Glancing over the mainstream, English-speaking press, you’d not be blamed for picking up a few pockets of negative sentiment surrounding the UN’s annual climate summit, COP, whose reputation in recent years has been tainted by accusations of a lobbyist ridden, corporate mecca. Worse still, given this year’s Presidency falls under Azerbaijan, The Washington Post’s editorial board helpfully points out that this is now the third year in a row hosted by a dictatorship, and the second in a row by a petrostate – ‘Another major climate conference helps a despotic regime’ – hardly the headline organisers at the UNFCC will relish. One wonders if the Post’s editors would refer to Dubai’s Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, host of COP28, so openly.
Cynically, or candidly, exiled Azeri former-opposition leader Ali Karimli tells The Economist that President Aliyev is purely interested in ‘laundering his reputation’, with the conference a ‘prime opportunity to exploit the international prestige bestowed upon a host state.’ For many it would seem counterintuitive to award COP Presidency to a nation utterly dependent on fossil fuel extraction and export, and of which its natural gas industry is booming. And so, by hosting in Baku – Qara Şəhər, or ‘The Black City – the capital of a nation with questionable civil liberties, worrying geopolitical conduct, and a dubiously-elected, authoritarian President who seems to be playing Vladmir Putin and NATO aligned Europe off each other – it’s no wonder people ask, what does this do for the reputation of COP, let alone the climate transition?
Given the great inequity in how climate change impacts nations across the world – with the developing, Global South bearing the greatest brunt – having resource rich, undemocratic, non-pluralistic countries play host is seen by many observers as problematic. In its FT View segment, that newspaper’s editorial board ran a piece – COP29 and the greenwashing of Azerbaijan – in which it essentially calls upon the UN’s climate arm to reform its process of awarding COP Presidencies.
And yet, the climate transition is a global movement requiring engagement from across the board, and so drawing in developing countries with domestic problems into the process, even allowing them to host, can serve to force them to reform. The world’s richest companies, most famous journalists, and most influential politicians will descend on Baku for two weeks and will quickly see past any façade President Mr Aliyev has draped over his country. It wasn’t a mistake made by the UNFCC, but it’s a reputational gamble.
But it’s not all negative. Azerbaijan is not a rogue state. As The Guardian’s Fiona Harvey points out, the country has ambitious climate targets (30% of electricity is to be renewable by 2030, up from 7% today), and of its exports, oil is now very much in decline…in place of natural gas. It is also making moves in renewable energy, with a 100MW solar plant now operational just outside of Baku and has plans to build an interconnector, exporting low-carbon energy to neighbouring Georgia, a nation with far fewer resources, while supplying Europe with much needed gas cut off by belligerent Russia.
Furthermore, the arguments against a ‘petrostate’ hosting COP unfortunately tend to lose their impact when we remind ourselves that COP26 was hosted in Glasgow, 150 miles from Aberdeen, home of the UK’s oil and gas industry. Would such arguments stand if, say, Norway, a nation with the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund built entirely on that country’s vast oil and gas fields, were to host? Previous hosts Qatar (2012), Canada (2005) and Brazil (1992) are all petrostates. As ever, it’s never black and white.
Ultimately, what is the purpose of COP? For national leaders and officials, the private sector, and the third sector, it is to come together to negotiate and agree on the next stage of action to tackle the climate emergency, take these home, and execute them in their home nations. That is it. It does not need to be popular among the wider public, among climate activists, or among journalists. Next year, Brazil plays host, hardly a nation devoid of systemic problems. But, as we should recognise, it cannot just be friends of the West who hold the pen on the global climate movement, or we run the risk further alienating those not inside the bubble of Western Hegemony.