Why is COP29, already dubbed the largest international event ever to be held in Azerbaijan, so important for our country? It’s not just about the number of official representatives from various countries and business people who will come to Azerbaijan in November 2024, although this factor also plays a role in terms of enhancing the prestige of the state. It’s not just about the international agreements that will surely be signed during the event, which will again play a role in entering Azerbaijan into the history of climate summits. The importance of COP29 stems primarily from the statement the country makes in the global fight for climate preservation and the opportunity to restructure its economy to meet modern global challenges. From this perspective, the significance of the climate summit for Azerbaijan is simply difficult to overestimate, as in the coming years we will witness a structural reorganization of the entire Azerbaijani economy, which, in fact, has already started.
The expressed thought is too profound and does not depend on which particular sector of the economy we will develop. Whatever the choice of the Azerbaijani government, and this choice has already been made and repeatedly declared in terms of focusing on non-raw sectors and green energy, development must be carried out in such a way that it aligns with global climate preservation requirements.
Yes, it sounds complicated. It might seem, what difference does it make to the global world which development path a country takes if it adheres to universal human values and principles and complies with all international norms? True, however, every year the international norms, promoted by the developed countries of the world, or power centers, which has long become synonymous, are accepted in such a way that they divide the world into raw material countries with limited development opportunities and developed countries that dictate the rules of the game. Therefore, balanced and socially oriented development is only possible with consideration of the accepted requirements, including those in the area of climate preservation.
To understand this, it is necessary to refer to the history of the emergence and development of climate summits.
The first climate conference under the auspices of the UN was organized in 1979 and was not particularly memorable, as the issue of the rapidity of climate change was not yet a concern. However, the participants concluded that decisions needed to be made concerning what scientists were “ringing alarm bells” about, namely climate change. The problem truly began to gain magnitude and attract political attention when, in 1985 in the Austrian Alps, a meeting of climatologists discussed issues of anthropogenic climate change (anthropogenic meaning changes made due to human intervention in natural processes). This meeting served as a kind of signal, rang a bell to which people listened, and as a result, three international organizations – the International Union of Scientific Unions (IUSU), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) – combined their efforts to organize a new initiative in 1988, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Naturally, these world events were unknown in Azerbaijan for the simple reason that at that time, people lived under the directives and guidance of the Communist Party of the USSR, and like all residents of the former Union, were isolated from the world by the Iron Curtain. 1988 was the height of Gorbachev’s perestroika and the fight against alcoholism across the former communist empire, plus the first separatist outbreaks by Armenians in Khankendi, and all the attention of Azerbaijani society was focused on these internal events.
And then the war in Karabakh started in Azerbaijan and there was simply no time for climate summits and anthropogenic impacts. Although the world was already actively discussing climate issues, and in 1992, the first UN climate summit on climate change issues, attended by 154 countries, was held in Rio de Janeiro. Three years later, in 1995, when the UN had already adopted its four resolutions on Karabakh and obliged Armenia to withdraw its troops from the occupied Azerbaijani territories, they imposed a ceasefire regime and the OSCE Minsk Group, and the world was gathering at the first climate summit in Berlin, COP1. Of course, the residents of Azerbaijan, who had just managed to cope with the consequences of hyperinflation, were also not concerned with climate summits at that time.
Thus, the world lived its life and reluctantly recalled that 20% of Azerbaijani land was under occupation. However, in 1994 Azerbaijan managed to sign the “Contract of the Century”, attract leading world companies to jointly develop hydrocarbon resources, and began a long work to raise the country’s economy, the start of which was to be given by financial resources from the sale of oil. And interestingly, when in 1997 we managed to establish the export of the first profitable oil and the curve of currency receipts in Azerbaijan sharply rose, the world at that time, in the same year, developed the Kyoto Protocol (which would enter into force much later), according to which a decision was made on the obligations of industrially developed countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. Mainly, this refers to carbon dioxide.
