Today marks the second and ultimate week of COP29—the annual U.N. local weather change summit, which seeks options to the world’s prime existential downside. The host? An oil-rich nation that, in keeping with the CIA World Factbook, is residence to the Absheron peninsula within the Caspian Sea that native scientists say is “the ecologically most devastated space on the planet.”
Being a petro-state just isn’t against the law. However how Azerbaijan’s fossil gas wealth exacerbates the human situation at residence and overseas makes its internet hosting of COP29 an Orwellian tragedy. Whereas 95% of Azerbaijan’s exports are oil and gasoline, in keeping with the environmental justice NGO Crude Accountability, the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants just isn’t benefiting from this wealth. Crude Accountability’s 2020 report “The Empty Bucket of the State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan” paperwork how high quality of life is reducing and, in keeping with the World Financial institution, 1 / 4 of the inhabitants is caught in poverty.
The nation’s authoritarian President Ilham Aliyev personally oversees the biggest money cow: the State Oil Fund. Which may be why he considers Azerbaijan’s huge reserve of fossil fuels “a present from God” even because it fails to uplift his individuals.
How did Azerbaijan ever change into the COP29 host? The important thing to its success might be the way it has courted among the world’s elites in ways in which have put Azerbaijan within the highlight lately. This long-term attraction offensive, which serves to deflect criticism of Aliyev’s authorities and rebrand Azerbaijan as a vibrant vacation spot, contains flying in celebrities and internet hosting worldwide occasions like Method 1. The apply is actually not restricted to Azerbaijan. Students affiliated with the Nationwide Endowment for Democracy have coined the time period “sharp energy” to explain prosperous authoritarians’ makes an attempt at rapidly constructing world affect to cement their home rule. Lately, few appear “sharper” than Azerbaijan.
The nation’s poor environmental and human rights report stands out. Between the President and his late father Heydar, the Aliyevs have run Azerbaijan for greater than 5 a long time. Critics are routinely put beneath home arrest, jailed, exiled, and maybe worse. Among the many regime’s targets is Gubad Ibadoghlu, the lead writer of Crude Accountability’s 2020 report, who was arrested in July 2023 whereas visiting household in Azerbaijan.
The nation additionally lately launched a pandemic-era warfare of selection in 2020 within the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, which in the end pushed out the indigenous Armenian inhabitants inside 4 years—in violation of Worldwide Court docket of Justice orders. The violent takeover adopted a nine-month siege sugar-coated as an environmental protest. Azerbaijan then proudly declared Karabakh as the primary area in Azerbaijan to change into “web zero.” In March 2024, President Aliyev celebrated the predictable and preventable compelled displacement with a conventional spring equinox bonfire, calling it a “ultimate cleansing.”
Given Azerbaijan’s use of environmentalism to justify what main human rights teams contemplate ethnic cleaning in Nagorno-Karabakh, COP29 for the regime is the ultimate rubber stamp for its autocratic and hostile tendencies, together with ongoing threats of invasion in opposition to Armenia.
But there’s grassroots pushback around the globe, together with from worldwide organizations like Freedom Home, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty Worldwide, in addition to local weather justice activists like Greta Thunberg—who’s boycotting Azerbaijan for “being a repressive, occupying state, which has dedicated ethnic cleaning” and for utilizing COP29 “to greenwash their crimes”—and Azerbaijani activists. Native activists specifically are bravely talking out regardless of the big dangers at residence and overseas.
Resisting dictatorships is daunting. Simply ask my pal Bahruz Samadov—a courageous and good younger educational—who shouted, “Give me a voice at COP29!” throughout a latest jail switch. He’s amongst a whole bunch of political prisoners in Azerbaijan, along with two dozen Armenian prisoners of warfare, together with senior Karabakh leaders, who face a long time behind bars. Samadov is charged with “excessive treason” for criticizing Azerbaijan’s coverage on Nagorno-Karabakh and for his ties to Armenian activists.
Loads of individuals have argued {that a} petro-aggressor ought to have by no means hosted COP29—however what’s performed is finished. The problem now’s whether or not varied heads of states and representatives from greater than 180 international locations on the U.N. local weather convention could have the braveness to talk up for the rights of Azerbaijani political prisoners and Armenian hostages, together with by requesting to fulfill with them, and push for the protected return of the ethnically-cleansed Armenian inhabitants of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Doing what’s proper in Azerbaijan is hardly a regional matter. Similar to Azerbaijan’s 2020 warfare on Nagorno-Karabakh with out world repercussions arguably inspired different autocrats like Vladimir Putin to observe swimsuit, no matter occurs in Baku this week could not keep in Baku. A petro-aggressor internet hosting COP29 is hardly sizzling air.
