Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Climate

If You Thought Dubai Was a Bad Place for COP, Wait Until It Goes To Azerbaijan

Yes, it’s another petrostate. But that’s just the beginning.

Ilham Aliyev.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images, Library of Congress

When the announcement came that COP29 will be held in Baku in 2024, the immediate reaction in the climate community was “again?!

It wasn’t that Azerbaijan — a nation of about 10 million people, situated on the Caspian Sea at the southern tail of the Caucasus mountains — had hosted the global climate summit before. Actually, it almost didn’t get the 2024 hosting gig at all: COP29 was briefly homeless after Russia vowed to block Bulgaria’s bid (because Bulgaria is part of the European Union) and longtime enemies Azerbaijan and Armenia vowed to block each other’s bids (because of what many have characterized as an ethnic cleansing). Other nations in the region balked at the sheer size of what the COP event has become. At one point, even Australia and Bonn, Germany, were on the table as potential COP29 replacements if the Eastern European bloc couldn’t pull things together.

But, rather amazingly, it did. That means — as countless headlines have blared, and as you’re undoubtedly already aware — that the United Nations summit intended to assess and progress the goal of limiting climate change will be held in an oil and gas-producing state for the third consecutive year. Cue the groans.

That is reason enough for hand-wringing, especially after a record turn-out of fossil fuel lobbyists at the convention this year, not to mention the scandal over the head of ADNOC leading the whole shebang. But if you thought all that was absurd and disturbing, wait until you hear about Azerbaijan.

“It’s stunning to me that they would make Baku the next place for COP,” Ronald Suny, a distinguished professor emeritus of History at the University of Michigan and an expert on the South Caucasian nations who’s written extensively about Azerbaijan, told me.

Yes, Azerbaijan is a petrostate. But more alarmingly, it is also even more repressive and authoritarian than the United Arab Emirates based on the scale developed by Freedom House, a human rights watchdog group. “Azerbaijan is not even a one-party state,” Suny explained. “It’s a one-person or one-family state.”

To make a long and complicated history very short, former First Secretary of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan Heydar Aliyev came to power after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1993 and eventually passed his title of head of state onto his onlyson, Ilham Aliyev, in “irregular” elections in 2003. Ilham Aliyev is still president today, and will remain so indefinitely. “There’s no dissent allowed,” Suny said. “There’s absolute control of the media — much stricter than Russia. Anyone who criticizes [the government] is either in jail or in exile. And lots of people are in jail.”

On the one hand, having COP29 in Baku could be viewed as a small positive. “For years, climate change has been a factor…in wars and conflicts,” reads one effusive lead paragraph in The Associated Press. “Now for the first time, it’s part of a peace deal.” True, the attention from the UN helped to spur a prisoner exchange and peace talks between Azerbaijan and Armenia following renewed bloodshed over the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region earlier this fall. It’s also likely that Azerbaijan will be on its best behavior ahead of the UN convention, given that it’s now under a higher-than-usual level of international scrutiny. Giving Baku the convention “is not necessarily a bad thing,” argues Rashmee Roshan Lall, an international affairs columnist, on her blog, “because it shows that COPs reflect the diversity of the world in which we live and seek to preserve.”

But allowing COP29 to happen inAzerbaijan also helps to legitimize and sanitize Ilham Aliyev’s rule. This is why other authoritarian regimes from Russia to Saudi Arabia to Qatar and Dubai have vied to host global events such as the soccer World Cup and the Olympics. Since 2012, Baku has played host to the Eurovision Song Contest, the First European Games, and the Formula 1 Grand Prix, according to Gubad Ibadoghlu, a senior policy analyst at Azerbaijan’s Economic Research Center, writing for the website Crude Accountability. The government in Baku explicitly “tries to whitewash its damaged image in the international arena by ‘paying attention to modernization’ and by creating connections with global leaders in the sphere of sports and culture,” Ibadoghlu said.

Suny sees the same thing happening now with COP. “It could be that Azerbaijan, which has tried and worked very hard to refurbish and beautify its image, will benefit from such an event and will be happy to put on a good face,” he said. And as Ibadoghlu pointed out, Azerbaijan has spent a huge amount of money on this program over the years. “It’s a very rich state and it can divert its resources — because it certainly doesn’t go into the people — to building extraordinary buildings,” Suny added. By allowing COP to be held in a country that viciously cracks down on dissent and free speech, then, the UN is not only turning a blind eye to but actively assisting what is basically a twisted form of greenwashing.

Curiously, estimates indicate that Azerbaijan might not be an oil state for much longer. The nation is expected to deplete its supply and sole source of wealth within the next 25 years — an involuntary phase-out by 2050, if you will. According to a World Bank report published two weeks ago, “urgent action on climate” — including investing in renewable energy, prioritizing energy efficiency, and climate-proofing its agricultural sector — “can help Azerbaijan minimize the risks emerging from the global low-carbon transition and protect the living standards of its people.”

In that sense, at the least, Baku needs COP. Now we have to wait to see what it does with its chance.

Blue

You’re out of free articles.

Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Energy

The New Campaign to Save Renewables: Lower Electricity Bills

Defenders of the Inflation Reduction Act have hit on what they hope will be a persuasive argument for why it should stay.

A leaf and a quarter.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

With the fate of the Inflation Reduction Act and its tax credits for building and producing clean energy hanging in the balance, the law’s supporters have increasingly turned to dollars-and-cents arguments in favor of its preservation. Since the election, industry and research groups have put out a handful of reports making the broad argument that in addition to higher greenhouse gas emissions, taking away these tax credits would mean higher electricity bills.

The American Clean Power Association put out a report in December, authored by the consulting firm ICF, arguing that “energy tax credits will drive $1.9 trillion in growth, creating 13.7 million jobs and delivering 4x return on investment.”

Keep reading...Show less
Green
Politics

AM Briefing: A Letter from EPA Staff

On environmental justice grants, melting glaciers, and Amazon’s carbon credits

EPA Workers Wrote an Anonymous Letter to America
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: Severe thunderstorms are expected across the Mississippi Valley this weekend • Storm Martinho pushed Portugal’s wind power generation to “historic maximums” • It’s 62 degrees Fahrenheit, cloudy, and very quiet at Heathrow Airport outside London, where a large fire at an electricity substation forced the international travel hub to close.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Trump issues executive order to expand critical mineral output

President Trump invoked emergency powers Thursday to expand production of critical minerals and reduce the nation’s reliance on other countries. The executive order relies on the Defense Production Act, which “grants the president powers to ensure the nation’s defense by expanding and expediting the supply of materials and services from the domestic industrial base.”

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Electric Vehicles

These States Are Still Pushing Public EV Charging Programs

If you live in Illinois or Massachusetts, you may yet get your robust electric vehicle infrastructure.

EV charging.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Robust incentive programs to build out electric vehicle charging stations are alive and well — in Illinois, at least. ComEd, a utility provider for the Chicago area, is pushing forward with $100 million worth of rebates to spur the installation of EV chargers in homes, businesses, and public locations around the Windy City. The program follows up a similar $87 million investment a year ago.

Federal dollars, once the most visible source of financial incentives for EVs and EV infrastructure, are critically endangered. Automakers and EV shoppers fear the Trump administration will attack tax credits for purchasing or leasing EVs. Executive orders have already suspended the $5 billion National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program, a.k.a. NEVI, which was set up to funnel money to states to build chargers along heavily trafficked corridors. With federal support frozen, it’s increasingly up to the automakers, utilities, and the states — the ones with EV-friendly regimes, at least — to pick up the slack.

Keep reading...Show less
Green