Azerbaijan will host COP29:second year in a row in a petro-state for the UN climate conference

After Putin's blackmail over Bulgaria's candidacy, Baku was chosen as the venue for the summit scheduled for November 2024

Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, will host the 2024 edition of COP, the annual UN conference on climate change in progress just these days in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates.The announcement came after months of stalemate, in which Russia Vladimir Putin he exercised his veto power to block the candidacy of Bulgaria, the first country to offer to host Cop29.A somewhat unprecedented situation, since the COP locations are usually chosen at least a couple of years in advance.Last May, in fact, the United Nations confirmed the location of Cop30, which will take place in 2025 in Belém, Brazil.Based on the rotation mechanism between areas, it is up to an Eastern European country to host the 2024 summit.Bulgaria was the first to apply, but the Kremlin opposed it, arguing that "no EU country would be impartial towards Russia".According to the Bulgarian Minister of the Environment, however, Putin's veto would be nothing more than "a retaliation for the positions on the war in Ukraine".

Baku's candidacy

The impasse was broken by the decision of Bulgaria and Armenia to withdraw their candidacy, paving the way for Azerbaijan.Baku's choice was supported by all the other countries in the area and now only needs to be formally approved by the plenary of the COP countries.However, a certain discontent is beginning to spread in the environmentalist world (and not only).Azerbaijan, just like the United Arab Emirates, is a "petro-state", in the sense that it bases much of its economy on fossil fuels, the main culprits for the climate crisis.Last year, oil and gas accounted for 90% of Baku's exports and Italy was also among the recipients.In 2022, in fact, our country imported 15% of its natural gas from Azerbaijan.

Al Gore's proposal

According to several members of the scientific community and the environmentalist world, granting countries that base their economy on fossil fuels the possibility of hosting a COP risks causing the entire process to lose credibility and effectiveness.At the summit underway in Dubai, a record number of lobbyists linked to the Oil & Gas sector were registered:2,456, four times more than at last year's Glasgow conference.Proposing a solution to this problem is former American vice president Al Gore, who has always been at the forefront of climate issues.In an interview with Bloomberg, Gore suggested changing the mechanism by which the host country of the COP is chosen, overcoming the system of veto rights and ensuring that the UN secretary general can also participate in the voting.

Cover photo:UNSPLASH/Lloyd Alozie