Azerbaijan’s climate leadership challenge

As host of COP29, Azerbaijan must guide the UN negotiations towards agreement on crucial climate finance. But the country’s weak environmental credentials, repressive politics and attachment to fossil fuel revenues invite doubts about its ability to provide effective climate leadership.Azerbaijan, a heavily oil- and gas-dependent state sandwiched between Russia and Iran, has propelled itself suddenly and incongruously into an international climate leadership role. As president of the UN’s 29th flagship climate ‘Conference of the Parties’ (COP29), to be hosted in Baku in November 2024, the country will need to shepherd nearly 200 other governments towards common positions in highly contentious negotiations. Above all, it will need to achieve consensus on the critical issue of climate finance.Azerbaijan’s moment in the climate diplomacy spotlight does not end with COP29. The country has vigorously pursued other international responsibilities, including by forming a COP presidential ‘Troika’ with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which hosted COP28 in 2023, and Brazil, which will host COP30 in 2025. Moreover, Azerbaijan will host UN World Environment Day in June 2026, and is bidding to preside over the global summit of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity in November 2026.This research paper examines the implications, both at international and national levels, of Azerbaijan’s new responsibilities and diplomatic prominence at this crucial moment for climate and environmental action. Climate impacts are escalating, while governments are locked in competition over who pays for, and who reaps the benefits of, the transition to a low-carbon future. The world urgently needs Azerbaijan to be an effective climate leader at COP29 and beyond. Azerbaijan, meanwhile, needs to tackle its own climate risks and rapidly increase momentum in its transition away from oil and gas dependence, given the combined threats of climate vulnerability, reserve depletion and market constraints.As COP29 president, Azerbaijan must provide direction and vision to the talks, brokering the consensus agreements which form the summit’s formal outcome. Yet given Azerbaijan’s domestic record on climate action, the limitations of its political economy, and the government’s performance to date in its role as COP president-designate, the country may struggle to provide credible and effective leadership.Azerbaijan’s energy diplomacy is a case in point. The country has made no secret of its hopes to be one of the ‘last standing’ among fossil fuel producers. It has even used its COP29 platform to petition the EU for financial support to double Azerbaijani gas exports to the bloc, and for guarantees of European demand into the future. By inserting itself at the centre of the multilateral climate process, Azerbaijan’s government may hope to control conversations around the global energy transition so that the country’s own oil and gas reserves can remain financially viable for as long as possible. While the government is promoting domestic generation and consumption of renewable energy, its openly declared prime objective is to free up more gas reserves for export.Another concern is the potential contradiction between Azerbaijan’s repressive political environment and the principle of diversely informed debate integral to the COP process. While active civil society participation is a fundamental tenet of UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations, crackdowns on Azerbaijani civil society have been escalating. Under such conditions, it is hard to see how the organizing committee can live up to its stated aim of an inclusive COP29.By contrast, Azerbaijan’s experience of balancing its foreign policy in a complex geopolitical environment may strengthen its hand. Since independence in 1991, the former Soviet republic has carefully avoided tying itself too closely to major geopolitical blocs. It joined the Non-Aligned Movement in 2011 and chaired this forum between 2019 and early 2024. Though now forging closer ties with Russia, Azerbaijan may still be ‘neutral enough’, in effect, to rally disparate subsets of COP delegates. These include countries in the Global South, small island states, hydrocarbon producers and major powers (as well as states resistant to the latter’s agendas or perceived diktats).An ability to broker agreement between diverse stakeholders will be crucial to COP29’s main task: delivering a New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) on climate finance. The NCQG will replace an inadequate previous arrangement, under which developed countries were supposed to mobilize $100 billion a year to support climate action in developing countries. Without climate finance in the trillions of dollars, developing countries will lack the means to fund ambitious mitigation, adapt to climate impacts, and cope with loss and damage that isn’t (or can’t be) avoided.Azerbaijan’s dependency on oil and gas is problematic for its COP29 presidency in many ways. It does, however, offer one potential advantage: it may enable the country to engage other hydrocarbon-rich nations in constructive and explicit debate on the dilemmas of transition away from fossil fuels – in a way never before achieved at the COP. Conversely, there is a risk that Azerbaijan could rally fellow fossil fuel producers around limited and unambitious outcomes at the summit. This is, perhaps, more likely given the deep interconnections between Azerbaijan’s fossil fuel wealth and the patronage system entrenched in its political culture.Finally, Azerbaijan’s framing of COP29 as a ‘peace COP’ risks distracting attention from the core issues, while adding to an agenda already overpacked with secondary initiatives. The prospect of a political settlement with Armenia provides a PR opportunity around regional stability. But overemphasis on optics risks a shallow and performative peace agreement, wasting genuine opportunities for progress at a critical juncture for Armenia and Azerbaijan.The world cannot afford for Azerbaijan’s turn at climate leadership to fail. This paper offers recommendations, summarized below, for getting the most out of COP29, supporting Azerbaijan’s longer-term climate leadership and action, and preserving the credibility of the UNFCCC at a time of heightened urgency and risk:Azerbaijan’s government should openly acknowledge its dilemmas and challenges around fossil fuel reliance and climate vulnerability, and solicit support from the global climate community in addressing them.As Troika members, Azerbaijan, Brazil and the UAE should be open about the geopolitical challenges of the energy transition. At recent COPs it has gradually become more possible to ask politically difficult questions about the future of fossil fuels. These questions need to be brought to the centre of the debate at COP29 and COP30. The Troika should make it part of its mission to plot a viable path to a decarbonized future for fossil fuel producers. Doing so would create conditions for greater ambition, currently limited by those with most to lose from transition.Azerbaijan’s government needs to engage with domestic civil society on climate and environmental action, to benefit from the innovation, inclusiveness and on-the-ground connections local actors can bring. The international community – both within government and outside it – should keep up pressure on Azerbaijan over its human rights record and suppression of domestic civil society, while remaining realistic about the low probability of meaningful reform given the country’s resistance to political pluralism.To bolster the credibility of the ‘peace COP’ agenda, Azerbaijan’s government should emphasize the links between cross-border, cascading climate risks, conflict and security. Joint action with Armenia on shared environmental challenges such as transboundary water management would help build confidence between the two states and demonstrate the value of cross-border action, for both resilience and peacebuilding, to the global community.Political leaders in Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia should also acknowledge their joint interest in effective climate action in a way that is independent of, but complementary to, Azerbaijan and Armenia’s bilateral peacebuilding efforts.Parties to the UNFCCC should mandate the secretariat to develop best practice and guardrails for the COP presidency. Faith and trust in the UNFCCC, the Paris Agreement and the COP process are the bedrock of multilateral climate ambition. Agreement between parties on how to realize the benefits, and limit the potential damage, from the system of rotating COP presidencies could help shore up future global climate cooperation.