From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

How could this get funnier? Azerbaijan, once described as the nation where it rains oil, has just appointed a state oil company veteran as COP29 President.

Azerbaijan appoint state oil company veteran as Cop29 president 

Published on 04/01/2024, 5:19pm

Mukhtar Babayev spent 26 years at Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil and gas company Socar, where he tried to limit the company’s environmental damage.

By Joe Lo

The government of Azerbaijan has appointed its environment minister Mukhtar Babayev to be the president of the Cop29 climate talks in Baku in November.

While Babayev will chair the talks, Azerbaijan’s deputy foreign minister Yalchin Rafiyev will be his lead negotiator, according to the Cop28 presidency.

Babayev spent 26 years at Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil and gas company Socar, where he tried to limit the company’s environmental damage, before becoming environment minister in 2018.

One negotiator who met Babayev recently described him as “nice” and “soft” but added “you don’t feel the authority and status like from [Cop28 president] Sultan [Al-Jaber], I don’t feel he is an independent person able to push for phasing out fossil fuels globally”.

Rafiyev is a newcomer to climate diplomacy. He did not attend the Cop26 or Cop27 climate talks and his active X (formerly known as Twitter) account has only mentioned climate change once in over six years.

…Read more: https://www.climatechangenews.com/2024/01/04/azerbaijan-appoint-state-oil-company-veteran-as-cop29-president/

My first thought this has to be a joke to annoy environmentalists, but the UN unhabitat.org website confirms the location of the next climate conference;

2024 UN Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC COP 29)

Event date

Monday 11 November, 2024 – Sunday 24 November, 2024

Website

2024 UN Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC COP 29)

Description

The 29th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 29) to the UNFCCC will convene from 11 to 24 November 2024. It will take place in Azerbaijan.

…Read more: https://unhabitat.org/events/2024-un-climate-change-conference-unfccc-cop-29

Obviously it would be unfair to let the UAE get all the oil and gas sales action, it was inevitable another major petro-industry player would want a chance to sell their product to climate delegates.

I predicted Saudi Arabia would be the next venue, but the Persian Gulf is a little unsettled right now – Yemen based Houthi rebels claimed responsibility for burning an oil depot in Jeddah in 2022, apparently as part of Saudi’s ongoing proxy war with Iran, so maybe Azerbaijan was seen as a more settled venue.

Having said that Azerbaijan’s geopolitical situation is not entirely settled. Azerbaijan fought and won a significant battle against Armenia in 2020, which ended with a significant border shift in Azerbaijan’s favour, and Russian peacekeepers stationed in the disputed border region. There were continued clashes as recently as 2022, so international arms dealers might also be interested in attending the climate conference. It is likely Armenian delegates will want to attend the conference, so the COP29 floor show could be particularly entertaining this year.

The only question, how will COP29 organisers convince small nations delegates to sign the deal? Surely they won’t fall for the same trick twice?

COP28: Were Small Nation Delegates Lured Away so a Deal could be Struck?

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Correction (EW): John Hultquist points out Azerbaijan seized control of ethnic Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2023, leading to the ethnic Armenian population fleeing the affected region, so the area is hotter than I thought. Perhaps COP29 will be the “Lord of War” international arms dealer climate conference rather than another COP28 style petro-deal climate conference. I wonder if delegates will remember to put in an appearance at the climate sessions?