Subsequently, the process of combating climate change in the world developed somewhat slower. First, the development of clear recommendations and requirements for developed countries required a well-prepared scientific research base, and this takes time. Second, trading began between those same developed countries on quota issues. Everyone perfectly understood that restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere were an opportunity for political pressure on a rival country. And precisely because of this, new financing tools and planning for the process of adapting to climate change by countries and regions appeared only in 2001 and were called the “Marrakesh Accords”, and four years later, in 2005, during the first meeting of the parties to the Kyoto Protocol in Montreal, the document actually came into force. This was a very important year for the world, because a so-called market for greenhouse gases appeared, that is, the cost of one cubic meter of carbon dioxide was determined, mechanisms for selling and emissions volumes for enterprises were developed, etc. And for us, those years are remembered by the intensive development of the regions of Azerbaijan and the course to increase the share of the non-oil sector in the economy. That is, already then, based on global trends in climate change, our country decided to simultaneously increase the volumes of non-hydrocarbon economy.
And the annual UN conferences on climate change, i.e., the COPs, meanwhile continued to be convened, and mechanisms for maintaining greenhouse gas emissions at an acceptable level were becoming increasingly sophisticated. Moreover, the events themselves were gaining more and more popularity in the world. Thus, if COP13 in 2007 in Bali, Indonesia, was attended by 13,000 participants, COP21 in Paris in 2015 was attended by representatives from 189 countries, and in the UAE last year, COP28 was attended by 100,000 people, which was recorded as an absolute record.
Azerbaijan has not lagged behind all these processes and joined the Kyoto Protocol on September 28, 2000, and on April 22, 2016, signed the Paris Protocol adopted the previous year at COP21. In January 2017, the document was ratified by the Milli Majlis. As a result, the country set a goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 35 percent by 2030, increase the share of renewable energy sources in electricity production to 30 percent, and by 2050, reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent.
In short, about how the confrontation between industrially developed states and developing countries around climate preservation issues directly affects the interests of Azerbaijan. Independent experts have long come to the conclusion that a number of powerful states, appealing to the climate theme, try to pressure other countries. And today, in the conditions of world restructuring, this issue becomes relevant. And perhaps this explains why other UN environmental conventions, for example, on biodiversity, do not arouse the same interest among the world’s power centers as the annual COP events.
The same can be said about UN documents aimed at eradicating poverty in the world. Theoretically, today, when 738 million people in the world are chronically underfed, the food theme should become the main one on all UN platforms or at least be part of the discussion on climate and attract climate financing. But this does not happen.
The main thought today: you must change your economy, because it pollutes the air, increases the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, retains the reflected solar heat on the surface of the planet, and harms all people on Earth. Naturally, underdeveloped countries, which are unable to attract high-tech and therefore expensive installations for cleaning gas emissions from processing, are the main targets. And the weaker the country, the less political leverage it has, and accordingly, the greater the obligations for climate preservation can be imposed on it. This, for example, explains why no one accuses China of polluting the atmosphere, which almost entirely bases its electricity production on burning coal. No one will also accuse the United States, which today occupies the first place in the world in gas (methane) and oil production, and therefore emits the most flue gases into the air.
In Azerbaijan, they perfectly understand the games that are going on in the world around COP and understand what issues will be at the forefront during the climate summit in 2024. Perhaps the most fundamental will be the issue of financing measures to adapt to combating climate change. At last year’s climate summit, a decision was made to allocate $100 billion US dollars per year by developed countries until 2025. But who exactly should provide these funds and for what specific measures should they be spent?
During last year’s COP, participant countries were only able to agree on the final amount of financing, and at COP29 in Baku, it will be necessary to discuss and adopt the procedural results of the financing process and finally formulate global goals for adapting measures to combat climate change. Will Azerbaijan cope with this task? We hope for the best. In any case, this autumn our country will provide a platform for such negotiations, but everything else already depends on the actual intentions of the summit participants to preserve planet Earth for our descendants.
Rauf Nasirov
