By Greta Thunberg
During rapidly escalating climate and humanitarian crises, another authoritarian petrostate with no respect for human rights is hosting COP29 — the UN’s latest annual climate summit that starts on November 11 and is being held after the re-election of a climate-denier US president.
COP meetings have proven to be greenwashing conferences that legitimize countries’ failures to ensure a livable world and future and have also allowed authoritarian regimes like Azerbaijan and the two previous hosts — the United Arab Emirates and Egypt — to continue violating human rights.
Genocides, ecocides, famines, wars, colonialism, rising inequalities and an escalating climate collapse are all interconnected crises that reinforce each other and lead to unimaginable suffering. While humanitarian crises are unfolding in Palestine, Yemen, Afghanistan, Sudan, Congo, Kurdistan, Lebanon, Baluchistan, Ukraine, Nagorno-Karabakh/Artsakh, and many, many other places, humanity is also breaching the 1.5C greenhouse gas emissions limit, with no signs of real reductions in sight. Instead, the opposite is taking place — last year, global emissions reached an all-time high. Heat records have been shattered, and this year is “virtually certain” to be the hottest year ever recorded, with unprecedented extreme weather events pushing the planet further into uncharted territory. The destabilization of the biosphere and the natural ecosystems we depend on to survive is leading to untold human suffering and further accelerating the mass extinction of flora and fauna.
Azerbaijan’s entire economy is built on fossil fuels, with the state-owned oil company Socar’s oil and gas exports accounting for close to 90% of the country’s exports. Despite what it might claim, Azerbaijan has no ambition to take climate action. It is planning to expand fossil fuel production, which is completely incompatible with the 1.5C limit and the goals of the Paris agreement on climate change.
Many attenders of this year’s COP are scared to criticize the Azerbaijan government. Human Rights Watch recently published a statement explaining how it couldn’t be certain that attenders’ rights to peacefully protest would be guaranteed. In addition, Azerbaijan land and sea borders will remain closed during Cop29, making it only possible to travel in and out of the country by air, which causes pollution and which many Azerbaijan citizens can’t afford. The reason given for closing borders at all Cops since the start of the Covid pandemic is to maintain “national security”, but I’ve heard many Azerbaijanis describe the situation as being “kept in a prison.”
