What country is Azerbaijan, where climate negotiations are underway

Cop29 takes place in Azerbaijan, a country heavily dependent on gas and oil exports, increasingly courted by Europe which wants to replace Russian supplies.

There Cop29, or the United Nations conference on climate change which begins today Baku, in Azerbaijan, si opens with an image:the Azerbaijani Deputy Minister of Energy and CEO of COP, Elnur Soltanov, who on the eve of the summit presents to a fake potential investor investment opportunities in the oil and gas sectors.“We have a lot of gas fields that need to be developed,” he says Soltanov to the person who is instead an investigator for the NGO Global Witness undercover.

The video was broadcast by the BBC and says a lot about how economic interests risk undermining the new climate negotiations, which also have among their objectives gradual elimination of fossil fuels. A "betrayal" that a former UN leader, already responsible for the climate talks, defined as "completely unacceptable".

As feared, therefore, this edition of the COP will also have to deal with the interference of those who operate in the fossil fuel sector.Which for Azerbaijan represent 90 percent of exports and 60 percent of the public budget. But what country is Azerbaijan, exactly?

The internal politics of Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic sandwiched between Russia and Iran, is the largest country in the Caucasus region.After the collapse of the Soviet Union and a period of political instability culminating in the rise to power in 1993 of Heydar Aliyev, father of the current president Ilham Aliyev, this country has experienced a strong economic transformation, fueled above all by the exploitation of large companies gas and oil reserves.

The current president has been in office since 2003 Ilham Aliyev, 62 years old, he was re-elected on February 7 for the fifth time with more than 90 percent of the votes in a vote that was however boycotted by the opposition.Despite the formal presence of six other candidates, who had nevertheless shown support for Aliyev in the past, the real opposition parties spoke of elections “farce” and boycotted the vote.

Artur Gerasymov, of the observation mission of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), he declared that the elections were "devoid of real pluralism".

Azerbaijan is in fact considered one authoritarian state where the press and civil liberties are severely limited.Internal stability is maintained by the hard fist of the president who in his twenty years of government has nevertheless managed to transform this newly independent and struggling state into a important regional energy player. The agreements signed with large energy producers have in fact allowed the country to capitalize on revenues and create not only a fund managed by the government for international projects, but also to reorganize the army.A priority, the latter, which changed the fate of Nagorno Karabakh, a territory long disputed with theArmenia.

The flash offensive in Nagorno Karabakh

After thirty years of tensions, in autumn 2023 Azerbaijan put an end to Armenian domination in the region with a lightning offensive. Nagorno Karabakh.The clashes have caused hundreds of deaths and a large part of the 120 thousand ethnic Armenian residents have fled to neighboring Armenia.

President Aliyev called victory in Karabakh "an unprecedented epochal event in the history of Azerbaijan", adding that the elections (among other things brought forward compared to the scheduled date in 2025) would have marked "the beginning of a new era" since they were held for the first time also in Karabakh.

The economy and the energy sector

To develop and diversify the economy, heavily dependent on oil and gas production, the Azerbaijani government in recent years has tried to attract foreign investments and stimulate private sector growth.He also initiated some reforms, linked above all to tourism, transport, information technology (IT) and agriculture, which have allowed the country to be inserted in the ranking of twenty "reformist" countries according to the report Doing Business 2020 of the Central Bank.The difficulty main for those who want to do business remain linked above all to the high level of corruption (Azerbaijan ranks 154th out of 180 in Transparency International's Corruption Index 2023) and to poor judicial transparency.

After theRussian invasion of Ukraine and Europe's willingness to replace Russian gas supplies, relations between the European Union and Baku have become closer.Last year Europe imported 11.8 billion cubic meters of gas from Azerbaijan, with a further 13 billion cubic meters expected to increase by the end of this year.In fact, in 2022, Baku signed a memorandum of understanding with the European Commission to double its gas exports to the Old Continent, bringing them to 20 billion cubic meters by 2027.

Second Foreign market info, in the first seven months of 2023 almost 45 percent of Azerbaijani exports were destined for Italy, which confirmed itself as the number one trading partner, even surpassing Turkey and Greece.

“Azerbaijan is the first supplier of oil to Italy and the second in terms of gas — had declared Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev during his visit in Italy last September —.The network of 3,500 kilometers of gas pipelines from Azerbaijan to Italy, the so-called southern gas corridor, today guarantees energy security to ten countries, seven of which are members of the European Union".

Azerbaijan's international relations

The geographical position of Azerbaijan, located at crossroads between Europe and Asia, together with its energy resources, makes it a strategic player in the Caucasus and beyond.

Even though satisfying Europe's energy appetites And preserving his own good relations with Ukraine, Azerbaijan has managed to maintain solid relations with Russia as well, thus balancing its economic and geopolitical interests.

His alliance with Turkey is even more complex:considered a "fraternal" nation due to ethnic and linguistic ties, this alliance was however partially compromised by conflict between Israel and Palestine.Turkish support for Palestine, in fact, contrasts with Baku's relatively neutral position.

Furthermore, relationships with Israel, Tehran's bitter enemy, have contributed to increasing the tensions with Iran:the latter has always feared that the independence of Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic, could push the large Azeri community in Iran to demand greater rights.

In short, Azerbaijan's ability to balancing relationships with various global players it could strengthen its influence on the economic and political dynamics of the region, thus consolidating its weight on the international scene.

But for activists, Azerbaijan is at the Cop29 continues to represent a questionable broker:Although Azerbaijani officials have declared their commitment to the energy transition and the need to reduce carbon emissions, the problem is that many countries – such as European neighbors hungry for non-Russian gas – have every interest in preserving its status as a trusted producer of fossil fuels.