The spotlight is on Azerbaijan as the little petrostate in the South Caucasus hosts the U.N.’s greatest environment conference.
Diplomats from throughout the world will descend on the capital Baku for the yearly environment top, understood as COP29, to goover how to prevent increasing risks from environment modification in a location that was one of the birthplaces of the oil market.
It was in Baku where the world’s initially oil fields were established in 1846 and where Azerbaijan led the world in oil production in 1899.
Sandwiched inbetween Iran to the south and Russia to the north, Azerbaijan is on the Caspian Sea and was part of the Soviet Union from 1922 to1991 Nearly all of Azerbaijan’s exports are oil and gas, 2 of the world’s leading sources of planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions. President Ilham Aliyev explained them in April as a “gift of the gods.”
Aliyev is Azerbaijan’s authoritarian leader. He is the kid of the previous president and hasactually been in power for more than 2 years, managing a crackdown on liberty of speech and civil society. The Associated Press was not approved approval by Azerbaijan’s authorities to report in the nation ahead of the conference.
Aliyev has stated it is a “big honor” for Azerbaijan to host the conference. He has likewise stated he desires his nation to usage more sustainable energy at home is so that it can export more oil and gas abroad.
In metal cages next to Azerbaijan’s Aquatic Palace sporting location are pumpjacks — a indication states they extract simply over 2 loads of oil a day. Others pump away somewhereelse, sucking up oil in view of one of Baku’s spiritual and traveler websites, the Bibi Heybat mosque that was rebuilt in the 1990s after it was damaged by the Bolsheviks nearly 80 years back.
Aliyev stated he thinksabout it “a indication of regard” from the global neighborhood that Azerbaijan is hosting COP and a acknowledgment of what Azerbaijan is doing around green energy.
Some of those prepares include establishing hydropower, solar and wind jobs in Karabakh, a area inhabited by ethnic Armenians who ranaway to Armenia after a lightning armedforce offensive by Azerbaijan in September 2023.
Aliyev stated in a speech in March that his nation is in the “active stage of green shift” however included that “no one can disregard the reality that without fossil fuel, the world cannot establish, at least in the foreseeable future.”
Mukhtar Babayev, Azerbaijan’s environment minister and previous vice president at the state energy business Socar, will serve as conference president of the talks. Babayev stated in April he desires to program how this “oil and gas nation of the previous” can program the world a green course with its efforts to ramp up sustainable energy, specifically wind power.
He stated he thinks his nation’s COP top needto construct on last year’s arrangement to shift away from fossil fuels and pave the method for nations to come together in 2025 on beefed-up and funded prepares to clamp down on heat-trapping gases.
But plenty of individuals doubt those dedications.
Multiple companies state Azerbaijan’s com