View from Baku: We must wash away division at COP29

As predictably as sea levels rise when emissions climb, accusations of “greenwashing” — from some quarters, at least — have followed the announcement of Azerbaijan as host of the annual UN climate summit. As COP29 approaches later this month, those voices have grown louder.

At the heart of the charge lies a caricature: that Azerbaijan thought that by simply hosting COP, it could somehow obscure its reputation as an oil and gas producer. Yet one of the first things those unfamiliar with Azerbaijan will learn is that fact.

Our history has been profoundly shaped by fossil fuel extraction since the world’s first commercial well was drilled in Baku in the 19th century. Rather than obscure its past, hosting COP only ensures it is more widely known.

Azerbaijan, whose share of global emissions stand at 0.01%, is not ashamed of its role in industry. Oil and gas revenues have funded investments in healthcare, infrastructure, and education and led to a 10-fold increase in GDP per capita since independence from the Soviet Union.

It has also served our partners’ energy security, whilst Azerbaijan’s supply of transitionary gas to Europe in the recent past has prevented a more pronounced return to dirtier coal as it faced a pinch of supply.

Energy is the cornerstone of the modern world. Yet alternatives to fossil fuels cannot yet fulfil the world’s demand. And this is what we must change.

We should ask ourselves what these summits are for — virtue-signalling or making possible this different future? Climate purity is inimical to the latter. How some expect a solution without the active engagement of producers is left unanswered by those accustomed to levelling accusations rather than responding to them.

Taking their reasoning to its logical conclusion reveals its absurdity. If producers should be precluded from hosting COP, then why not also the consumers who import and burn the fossil fuels? No country in the world meets this criterion.

Nations should be judged not on their inheritance but by the direction they’re heading. Azerbaijan has little control over global demand for gas or the logic of markets that will snap to fulfil it. What it can offer is an alternative.

On the brink of long-elusive peace deal

Abundant wind reserves in the Caspian Sea far outstrips domestic demand. Azerbaijan has signed an MOU to ensure this bounty of renewable energy can reach European partners via a subsea electricity cable beneath the Black Sea.

But a project on this transformative scale requires collaboration and commitment from various stakeholders — producers and consumers alike.

Climate change affects us all; we’re in this together. Yet rather than remain as an empty slogan, the logic should filter through to these mega projects that will enable a different future.

Rather than grappling with the practicalities of climate action, some prefer the more prosaic world of attacking the COP hosts. Regardless of what Azerbaijan says or delivers, those in the latter camp will see grand schemes. But they are difficult to square with the fact that Azerbaijan had little expectation of hosting the conference in the first place.

This year, it is the turn of the Eastern Europeans to host COP. Yet geopolitics across the breadth of the region had hindered a country emerging.

For our part, Armenia had vetoed our bid. Armenia had occupied almost a fifth of our internationally recognised territory for the past three decades, whilst Azerbaijan had taken back these territories in 2020.

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Yet, as part of historic peace talks between our two nations, Armenia agreed to support our bid, whilst we agreed to support the Armenian candidature for Eastern European Group Cop Bureau membership. The breakthrough came a year later than hosts are usually selected, giving Azerbaijan just half the time to prepare for the conference.

With this territory, attacks have perhaps expectedly come from those who oppose peace talks between Azerbaijan and Armenia. COP serves only as a branch on which to hang all manner of criticism, including apparent attempts of Azerbaijan to now “peace-wash” its reputation, ignoring the fact its hosting was a product of peace talks or that — as both sides have acknowledged — we stand on the brink of a long-elusive peace deal.

Complex and challenging work

Azerbaijan aims only for one washing at COP: to scrub away the divisions that lie between countries.

We must help developed nations agree a new climate fund that will turn promises to phase down global emissions at the past COP into reality, whilst protecting developing countries on the front lines of climate change — in line with our common but differentiated responsibilities due to historical emissions.

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This is complex and challenging work. For some, it is understandably easier to find refuge in simple, cheap, criticism.

Hikmet Hajiyev is foreign affairs adviser to the president of Azerbaijan.

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