Mukhtar Babayev, with more than 24 years of experience in the Azerbaijan state oil company (Socar), he will be the president of COP29 to be held in Baku in November 2024. His appointment has been harshly criticized by environmental groups and NGOs, who have emphasized the parallelism with the double role Sultan Al Jaberpresident of COP28 and at the same time executive director of Adnoc, the United Arab Emirates oil company.
Despite his record as a gas and oil executive, Babayev was appointed in 2018 environment minister and has been trying for more than a decade to “change mentality” and instill the “ecological imperative” in its 10 million compatriots.
Fossil fuels represent 92.5% of Azerabayan’s exports, which has been exploiting its resources for 160 years and suffering serious environmental deterioration due to the impact of the petrochemical industry. To the point where a large area of the capital and COP29 venue, Baku, was known as the “black city” for its links to oil.
The election of the former Soviet republic has also been criticized for its poor democratic and human rights record, as well as for its military offensive in 2023 to recover Nagorno Karabakh and his confrontation with Armenia. Azerbaijan will in any case be the third consecutive “petrostate” to host a climate COP.
The top UN climate change official, Simon Stiell, the same one who predicted in Dubai “the beginning of the end of the era of fossil fuels”, has welcomed the appointment as president of COP29 of Mukhtar Babayev, who will be supported by the deputy foreign minister Yalchin Rafiyev.