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Azerbaijan goals just for one washing at COP: to clean away the divisions that lie between nations. Hikmet Hajiyev writes.
As predictably as sea ranges upward push when emissions climb, accusations of “greenwashing” — from some quarters, no less than — have adopted the announcement of Azerbaijan as host of the yearly UN local weather summit. As COP29 approaches later this month, the ones voices have grown louder.
On the middle of the fee lies a cartoon: that Azerbaijan idea that via merely internet hosting COP, it will by hook or by crook difficult to understand its popularity as an oil and fuel manufacturer. But one of the most first issues the ones unfamiliar with Azerbaijan will be informed is that reality.
Our historical past has been profoundly formed via fossil gas extraction because the international’s first business neatly used to be drilled in Baku within the nineteenth century. Fairly than difficult to understand its previous, internet hosting COP handiest guarantees it’s extra widely recognized.
Azerbaijan, whose percentage of worldwide emissions stand at 0.01%, isn’t ashamed of its function in trade. Oil and fuel revenues have funded investments in healthcare, infrastructure, and training and resulted in a 10-fold building up in GDP according to capita since independence from the Soviet Union.
It has additionally served our companions’ power safety, while Azerbaijan’s provide of transitionary fuel to Europe within the fresh previous has avoided a extra pronounced go back to dirtier coal because it confronted a pinch of provide.
Power is the cornerstone of the fashionable international. But possible choices to fossil fuels can’t but fulfil the sector’s call for. And that is what we should exchange.
We must ask ourselves what those summits are for — virtue-signalling or making imaginable this other long term? Local weather purity is inimical to the latter. How some be expecting an answer with out the lively engagement of manufacturers is left unanswered via the ones aware of levelling accusations fairly than responding to them.
Taking their reasoning to its logical conclusion unearths its absurdity. If manufacturers must be precluded from internet hosting COP, then why don’t you additionally the patrons who import and burn the fossil fuels? No nation on the earth meets this criterion.
Countries must be judged no longer on their inheritance however via the course they’re heading. Azerbaijan has little keep watch over over international call for for fuel or the good judgment of markets that can snap to fulfil it. What it may possibly be offering is another.
Getting ready to long-elusive peace deal
Ample wind reserves within the Caspian Sea a long way outstrips home call for. Azerbaijan has signed an MOU to make sure this bounty of renewable power can achieve Eu companions by means of a subsea electrical energy cable underneath the Black Sea.
However a venture in this transformative scale calls for collaboration and dedication from more than a few stakeholders — manufacturers and shoppers alike.
Local weather exchange impacts us all; we’re on this in combination. But fairly than stay as an empty slogan, the good judgment must clear out thru to those mega initiatives that can allow a unique long term.
Fairly than grappling with the practicalities of local weather motion, some desire the extra prosaic international of attacking the COP hosts. Irrespective of what Azerbaijan says or delivers, the ones within the latter camp will see grand schemes. However they’re tricky to sq. with the truth that Azerbaijan had little expectation of internet hosting the convention within the first position.
This yr, it’s the flip of the Jap Europeans to host COP. But geopolitics around the breadth of the area had hindered a rustic rising.
For our section, Armenia had vetoed our bid. Armenia had occupied virtually a 5th of our across the world recognised territory for the previous 3 many years, while Azerbaijan had taken again those territories in 2020.
But, as a part of historical peace talks between our two countries, Armenia agreed to reinforce our bid, while we agreed to reinforce the Armenian candidature for Jap Eu Staff Cop Bureau club. The step forward got here a yr later than hosts are generally decided on, giving Azerbaijan simply part the time to arrange for the convention.
With this territory, assaults have possibly expectedly come from those that oppose peace talks between Azerbaijan and Armenia. COP serves handiest as a department on which to hold all way of grievance, together with obvious makes an attempt of Azerbaijan to now “peace-wash” its popularity, ignoring the reality its internet hosting used to be a made from peace talks or that — as either side have stated — we stand getting ready to a long-elusive peace deal.
Complicated and difficult paintings
Azerbaijan goals just for one washing at COP: to clean away the divisions that lie between nations.
We should lend a hand advanced countries agree a brand new local weather fund that can flip guarantees to segment down international emissions on the previous COP into truth, while protective growing nations at the entrance traces of local weather exchange — consistent with our not unusual however differentiated tasks because of ancient emissions.
That is complicated and difficult paintings. For some, it’s understandably more uncomplicated to search out safe haven in easy, affordable, grievance.
Hikmet Hajiyev is overseas affairs adviser to the president of Azerbaijan.
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