knowledge. The challenge lies in the details—how to translate these insights into practical implementation. A crucial yet underrepresented aspect of the report was global case studies of SMEs, showcasing successes, partial successes, and failures with clear lessons to learn from each.
Our academic group has committed to convening a special interest group to strengthen networks, advance knowledge, and measure impact leading up to COP30. This is a compelling area with real potential for positive change, and we aim to contribute meaningfully to that progress.
How was the experience of being in Baku for COP29?
COPs are a mad mix of an expo, conference, and Olympics, with negotiations at the heart.
COP29 took place in an “Olympic” stadium that never did host the Olympics and which we couldn’t see – the COP takes place inside windowless, thin cardboard walls and corridors within the stadium. There are thousands of people from around the globe attending; relatively speaking, for a COP, it was not crowded but the reality was that it was very busy. With so many concentrated in one relatively small space, you run into many people whom you know and meet tons of people even in a short time. The COP is a super-connecting place but also a place with many voices clamoring to be heard, leading to competing as well as collaborative ideas.
Azerbaijan is a fascinating and apposite place in which to hold the COP – its name is sometimes translated as meaning “land of fire”. This is possibly because there are a number of natural gas vents that have been a geographical feature and placed within ancient faiths: the Atashgah Fire Temple in Baku would be one example and Yanar Dag, a hill permanently aflame just outside the city center, another. The economy of Azerbaijan is rooted almost entirely in oil and gas exports to Europe, particularly following the Ukraine war. Issues of flaring, methane, and oil and gas dependency need to be understood in these contexts.
How does the location of COP29 influence discussions around climate change?
The primary goal of COP is for nations to agree on reducing global greenhouse gas emissions to a safe level. This involves addressing climate finance, particularly for developing countries, setting climate targets, and reaffirming commitments to climate action—especially in light of the recent US election outcome.
In Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson’s terms, the COP is being held in a country with an extractive politics and economy that is highly reliant on fossil fuels. Some have skipped COP because of this context; others have said it is even more important to be engaged now because of where the talks are being held. And where the COP is held perhaps belies the prime actors in the negotiations: countries such as China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the US, all with their complex relations to fossil fuels. The next hosts, Brazil, are also major fossil fuel players and there are deals being struck in Azerbaijan and Brazil as we speak.
What were the dominant themes or issues at COP29?
Negotiations are ongoing at the time of writing, with a couple of days left, and billions are needed to help countries meet emissions goals. Central negotiations are the financial arrangements, the new collective quantifiable goals on climate finance (NCQG); there are further, separate negotiations on adaptation, article 6, mitigation, and the overall deal.
What are the biggest challenges discussed at the event?
Negotiations this year, particularly climate finance, are beyond difficult. Negotiation itself is physically and emotionally grueling – those in the room get very little sleep, some are under-resourced, and all are under intense scrutiny, by colleagues, inside the room by observers, in overflow rooms by COP attendees, and by the world as a whole.
Each COP, the pressure on the process redoubles: how does each country invest to decarbonize at the same time that it also tries to protect itself from the effects of all countries not having done so fast enough?
What partnerships or collaborations emerged from the event?
I connected with most participants at the event, as well as audience members interested in the ideas raised by my academic colleagues in the report. These included representatives from NGOs like the We Mean Business Coalition, which encompasses the SME Climate Hub, already engaged with our work; B4NZ, focused on how banks finance SMEs; the World Benchmarking Alliance; multinational corporations; individual SME representatives; the International Chambers of Commerce; and others. Additionally, I engaged with academics from multiple countries, university consortia, BINGO, RINGO, Mission Possible 2025, the Climate Champions team, past High-Level Climate Champions, individual negotiators, Chatham House, and students.
How important is collaboration in addressing climate change?
Knowledge and networks in respect of climate proofing are key for SMEs themselves but making the right connections and finding the time and resources to do so is not easy. This means that the more the existing entities out there interconnect and know about each other and work together, the more SMEs are likely to be able to find the right universe of answers as well as colleagues to work with them.
Working on solutions together has been shown to be useful where there isn’t the power and scale of multinationals; however, it should be noted that SMEs have some of the greatest potential to innovate and lead, beyond multinational companies – in part because of their very size, which can make it easier to pivot quickly: one academic in our network has shown this in the case of Ukraine, which had to decarbonize overnight.
What were your key takeaways from COP29?
State negotiations are the core of the COP. Non state actors have an important role in building momentum and pressure and ranges of answers to the challenges that the negotiations address, and also to set their own measurable emissions targets.
It is a challenge to ensure that those with the best intentions and ideas are not correlated with or accorded the least agency. It was heartening to see and to meet many young people who have some of the best ideas and whose presence at the COP will hopefully shape negotiations going forward.
Many are looking past the present COP29 to Brazil (COP30) but the urgency of action now and learning from the lessons of now and building on them for Brazil should be front of mind.
What message would you leave for those who weren’t able to attend?
Advocating for change requires courage, clarity, and persistence. Push for the right knowledge to reach the right places, honestly addressing challenges while presenting solutions. Even when power structures resist, speak up for what is right with principled disagreement and conviction. Use your platform to amplify diverse voices, focusing on what matters most. Be concise, clear, and direct in your message, and connect with a wide range of people to broaden perspectives and strengthen networks. Continuously test your understanding, question what you hear, and stay resilient against those who obstruct progress. Be accountable in yourself. Keep the ultimate goal in sight, and let it guide your actions.
Slingshot