Azerbaijan is the host of the UN’s climate conference, shining a spotlight on the petrostate

The spotlight is on Azerbaijan as the tiny petrostate in the South Caucasus hosts the U.N.’s biggest climate conference.

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

It was in Baku where the globe’s first oil fields were developed  in 1846 and where Azerbaijan led the globe 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. Nearly all of Azerbaijan’s exports are oil and gas, two of the globe’s leading sources of earth-warming carbon dioxide emissions. President Ilham Aliyev described them in April as a “gift of the gods.”

Aliyev is Azerbaijan’s authoritarian chief. He is the son of the former president and has been in power for more than two decades, overseeing a crackdown on liberty of talk and civil population. The Associated Press was not granted permission by Azerbaijan’s authorities to update in the country ahead of the conference.

Aliyev has said it is a “large integrity” for Azerbaijan to host the conference. He has also said he wants his country to use more renewable vigor at home is so that it can export more oil and gas abroad.

In metal cages next to Azerbaijan’s Aquatic Palace sporting venue are pumpjacks — a sign says they extract just over 2 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 regard” from the international throng that Azerbaijan is hosting COP and a recognition of what Azerbaijan is doing around green vigor.

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 talk in March that his country is in the “energetic phase of green shift” but added that “no one can ignore the truth that without fossil fuel, the globe cannot develop, at least in the foreseeable upcoming.”

Mukhtar Babayev, Azerbaijan’s surroundings minister and former vice president at the state vigor corporation Socar, will serve as conference president of the talks. Babayev said in April he wants to display how this “oil and gas country of the history” can display the globe a green path with its efforts to ramp up renewable vigor, especially wind power.

He said he believes his country’s COP summit must construct on  last year’s agreement  to shift away from fossil fuels and pave the way for countries to arrive together in 2025 on beefed-up and financed plans to clamp down on heat-trapping gases.

But plenty of people question those commitments.

Multiple organizations declare Azerbaijan’s commitment to the green vigor shift amounts to greenwashing – giving the impression that the country is doing more than it is to combat climate transformation.

While many countries including the United States and the United Arab Emirates — last year’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 risky, she said, referencing a crackdown on civil population 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 may encounter living near the Sangachal oil and gas terminal just outside Baku but indicated that their concerns are 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 arrive together to enhance plans to stop the emission of gases that contribute to global warming. But his country has been criticized for failing to clamp down on exactly that.

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

Gas flaring is a major source of soot, carbon dioxide and methane emissions that contribute to global warming. It happens when vigor 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,” Louis Wilson, head of fossil fuels investigations at Global Witness, told AP.

The Paris climate agreement requires countries to submit plans to combat climate transformation, with Azerbaijan’s latest update coming in 2023. A throng of climate scientists rated it “critically insufficient” in September. It’s expected the country will submit an updated schedule this year.

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

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

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

That meant chance for Azerbaijan, with the EU striking a deal later that year to double its imports of Azeri gas to 20 billion cubic meters a year by 2027. But there are questions as to whether Azerbaijan can meet that demand and disagreements over the terms of the deal.

“The more renewable sources we have, the more natural gas we will save,” Aliyev said in March, noting the fuel saved will be “an additional contribution to the Southern Gas Corridor,” which takes gas from the Caspian Sea to Europe.

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

Azerbaijan’s hosting of COP will turn the spotlight on the country which makes most of its money from selling fossil fuels but it may also highlight Europe’s — and the globe’s — continuing dependence on them.

For many climate experts, the question for Azerbaijan is whether the country that saw the beginnings of the fossil fuel industry is solemn about hosting negotiations concentrated on moving the globe toward green vigor.

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