When delegates of the world collect in Baku, Azerbaijan, subsequent week for a very powerful yearly assembly on local weather change, their conferences will overlook a reeking lake, polluted by the oil fields on the opposite aspect. This metropolis’s first oil reservoir was constructed on the lake’s shores within the nineteenth century; now almost half of Azerbaijan’s GDP and greater than 90 p.c of its export income come from oil and fuel. It’s, in no unsure phrases, a petrostate.
Final 12 months, too, the UN Convention of Events (COP) assembly was a parade of oil-state wealth and pursuits. Held within the United Arab Emirates, the convention included hundreds of oil and fuel lobbyists; its president was an government of the UAE’s nationwide oil firm. Baku’s COP president, Azerbaijan’s ecology and natural-resources minister, is additionally an ex-executive of its oil firm.
Optimistically, handing affect over this convention to the UAE, and now Azerbaijan—states whose pursuits are, in some ways, against its purpose—signifies that leaders who rely on fossil fuels should face the prices of burning them. As host this 12 months, Azerbaijan’s job can be to dealer an settlement that secures billions—probably trillions—of {dollars} from rich international locations to assist alongside the inexperienced transition in poorer international locations. Creating nations want these funds to set bold local weather objectives, the subsequent spherical of that are due in February 2025. A failed COP might set off a series response of failure. The world is playing {that a} nation that’s proven a naked minimal of dedication to this complete course of can maintain us all on a path to staving off catastrophic warming.
Baku got here to host COP by technique of elimination. Internet hosting duties rotate amongst areas of the world; this 12 months is Japanese Europe’s flip. Russia nixed the opportunity of any European Union nation, leaving solely Armenia and Azerbaijan standing. Armenia retracted its bid after Azerbaijan agreed to launch 32 Armenian service members from jail. (Armenia freed two Azerbaijani troopers in trade.)
In some ways, Azerbaijan is an especially unlikely candidate. Joanna Depledge, a fellow on the College of Cambridge and an professional on worldwide local weather negotiations, has adopted all 29 years of COP to date, and advised me that Azerbaijan has “been just about off the radar for the reason that starting.” The nation has rarely spoken throughout earlier negotiations, and isn’t a part of any of COP’s main political coalitions, she mentioned. The Paris Settlement requires that, each 5 years, every nation should lay out the way it will scale back emissions in a Nationally Decided Contribution plan; Azerbaijan is “one of many only a few international locations whose second NDC was weaker than the primary,” Depledge mentioned. To Steve Pye, an energy-systems professor at College Faculty London, having a petrostate host a local weather assembly presents an unambiguous battle of curiosity. The nation has been clear that it’s seeking to ramp up fuel exports and has made “no indication” that it needs to maneuver away from fossil-fuel dependency, he advised me. That’s an ungainly, even weird, stance for the entity accountable for facilitating delicate local weather diplomacy to carry.
Nonetheless, in some methods, Azerbaijan “might be seen as an trustworthy dealer” within the finance negotiations, as a result of it’s neither a standard donor nation nor a recipient of the funds below negotiation, Depledge mentioned. Azerbaijan, for its half, says it intends to “allow motion” to ship “deep, fast and sustained emission reductions … whereas leaving nobody behind.”
The entire level of COP is to carry numerous international locations collectively, Depledge mentioned; world local weather diplomacy can not transfer ahead with out petrostates on board. Final 12 months’s COP, in Dubai, resulted within the first world settlement to transition away from fossil fuels, and was seen as a modest success. To run COP, Azerbaijan can be pressured to reckon with world local weather change immediately; its workforce must take heed to everybody, together with the international locations most ravaged by local weather change at the moment. That’s certain to have an effect, Depledge thinks. In the end, Azerbaijan will even have to adapt to a post-oil financial system: The World Financial institution estimates that the nation’s oil reserves will dwindle by mid-century. And, since being chosen to host, it has joined a serious worldwide pledge to restrict methane emissions, in addition to introduced that its third NDC (in contrast to its earlier one) can be aligned with the Paris Settlement’s objectives—though it has but to unveil the precise plan.
COP additionally offers Azerbaijan an opportunity to burnish its picture. After Armenia withdrew its internet hosting bid, Azerbaijan branded this a “peace COP,” proposing a worldwide cease-fire for the times earlier than, throughout, and after the assembly. A military of bots have been deployed on X to reward Azerbaijan simply forward of the talks, The Washington Publish reported. Ronald Grigor Suny, a professor emeritus of historical past on the College of Michigan who has written extensively about Azerbaijan, advised me that he views the nation’s internet hosting train as an elaborate propaganda marketing campaign to sanitize the picture of a essentially authoritarian and oil-committed nation—a spot that final 12 months performed what many authorized and human-rights students thought-about an ethnic-cleansing marketing campaign in one in all its Armenian enclaves. “It is a staging of an occasion to impress individuals by the normality, the acceptability, the modernity of this little state,” he mentioned. However hope for any peace-related initiatives, together with a peace take care of Armenia, is already dwindling. Local weather and geopolitical specialists have known as the entire thing a cynical PR stunt, and Amnesty Worldwide stories that the nation, which Azerbaijani human-rights defenders estimate holds tons of of teachers and activists in jail, has jailed extra of its critics for the reason that COP presidency was introduced.
Azerbaijan will nonetheless have to dealer an actual local weather deal by the tip of the occasion for it to be declared successful. Failure can be deeply embarrassing and, extra pressingly, harmful for the planet. The world is on observe for as much as 3.1 levels Celsius of warming by 2100, and complete carbon-dioxide emissions in 2030 can be solely 2.6 p.c decrease than in 2019 if international locations’ present NDCs are adopted, in accordance with new evaluation. Holding to a 1.5 diploma Celsius warming restrict would require a decreasing of 43 p.c over the identical time interval, which many scientists now say is out of attain. Holding warming beneath the much more catastrophic 2 diploma restrict now will take far sooner and extra decisive motion than the gradual COP course of has traditionally produced.
Even when this COP ends in success, Pye, who has labored on the UN Setting Program’s Manufacturing Hole Report, notes that, with out follow-through, what occurs on the convention is merely lip service. As soon as the highlight of COP was off it, the UAE, as an illustration, returned roughly to enterprise as typical; this 12 months, the state oil firm elevated its manufacturing capability. Then once more, the UAE is investing closely in clear power, too, following a maximalist method of extra of every little thing—very like the concept that President Joe Biden has adopted in the USA, which just lately turned the world’s greatest oil producer and fuel exporter at the same time as Biden’s home insurance policies, most notably the Inflation Discount Act, have pushed the nation towards key local weather objectives.
Maybe greater than Baku’s management, the outcomes of the U.S. election will set the tone for the upcoming COP. Information of a second Trump presidency would possible neutralize any hope for a powerful local weather finance settlement in Baku. In 2016, information of Trump’s election arrived whereas that 12 months’s COP was below approach in Marrakech, to withering impact. America’s practical absence from local weather negotiations marred proceedings for 4 years. Wherever COP is held, American willingness to barter in good religion has the ability to make or break the local weather offers. Put one other approach, it’s nonetheless potential to avoid wasting the world, if we need to.
