BRUSSELS BEHIND THE SCENES
Weekly analysis with Sam Morgan
Climate talks in Dubai are still ongoing and one of the biggest questions still left unresolved is where the next COP meeting will take place. Due to lack of other options, oil and gas giant Azerbaijan has emerged as the frontrunner.
COP is a UN-led process, so it is completely exposed to the vagaries and whims of politics-playing governments. That is why it has been so difficult to find a host for next year.
This year COP28 is in the United Arab Emirates and COP29 is supposed to be held in an Eastern European country, as per the UN’s rotation system.
Most countries have been ruled out of the running because of a variety of factors, leaving Azerbaijan as the only viable candidate. Unfortunately, being a petrostate does not preclude you from hosting global climate talks.
BRUSSELS BEHIND THE SCENES includes weekly analysis not found anywhere else, as Sam Morgan helps you make sense of what is happening in Brussels. If you want to receive Brussels Behind the Scenes straight to your inbox every week, subscribe to the newsletter here.
Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine has once again had another knock-on effect. Whether it falls into Donald Rumsfeld’s known-unknowns or unknown-unknowns is up to you, but it certainly was not entirely predictable.
The European Union has imposed widespread sanctions on Moscow and, in retaliation, the Russians have vetoed any Eastern European member country that has bid to host COP29 next year.
Bulgaria and Czechia were both serious about hosting but have withdrawn their candidacies because they simply were not going anywhere.
Other potential hosts like Moldova or even Ukraine were never particularly viable because of the conflict in their backyard. The Balkan nations that are not in the EU yet have not signalled much interest and most lack the facilities to host such a large event.
For most of this week it looked probable that COP29 would revert back to the venue of its secretariat, Bonn. It also looked likely that the current chair of the process, the UAE, would remain in charge for another year until Brazil takes over for COP30.
Climate experts contacted by Behind the Scenes were worried that 12 more months of Dubai-led leadership would set the green movement back even further.
They might actually have preferred that option to the one that now looks like the favourite.
Armenia and Azerbaijan both had launched bids for COP but neither were on the cards because each side vetoed the other. The two countries’ long-standing conflict reached boiling point this year and there is plenty of animosity on each side.
However, this week, Armenia proved it was the bigger man and withdrew its bid and pledged to support its neighbour’s candidacy, as part of ongoing talks aimed at brokering a peace of sorts between the two.
With the only hurdle stopping Azerbaijan from hosting removed, it now looks like just a formality and that COP29 will be hosted by yet another petrostate.
Baku has the resources, facilities – it hosts an F1 grand prix every year so definitely has hotels and spaces sufficient to accommodate 100,000 people – and, most importantly, the implicit backing of Russia to get the nod.
The Azeri economy is about 90% reliant on oil and gas exports. It has exploited the Caspian Sea aggressively in recent years and has emerged as a major supplier of fossil gas in particular for Europe, again thanks to Russia’s invasion.
COP is meant to gather the international community to decide how our existing climate goals can be met. All the science shows that fossil fuels only make the problem worse. The simple conclusion here is that countries like Azerbaijan should not be hosting it.
Add in the fact that the country is governed by an authoritarian regime and that its leader, Ilham Aliyev, has ratcheted up his rhetoric against Armenia, even threatening to invade parts of the country, and you have yet another dubious host of an international event.
This would be ‘greenwashing’ at its worst. The climate equivalent of giving Qatar the World Cup and everyone thinking it is wonderful just because Lionel Messi scored a couple of penalties.
One EU official contacted by Behind the Scenes said that Brussels will “absolutely not stand in the way of Baku hosting COP”, suggesting that the lucrative long-term gas contracts recently brokered are far too valuable to jeopardise.
After all, the EU wants to wean itself off of Russian gas by 2027. COP29 will probably be a great trade fair for fossil fuel exports, as it is certain that Azerbaijan will use the event to show off its wares.
Baku will also probably draw attention to the fact that Nagorno-Karabakh, a region that its army reclaimed earlier this year from ethnic Armenian settlers, is rich in renewables thanks to hydropower.
It probably will not draw attention to the blockade of the region or the mass displacement of people that has been triggered as a result.
Perhaps this is unfair on Azerbaijan. COP29 could be a turning point for the petrostate, where it shows the rest of the oil and gas producing nations in the world that there is another way and that oil fields and gas wells should be shut down.
That is probably just the weekend optimism talking…
BRUSSELS BEHIND THE SCENES includes weekly analysis not found anywhere else, as Sam Morgan helps you make sense of what is happening in Brussels. If you want to receive Brussels Behind the Scenes straight to your inbox every week, subscribe to the newsletter here.
