Azerbaijan, a significant oil and gasoline producer accused of great human rights abuses, is “completely suited” to host a essential world local weather summit, in keeping with its man answerable for it.
Earlier than the COP29 local weather talks kick off within the capital Baku on Monday, the president of the talks, Mukhtar Babayev, advised Sky Information the nation has lots to convey to the desk.
Sandwiched between Russia and Iran, bridging Europe and Asia, Azerbaijan is “strategically positioned” to bridge variations between areas, he mentioned, as international locations assemble with wildly completely different ambitions, grudges and fears for the talks.
However there’s another excuse, mentioned Mr Babayev: its position as a significant oil and gasoline producer.
Baku is the “world’s first oil city”, residence to the world’s first industrial oil properly from 1847. Relics and tributes to its supply of wealth adorn town, from the previous oil pumpjacks to its three flame-shaped skyscrapers.
“As a hydrocarbon producer that’s investing closely within the change to renewable power, we’re well-attuned to the wants of the power transition,” Mr Babayev, who declined an interview, mentioned in a written Q&A.
Mukhtar Babayev can also be Azerbaijan’s ecology minister. Pic: AP
However it’s also investing closely in its gasoline, aiming to spice up manufacturing by greater than 30% over the approaching decade.
And COP chief government Elnur Sultanov was secretly filmed apparently utilizing his position to debate gasoline offers.
Campaigners see this as at odds with the local weather management position it has put itself ahead for by internet hosting one of many annual United Nations COP talks.
Shereen Talaat, founding father of the regional local weather group MENAFem, mentioned increasing gasoline manufacturing dangers “undermining their very own credibility and jeopardising the way forward for our planet”.
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The opposite ‘hypocrisy’
However Azerbaijan is hardly the primary oil producer to host a COP summit. The UK was pumping out oil and gasoline from the North Sea because it hosted COP26 in Glasgow.
And Azerbaijan is extra depending on its oil and gasoline revenues, which offer 60% of the federal government’s finances and 90% of its exports.
Glada Lahn, power specialist from thinktank Chatham Home, mentioned: “Not like the UK, Azerbaijan’s excessive degree of dependence on oil and gasoline rents means it has the inducement to extend its gasoline availability for export – particularly when one main neighbouring shopper bloc – the EU – is asking for it.”
After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, and the EU sought to chop off cash to Moscow by ditching Russian gasoline, it wanted to look elsewhere.
That July, it signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Azerbaijan to double the quantity of gasoline it buys to twenty billion cubic metres (bcm) by 2027.
The Southern Fuel Hall of pipelines that take Azerbaijani gasoline to European international locations
The EU’s “sprint for gasoline” within the wake of Russian cut-offs and sanctions opened it as much as its personal accusations of “hypocrisy”, mentioned Ms Lahn.
“And you’ll perceive why. In asking international locations like Azerbaijan, Egypt and Qatar for extra gasoline, it seems to go towards what they preach.”
It additionally seems to have prompted Azerbaijan to import extra Russian gasoline to fulfill its home demand, so it might promote extra of its personal to the EU, Ms Lahn mentioned, including “it’s ironic”.
Azerbaijan imported no gasoline from ally Russia in 2020 or 2021, however this jumped to 0.5 bcm in 2022 and 0.8-1 bcm in 2023, in keeping with information from S&P International.
Ilham Aliyev, the nation’s autocratic president, this summer season mentioned it was as a result of Russian gasoline was “very inexpensive”.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev met on the BRICS summit final month. Pic: Reuters
Detentions and crackdowns
Now, nonetheless, Azerbaijan’s gasoline cope with the EU is on shaky floor, because the bloc seeks to wind down its gasoline use and fossil gas financing to fulfill local weather objectives.
European politicians additionally now really feel queasy about working with the autocratic Azerbaijani authorities after its fierce crackdown on activists, unbiased journalists and critics.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) has documented circumstances of 33 folks being detained for the reason that begin of 2023, most within the final 12 months, since Azerbaijan was confirmed as host of COP29.
“They’ve arrested an unprecedentedly giant excessive variety of folks in a comparatively brief area of time, and an ever-widening circle of individuals,” mentioned Rachel Denber from HRW.
The US State Division final 12 months additionally detailed “credible studies” of “important human rights points”, together with arbitrary killing, torture, political prisoners and unjustified arrests of journalists.
Law enforcement officials detained activists of the opposition occasion Common Entrance and the Nationwide Council of Democratic Forces in 2018. Pic: AP
One in all these was an educational with the London College of Economics, Dr Gubad Ibadoghlu.
He was arrested on a go to to Azerbaijan final 12 months on counterfeit foreign money prices “universally thought of to be spurious and motivated by his criticism of corruption within the nation”, the US State Division mentioned.
Mr Babayev advised Sky Information: “We strongly reject any allegations of political prisoners being held in Azerbaijan. We’re disillusioned that some actors are in search of to fire up a smear marketing campaign and detract from the necessary work that lies earlier than us.”
Commenting on this denial, Gubad’s son Ibad Bayramov mentioned: “It is like somebody wanting on the sky and saying it’s black. Whenever you see that sky is clearly not black.”
Dr Gubad Ibadoghlu and his son Ibad Bayramov in 2022. Pic: Ibad Bayramov
Mr Bayramov, who this week visited London to induce UK MPs to name for his father’s launch, advised Sky Information: “The Azerbaijan authorities in all probability thought they might discover a technique to cover all their totalitarian insurance policies as a result of [COP29] is about local weather.”
However he mentioned “extra folks now know concerning the human rights violations in Azerbaijan than ever earlier than”.
In October the European Parliament mentioned Azerbaijan’s “ongoing human rights abuses” had been “incompatible” with its position internet hosting COP – a course of that’s supposed to have interaction with civil society.
Citing this, in addition to fears upping gasoline imports from Azerbaijan may be “compensated in flip by Baku importing Russian gasoline”, the MEPs known as on the European Fee to ditch Azerbaijan’s gasoline.
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Good cop or dangerous cop?
The incentives to maintain pumping gasoline and what’s left of its oil are sturdy.
Transitioning away from them, as countries pledged last year, can be “financial suicide”, mentioned Gulmira Rzayeva from the Oxford Institute for Vitality Research.
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However it’s also extremely weak to the impacts of local weather change, given its water shortage and reliance on agriculture for one-third of its jobs.
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One take a look at of the way it desires to stability these two threats might be in its new local weather motion plan, which can or is probably not revealed throughout COP29. The present one has the bottom potential ranking.
The opposite might be the way it handles the subsequent two weeks of talks.
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Ruth Townend, who co-wrote a report with Ms Lahn, mentioned the management might “dig in its fingernails and attempt to proceed producing oil and gasoline for so long as potential”.
Or it might attempt to “break a brand new path… to maneuver previous fossil fuels to cope with that form of vulnerability and primarily safe their future”.
