A small Petrostate is leading the world’s climate talks

When delegates of the world gather next week in Baku, Azerbaijan, for the most important annual meeting on climate change, their meetings will pass by a stinky more, polluted through the oil fields on the other side. Of this city first oil reservoir was built on the shores of the lake in the 19th century; almost now half of Azerbaijan’s GDP and more than 90 percent of export revenues come from oil and gas. It is, in no uncertain terms, a petrostate.

Last year’s meeting of the UN Conference of Parties (COP) was also a parade wealth of the oil state and interests. The conference, held in the United Arab Emirates, attracted thousands of people oil and gas lobbyists; the president was an executive of the UAE’s national oil company. Baku’s COP president, the Azerbaijani Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources, is Also An ex-director of are oil company.

Optimistically, transferring the influence of this conference to the UAE, and now Azerbaijan – states whose interests are in many ways antithetical to its purpose – means that leaders dependent on fossil fuels will have to bear the costs of burning them. As host country this year, Azerbaijan’s job will be to broker a deal that secures billions – possibly trillions – of dollars from rich countries to help the green transition in poorer countries. Developing countries need these funds to set ambitious climate goals, with the next round due in February 2025. A failed COP could set off a chain reaction of failure. The world is betting that a country that has shown a bare minimum of involvement in this entire process can keep us all on track to avoid catastrophic warming.

Baku came to host COP through a process of elimination. The hosting duties vary between regions of the world; this year it is Eastern Europe’s turn. Russia has ruled out the possibility of a country in the European Union, leaving only Armenia and Azerbaijan standing. Armenia withdrew its offer after Azerbaijan agreed to release him 32 Armenian soldiers out of prison. (Armenia released two Azerbaijani soldiers in return.)

In many ways, Azerbaijan is an extremely unlikely candidate. Joanna Depledge, a fellow at the University of Cambridge and an expert on international climate negotiations, has followed the COP for all 29 years so far and told me that Azerbaijan has “been pretty much off the radar since its inception.” The country has virtually never spoken in previous negotiations and is not part of any of the COP’s main political coalitions, she said. The Paris Agreement requires each country to commit every five years to how it will reduce emissions in a nationally determined contribution plan; Azerbaijan is “one of the few countries whose second NDC was weaker than the first,” Depledge said. For Steve Pye, professor of energy systems at University College London, having a petrostate host a climate meeting is an unequivocal conflict of interest. The country has made clear it wants to boost gas exports and has given “no indication” that it wants to move away from dependence on fossil fuels, he told me. That’s an uncomfortable, even bizarre position from the entity responsible for facilitating delicate climate diplomacy.

Still, Azerbaijan can in some ways “be seen as an honest broker” in the financial negotiations because it is neither a traditional donor country nor a recipient of the funds being negotiated, Depledge said. Azerbaijan, for its part, say it is intended to “enable action” to “achieve deep, rapid and sustainable emissions reductions… while leaving no one behind.”

The whole point of COP is to bring diverse countries together, Depledge said; Global climate diplomacy cannot move forward without oil states on board. Last year’s COP in Dubai resulted in the first global agreement to move away from fossil fuels, and was seen as a modest success. To implement the COP, Azerbaijan will be forced to take global climate change directly into account; the team will have to listen to everyone, including the countries currently most affected by climate change. That will certainly have an impact, Depledge thinks. Ultimately, Azerbaijan will also have to adapt to a post-oil economy World Bank estimates that the country’s oil reserves will dwindle by the middle of this century. And since it was chosen as host, it has joined a great international pledge limit methane emissionsand announced that his third NDC (unlike his previous one) will be aligned with the goals of the Paris Agreement – ​​although the actual plan has yet to be unveiled.

COP also gives Azerbaijan the opportunity to clean up its image. After Armenia withdrew its offer, Azerbaijan labeled it a “peace COP,” proposing a global ceasefire for the days before, during and after the meeting. Just before the talks, an army of bots was deployed on X to praise Azerbaijan. The Washington Post reported. Ronald Grigor Suny, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Michigan who has written extensively about Azerbaijan, told me that he views the country’s hosting operation as an elaborate propaganda campaign to cleanse the image of a fundamentally authoritarian and oil-committed country. place that took place last year which was much legal and human rights scholars considered one ethnic cleansing campaign in one of the Armenian enclaves. “This is a staging of an event to impress the people with the normality, acceptability and modernity of this small state,” he said. But there is already hope for peace-related initiatives, including a peace deal with Armenia decreasing. Climate and geopolitical experts have given the whole thing an ‘a.’ cynical PR stuntAnd Amnesty International reports this that the country, which Azerbaijani human rights defenders say is holding hundreds of academics and activists in prison, has jailed more of its critics since the COP presidency was announced.

Azerbaijan will still need to reach a real climate deal by the end of the event to declare it a success. A failure would be very embarrassing and, more importantly, dangerous for the planet. The world is on track for warming of 3.1 degrees Celsius by 2100, and total CO2 emissions in 2030 will be only 2.6 percent lower than in 2019, if countries’ current NDCs are followed. new analysis. Maintaining the 1.5 degree Celsius warming limit would require a 43 percent reduction over the same period, which many scientists now believe is unachievable. Now, keeping warming below the much more catastrophic 2 degrees limit will require much faster and more decisive action than the slow COP process has historically delivered.

Even if this COP ends successfully, Pye, who worked on the UN Environment Program’s Production Gap Report, notes that without follow-up, what happens at the conference is just lip service. Once the COP spotlight was off, the UAE, for example, more or less returned to business as usual; this year, the state oil company increased its production capacity. On the other hand, the UAE is also investing heavily in clean energy, following a maximalist approach to more of everything – just like the theory which President Joe Biden has followed in the United States, which recently became the world’s largest oil producer and gas exporter, even as Biden’s domestic policies, especially the Inflation Reduction Act, have pushed the country toward key climate goals.

Perhaps more than Baku’s leadership, the results of the US elections will set the tone for the coming COP. News of a second Trump presidency would likely neutralize any hopes for a strong climate finance deal in Baku. In 2016, news of Trump’s election arrived while that year’s COP was underway in Marrakech, to devastating effect. America’s functional absence from the climate negotiations has marred the proceedings for four years. Wherever the COP is held, America’s willingness to negotiate in good faith has the power to make or break climate agreements. In other words, it is still possible to save the world, if we want to.