Will Azerbaijan Use or Abuse Its Climate Change Leadership Moment?

It was always going to be a strange choice. This year’s United Nations climate conference, COP29, was set to be held in a member of the U.N.’s Eastern European States group, as the COP hosts rotate through that and four other collections of the world’s countries. The problem is that the choice of the host is supposed to be unanimous among each bloc — and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 meant this group was not exactly aligned in priorities as the bids came in.

Russia would block any European Union member state, and two other possibilities, Armenia and Azerbaijan, were holding out against the other for also obvious reasons. Eventually, Armenia dropped its objections, and Azerbaijan’s capital of Baku emerged as more or less the only option.

Again: A strange choice. Azerbaijan gets upward of 90 percent of its government revenue from the oil and gas industry, exceeding even that of COP28 petrostate host United Arab Emirates. The Freedom Index, put together by a U.S.-based non-profit, gives Azerbaijan a score of 9 out of 100. “Corruption is rampant, and the formal political opposition has been weakened by years of persecution,” wrote the authors of that index. “The authorities have carried out an extensive crackdown on civil liberties in recent years, leaving little room for independent expression or activism.”

On that last scale, it hasn’t been a great run for the COPs — COP27 host Egypt and the UAE both score an 18, still well within the “Not Free” range. That’s also three straight hosts of a global climate conference that very much depend on fossil fuels in their economies.

The last two, though, have managed to squeeze out some progress amidst the oily sheen. In Egypt, the world created a loss-and-damage fund, designed as a first step toward, essentially climate reparations to the poorer nations suffering from two centuries of richer countries’ emissions. In Dubai last year, the eventual agreement for the first time included the need to “transition away” from fossil fuels, even though loopholes abound.

Can Azerbaijan continue that modestly successful trend, or is it too awash in civil rights abuses and fossil gas?

“[G]iven Azerbaijan’s domestic record on climate action, the limitations of its political economy, and the government’s performance to date in its role as COP president-designate, the country may struggle to provide credible and effective leadership,” wrote authors of a report released Tuesday from Chatham House, a U.K.-based NGO.

The most glaring and frankly obscene possibility the report raises is that the COP host will actually use its leadership position to set the terms of future fossil fuel use and solidify its own potential for revenue.

“The country has made no secret of its hopes to be one of the ‘last standing’ among fossil fuel producers,” the authors wrote. “By inserting itself at the centre of the multilateral climate process, Azerbaijan’s government may hope to control conversations around the global energy transition so that the country’s own oil and gas reserves can remain financially viable for as long as possible.”

This potential comes at a time when the energy transition touted in that 2023 Dubai agreement feels dangerously far off. The oil industry continues to set records for production and profit, and many countries seem to be abandoning their climate ambitions. The finance prospects of COP29, involving a theoretical new pledge for rich countries to provide much needed dollars to the developing world, appear “extremely bleak” and at risk of outright failure. It’s not great!

The Chatham House report offers some recommendations for the COP29 host, though I’m not sure how receptive a country engaged in ongoing “crackdowns on Azerbaijani civil society” and that calls its fossil fuel reserves a “gift of the gods” is going to be here. A first step, the authors say, is to “openly acknowledge” the conflict between a fossil fuel-based economy and a world on fire.

“Reducing dependence on fossil fuels will take Azerbaijan many years,” they wrote. “Azerbaijan’s government must ‘bite the bullet’ with an ambitious revision” of its national climate plan — something it actually went backward on at last revision in 2023, and engage much more energetically with the international community than its recent track record suggests is on the table.

“[T]o be even remotely credible on climate leadership, Baku must at least begin an inspirational narrative of change for the country, back this up with ambitious commitments and concrete actions, and gather other nations behind its example,” the authors concluded. “This is the historic opportunity that Azerbaijan has, yet which seems to be passing it by.”