During the second and third weeks of November, Azerbaijan is hosting the 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29) against the backdrop of its ethnic cleansing of over 100,000 Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh/Artsakh a year ago. Armenia’s unlikely approval of Azerbaijan’s hosting bid raises speculation about whether Armenia has received anything in return. At least in the short term, Armenia will likely seek to recover hostages currently detained and tortured in Azerbaijani prisons. Armenia and Azerbaijan may use the conference as a launching pad for the much-discussed postwar bilateral treaty.
What is certain, however, is that Azerbaijan will spend COP29 making more natural gas deals. In the next decade, Azerbaijan plans to increase its natural gas production by a third and release an estimated 781 metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere while doubling its gas exports to Europe by 2027. Absheron, the Azerbaijani province adjacent to the Shah Deniz mega-gasfield where COP29 is being held, is considered the most environmentally devastated area in the world. Greta Thunberg, Ursula von der Leyen and many global and business leaders have announced that they won’t be attending the conference. This all begs the question: why is this fossil fuel capital hosting the world’s premier climate change conference?
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s ecological record is far from clean, but that hasn’t stopped him from marketing Azerbaijan’s green agenda. At the forefront of his messaging, Aliyev has announced his “sustainable settlement” plan, aiming to leverage sustainability gains in Nagorno-Karabakh to legitimize Azerbaijani internally displaced persons’ right to return. Promises of hydropower, water quality management and methane reduction headlined Azerbaijan’s presentation on Nagorno-Karabakh’s green potential at COP28, last year’s conference. This year, it remains to be seen how Aliyev will continue to use Nagorno-Karabakh to serve his dual objectives of green marketing and Azerbaijani expansionism.
The climate conference is taking place a year after Azerbaijan weaponized scantly supported allegations of “ecocide” to greenwash its ethnic cleansing of over 100,000 Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh. While Azerbaijan claimed to be acting in response to mass deforestation, an analysis by Global Forest Watch found that forest cover in Nagorno-Karabakh actually increased between 2000-2020. Despite this, the Aliyev government funded self-proclaimed eco-activists to orchestrate a 10-month blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh, resulting in a massive humanitarian crisis. In September 2023, Azerbaijan broke the ceasefire and launched a full-scale military attack, forcibly displacing Nagorno-Karabakh’s civilian population.
Pedaling this greenwashing agenda further, in February 2023, Azerbaijan filed suit against the Armenian government under the Council of Europe’s Bern Convention to recover damages caused by alleged environmental harms in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Azerbaijan sustains this environmental offensive while detaining the Armenian leaders most equipped to defend against it. During COP29, at least 23 Armenian prisoners and hostages will continue their unlawful detention under brutal conditions. Azerbaijan has, ironically, dubbed the conference “peaceful COP,” calling for a global pause to hostilities while subjecting hostages to treatment that the Human Rights Watch calls “abhorrent and a war crime.”
Among the detainees is Davit Babayan, the former Nagorno-Karabakh Foreign Minister and lead water diplomat. For years, Babayan was a voice for finding common ground on issues like joint management of natural resources and increased diplomatic focus on water politics. Babayan supported efforts to exchange water for oil, among other negotiated agreements, through the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) legislative format. Yet PACE’s efforts to find a breakthrough were riddled with alleged Azerbaijani bribes. The negotiation format ultimately fell through when Azerbaijan left the body entirely this year, because PACE decided to address the status and treatment of Armenian detainees.
At the core of the PACE negotiation format was the Sarsang Reservoir, the biggest freshwater reserve in Nagorno-Karabakh. Decreased water flow from Sarsang was a rallying cry for Aliyev in the lead-up to the 2020 war in Artsakh. Azerbaijan has since ceased its operation after ethnically cleansing the region. Armenia has raised concerns about losing out on electricity imports generated by the Sarsang hydropower plant. These types of water issues have played an aggravating role between the two countries for years, demonstrating a clear need to address underlying environmental stressors between the neighbors.
However, COP29 president and former SOCAR (State Oil Company of the Republic of Azerbaijan) operative Mukhtar Babayev doesn’t seem open to dialogue on water. In fact, Babayev’s assignment has raised concerns over whether COP29 will lead to any environmental progress. Babayev supports Azerbaijan’s effort to supply European markets with natural gas, threatening last year’s international agreement to phase out fossil fuels. Babayev may use his platform to facilitate SOCAR bidding for new fossil fuel agreements, like UAE’s COP president did last year. Reporters have pointed to Azerbaijan’s recent detention and beatings of journalists and climate activists in the lead-up to the conference. Meanwhile, Babayev also advocates for the Aliyev government’s “sustainable settlement” plan. In October 2023, he presented at the UNEC Economic Forum on how water management will pave the way for the “Great Return to Karabakh.”
The Aliyev government’s environmental posturing on Nagorno-Karabakh means COP29 is as much regional as it is global. Throughout the conference, Azerbaijan will need to listen to its critics if it intends to gain credibility. Prisoners of war, mass ethnic cleansing and coercive diplomacy lurk behind Azerbaijan’s veiled environmentalism — while the right to a dignified and safe return for Artsakh Armenians is still left unaddressed. While the international community will surely welcome the oil state’s green ambitions, it should treat COP29 as a forum to press Azerbaijan on its progress.
Nareg Kuyumjian
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When dictatorships like Azerbaijan and others are constantly appeased due to geostrategic interests, any reference about human rights, democracy, justice, environmentalism, etc. sounds hollow and laughable, especially when they are preached by the Western democracies, while they do business with such dictatorships.
When Azerbaijan’s gross human rights violations and aggressions are overlooked and condoned, and on top of it, rewarded with PR shows like the utterly useless COP29, the European Games and other prestigous international events, the hypocrisy of the Western democracies becomes even more blatant.
And by the way, has Armenia raised the plight of the Armenian hostages languishing in Baku prisons, while the Armenian delegation is attending the COP29 in the very same city? Very unlikely, since Pashinyan would be content for his political enemies rotting in Azerbaijani prisons, also to die there.
Armenia did not send a delegation to COP29 in Baku Azerbaijan. And yes Armenia constantly raises the issue of political captives during meetings with Azerbaijan, other countries as well as international organisations. The release of the Armenian captives has constantly been amongst the top three priority issues discussed during such meetings.
@Hagop
Thank you for the correction. Though I strongly suspect that Pashinyan is unwilling and dragging his feet on the release of the Artsakhi leaders, due to their falling out after he acquiesced to the humiliating ceasefire in 2020. Pashinyan does not want anyone in Armenia to challenge his rule, and the imprisoned Artsakhi politicians rotting in Azerbaijani prisons, are amongst his greatest political enemies.
The ironic thing is that the Arktash politicians who became rather anti Pashinyan and were pro Russian are now detained by Azerbaijan hence Pashinyan seems free whilst pro Russian Armenians are detained by pro Russia Azerbaijan whether they are still as pro Russian like the art population remains to be seen.