Crucial climate talks begin in country that hails oil and gas as “gift of the gods”

The spotlight is on Azerbaijan as the small petro-state in the South Caucasus hosts the United Nations’ biggest climate conference. 

Diplomats from across the world will descend on the capital Baku from Monday for the annual climate summit, known as COP29, to discuss how to avoid increasing threats from climate change in a place that was one of the birthplaces of the oil industry.

It was in Baku where the world’s first oil fields were developed  in 1846 and where Azerbaijan led the world in oil production in 1899.

Sandwiched between Iran to the south and Russia to the north, Azerbaijan is on the Caspian Sea and was part of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1991. 

Almost all of Azerbaijan’s exports are oil and gas, two of the world’s leading sources of planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions. 

President Ilham Aliyev described them in April as a “gift of the gods”.

Azerbaijan’s authoritarian leader, Aliyev is the son of the former president and has been in power for more than two decades, overseeing a crackdown on freedom of speech and civil society. 

Aliyev, who has said it is a “big honour” for Azerbaijan to host the conference, wants his country to use more renewable energy at home so it can export more oil and gas abroad.

In Baku, the signs of fossil fuel addiction are everywhere 

In metal cages next to Azerbaijan’s Aquatic Palace sporting venue are pumpjacks – a sign says they extract more than two tons of oil a day. 

Others pump away elsewhere, sucking up oil in view of one of Baku’s religious and tourist sites, the Bibi Heybat mosque that was rebuilt in the 1990s after it was destroyed by the Bolsheviks almost 80 years ago. 

Aliyev said he considers it “a sign of respect” from the international community that Azerbaijan is hosting COP29 and a recognition of what Azerbaijan is doing around green energy.

Some of those plans involve developing hydropower, solar and wind projects in Karabakh, a region populated by ethnic Armenians who fled to Armenia after a lightning military offensive by Azerbaijan in September 2023.

Aliyev said in a speech in March that his country was in the “active phase of green transition” but added that “no one can ignore the fact that without fossil fuel, the world cannot develop, at least in the foreseeable future”.

Mukhtar Babayev, Azerbaijan’s environment minister and former vice president at the state energy company Socar, will serve as conference president. 

Babayev said in April he wanted to show how this “oil and gas country of the past” could show the world a green path with its efforts to ramp up renewable energy, especially wind power.

He said he believed his country’s COP29 summit must build on  2023’s agreement  to transition away from fossil fuels and pave the way for countries to come together in 2025 on beefed-up and financed plans to clamp down on heat-trapping gases.

But plenty of people doubt those commitments.

Multiple organisations say Azerbaijan’s commitment to the green energy transition amounts to greenwashing – giving the impression that the country is doing more than it is to combat climate change.

Claims of greenwashing and civil society crackdowns abound.

While many countries including the United States and the United Arab Emirates – 2023’s host – grapple with the challenges of transitioning away from fossil fuels, Azerbaijan has historically not been proactive in that regard, said Kate Watters, executive director at Crude Accountability, which monitors environmental issues in the Caspian Sea region.

Environmental monitoring in Azerbaijan is dangerous, she said, referencing a crackdown on civil society that has effectively snuffed out any real opposition and seen people detained. 

There’s no effective mechanism in Azerbaijan for locals to ring alarm bells about exposure to pollutants from the oil and gas industry, Watters said. 

She referenced health issues such as rashes and sickness that residents might experience living near the Sangachal oil and gas terminal just outside Baku but indicated that their concerns were not heard.

Azerbaijani government officials did not respond to numerous requests from The Associated Press for comment.

Babayev has pointed to Azerbaijan experiencing higher-than-normal temperatures and said he wants states to come together to improve plans to stop the emission of gases that contribute to global warming. 

But his country has been criticised for failing to clamp down on exactly that.

Analysis from Global Witness, a nonprofit organisation, found the volume of gas flared at oil and gas facilities in Azerbaijan increased by 10.5 per cent since 2018. 

Gas flaring is a major source of soot, carbon dioxide and methane emissions that contribute to global warming. 

It happens when energy companies burn off excess gas instead of capturing it when it’s released while drilling for oil.

It’s been blamed by human rights groups and investigative journalists for some of Azerbaijanis’ health issues, including around the Sangachal terminal.

“We’re heading into a COP where even the host isn’t bothering to do the basic functions of climate diplomacy,” head of fossil fuels investigations at Global Witness Louis Wilson said. 

Azerbaijan owns one of the largest gas fields in the world, Shah Deniz, and BP announced in April the start of oil production from a new offshore platform also in the Caspian Sea. 

Baku is planning to hike its fossil fuel production in the next decade and its natural resources have transformed it into a geopolitical player.

Before Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Moscow supplied some 40 per cent of Europe’s natural gas through four pipelines but most of that was later cut off.

That created an opportunity for Azerbaijan, with the EU striking a deal later in 2022 to double its imports of Azeri gas to 20 billion cubic metres a year by 2027. 

Azerbaijani officials have argued that it is unfair to criticise Baku for producing more fossil fuels when there is a demand across Europe as national governments endeavour to keep fuel prices low for citizens. 

Azerbaijan’s hosting of COP29 will turn the spotlight on the nation that makes most of its money from selling fossil fuels but it might also highlight Europe’s – and the world’s – continuing dependence on them. 

For many climate experts, the question for Azerbaijan is whether the country that was part of the beginnings of the fossil fuel industry is serious about hosting negotiations focused on moving the world toward green energy.

AAP