Why a petrostate is hosting UN climate talks — again
Lack of climate action, human rights concerns raised about COP29 host country Azerbaijan
The annual United Nations climate summit, COP29, opened Monday. For a second year in a row, it's being hosted by one of the oil capitals of the world — Baku, Azerbaijan. Last year, the conference was hosted by Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
That's despite the fact that emissions from burning fossil fuels such as oil is the main cause of the dangerous climate change that the conference is trying to stop.
This year's COP president, charged with leading the annual climate negotiations, is Mukhtar Babayev, Azerbaijan's minister of Ecology and Natural Resources. He was previously the vice-president of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR).
Even before the conference started, a senior COP29 official was recorded on video trying to arrange a meeting to negotiate a fossil fuel deal with a purported oil and gas investment group, according to reports by BBC News and the anti-corruption group Global Witness.
Azerbaijan's human rights record has also caused controversy, prompting most Canadian opposition MPs to skip the conference this year. Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly has described the exodus of 130,000 ethic Armenians from the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan last year as having been "forcibly displaced" by an "unjustified" military operation by Azerbaijan.
So how did a petrostate like Azerbaijan, where the economy is heavily dependent on oil and gas, end up hosting and presiding over the climate talks? And what can we expect from it in that role? Here's a closer look.
How are host country, president picked?
The host country of the annual conference rotates among five United Nations regional groups: African; Asia-Pacific; Eastern Europe; Latin American and Caribbean; Western European and others.
This year, it's the Eastern European group's turn. It's the job of countries in the host region to consult with each other and nominate a country to make an offer to host. The offer is sent to the UN climate change secretariat.
In this case, Russian blocked the selection of European Union countries such as Bulgaria, Slovenia and Moldova, due to EU sanctions over Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
That left Armenia and Azerbaijan, which have been at war over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh for decades. But each threatened to veto the other's bid to host COP29.
However, Armenia agreed to back Azerbaijan's bid last December, after the two countries reached a deal to exchange soldiers that each side had captured during the conflict.
The deal was brokered by Russia, which supported Azerbaijan's bid, the New York Times reported.
The COP president is also selected by regional group members, and the president and host are usually from the same country, although there have been a couple of exceptions.
What are they supposed to do?
As might be expected, the host country provides facilities, equipment, utilities, services and security for the conference.
But the host government is also expected to provide leadership for the negotiations. The UN says the president's role includes "raising ambition" to tackle climate change internationally and developing a vision for the best possible outcome of the meeting.
That's why there were concerns about the news that Azerbaijan's COP team tried to negotiate fossil fuel deals while organizing the conference.
The group Global Witness recorded the interaction after one of its members posed as the head of a fake energy investment company. Patrick Galey, senior investigator with the group, told CBC News, "It is a conflict of interest to allow a major producer of oil and gas to be custodian of climate talks that are designed to reduce emissions in order to achieve a livable future for everyone."
The fact that the country may be misusing its position to further fossil fuel interests shocked Christiana Figueres, the former UN climate executive who oversaw the signing of the 2015 Paris agreement. She told BBC News it was "contrary and egregious" to the purpose of COP.
What are pros and cons of petrostates hosting?
Former U.S. vice-president Al Gore has called it "ridiculous" for COP to be hosted by petrostates.
In December 2023, after last year's climate conference, Gore said that while the agreement reached at COP28 was an important milestone in recognizing the "climate crisis is at its heart a fossil fuel crisis," he also noted that "the influence of petrostates is still evident in the half measures and loopholes" in the agreement.
Baku was where the world's first oil fields were developed in 1846, and oil and gas still accounted for around a third of its GDP and 90 per cent of its exports between 2013 and 2017, according to the International Energy Agency.
The country's President, Ilham Aliyev, has said its selection to host the climate summit is a recognition of what Azerbaijan is doing around green energy.
However, critics say that what it's doing on climate doesn't amount to much. The country's climate target and current policies are projected to grow its emissions by 20 per cent by 2030, reports the Climate Action Tracker, which measures climate progress against targets of the Paris Agreement.
That has prompted accusations that Azerbaijan is using its position as host to create the impression that it is more environmentally friendly than it really is, a practice known as greenwashing.
Meera Robins, an analyst with the London-based sustainability consulting group Context, is among those who have expressed concern about Azerbaijan's lack of climate progress.
However, she argued in a blog post that no country should be excluded from contributing to climate action and said that having a petrostate host a COP conference "can increase international pressure on the country to live up to its climate commitments."
Joanna Depledge, a global climate negotiations expert at the University of Cambridge, told the Financial Times that banning petrostates from hosting would create an uproar among developing countries that are already suspicious that climate negotiations like COP are dominated by rich western countries that don't understand their circumstances.
Others, such as Kaveh Guilanpour of the Center for Climate and Energy solutions, have pointed out that many European oil and gas producers have previously hosted COP summits.
He was also among those who noted that last year's conference, hosted by petrostate Dubai, managed to come to a groundbreaking global consensus on the need to transition away from fossil fuels, suggesting that good results from climate conferences are possible even if the host country relies heavily on fossil fuels.
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With a file from Jill English and Susan Ormiston
