King Charles Won’t Attend COP29 Meeting in Azerbaijan After Royal Tour

King Charles’ fall calendar is taking shape, and it won’t include an appearance at the COP29 climate meeting in Azerbaijan next month. 

It emerged on Oct. 9 that the King, 75, will not attend the upcoming 29th U.N. Climate Change Conference, abbreviated as COP29, in Baku, Azerbaijan, which runs from Nov. 11 to Nov. 22. While the King, a lifelong advocate for the environment, has previously attended the event in recent years, he will not appear there this year on the advice of government ministers.

Buckingham Palace had no comment.

According to the Mirror, government officials felt “an abundance of caution” was necessary in light of the sovereign’s schedule. COP29 begins a few weeks after the King wraps his long-distance royal tour of Australia and Samoa with Queen Camilla. It’s significant as it marks their first tour of Commonwealth countries since his accession and is their furthest working trip from home following the palace announcing in February that the King was diagnosed with cancer and began treatment.

“The King will not be going to COP. He has not been asked by the government to attend the event and he is also mindful of his own commitments following the upcoming autumn tour,” a source said, according to the Mirror.

Over the weekend, the Daily Mail reported that King’s medical team is allowing him to briefly cease what is thought to be weekly treatment for cancer when he is in Australia and Samoa. Looking ahead to COP29, it would be a five-hour flight from London to Baku, and all attendances at COP29 are on the advice of government ministers. 

The Court Circular said that King Charles welcomed the United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties Presidencies Troika, including Mukhtar Babayev, the COP29 President-Designate, to Clarence House in July.

While the monarch will not be at the meeting in person, he might follow along from afar. The King made a passionate speech at the COP28 talks in Dubai in December 2023, calling for change for the sake of the next generation. 

“n 2050, our grandchildren won’t be asking what we said, they will be living with the consequences of what we did or didn’t do,” King Charles, a grandfather of five, said at the opening of the climate conference last year.

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He further urged the climate talks as “an unmissable opportunity to keep our common hope alive. I can only urge you to meet it with ambition, imagination and a true sense of the emergency we face, and together with a commitment to the practical action upon which our shared future depends.”