Azerbaijan’s COP29 bid is a step toward peace and green transition Presidential aide’s letter to the Financial Times

In response to criticisms over Azerbaijan hosting COP29, Azerbaijani presidential aide Hikmet Hajiyev highlights the hypocrisy of labelling oil and gas producers as unsuitable hosts in a letter published by the Financial Times. Caliber.Az reprints the letter.

Labelling petrostates as unfit hosts is a hypocrite’s game (“COP29 and the greenwashing of Azerbaijan”, FT View, October 14). When Azerbaijan hosts COP29 next month, it will be the 28th time the climate summit has been held in an oil and gas producer. Every host — bar Switzerland — has been involved in extraction. Every country in the world — bar none — is a fossil fuel consumer.

Instead, it’s wiser to ask how a country came to host, what they plan to achieve and why. Azerbaijan never anticipated playing host this year; we expected our bid to be vetoed by neighbour Armenia, which had occupied almost a fifth of our territory for 30 years. Yet in an unprecedented deal last December, Armenia agreed to back Azerbaijan as host as part of ongoing peace talks.

Negotiations continue and substantial progress has been achieved. Border delimitation commissions are active. Armenia’s commission has recently accepted the Alma-Ata Declaration — a commitment to the sovereignty of borders among post-Soviet states agreed in the 1990s.

Many would wish to see an official peace agreement signed before COP, but this is a very different proposition from two sides agreeing a deal in the negotiating room. Armenia’s constitution still contains a revanchist claim on Azerbaijani territory. The speed at which we can finalise a peace deal largely depends on how quickly Armenia can move on the issue. Critics calling this stalling should ask if they would sign a peace deal while their former adversary still claims their territory. Yet regardless of whether one is signed by the time COP begins, it will still be a COP of peace because of how it emerged. This year’s COP will focus on increasing the finance target — the New Collective Quantified Goal — to turn the global transition from fossil fuels into reality. Furthermore, Azerbaijan has seeded a climate fund, into which we expect other oil and gas producing nations and companies to invest.

Azerbaijan is demonstrating how an oil and gas producer can transition. We are not only implementing the region’s largest renewable projects but shifting from fossil fuel to electricity exports. In partnership with the EU, Azerbaijan is developing an electricity cable beneath the Black Sea to link Caspian Sea wind power to the continent. While we can’t influence the demand that drives foreign energy markets, we are reshaping the supply side.

Azerbaijan is hosting COP because we are walking the path to peace. At COP, we will advocate for new funds to finance a just transition from fossil fuels to renewables, a shift we are already actively pursuing ourselves.