Sao Paulo
Among the world's ten most oildependent economies, Azerbaijan will host and chair the UN climate conference COP29, scheduled to take place from November 11 to 22, 2024.
The definition only came this weekend, during the final days of negotiations at COP28, which runs until Tuesday in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates. The official announcement of the next host is expected to take place at the closing plenary of the COP.
However, the document prepared by the UN Secretariat with the agenda of venues for the next editions of the COP has already been distributed this Sunday (10). Brazil will also officially host COP30 in November 2025.
Generally, host countries are confirmed two years in advance so that they can prepare to finance the event and carry out the work. Unofficially, the presidency of a COP begins as soon as the previous edition ends.
However, tension over the hosting of COP29 lasted until the middle of COP28 due to conflicts in the Eastern European region, which according to the UNsponsored regional rotation would be the next region to host the event.
The difficulty was compounded by Russia's declaration that it would veto any EU country's candidacy as host, a response to sanctions imposed by the bloc over the war on Ukraine.
Azerbaijan is also at war with Armenia, but last week the two countries began to communicate.
On Thursday (7), the heads of state of both countries issued a joint statement declaring that there is a historic chance for longterm peace. On the same day, Armenia lifted its veto on Azerbaijan's bid to host COP29.
On Saturday (9), in informal talks, the Russians also pledged not to veto the country's candidacy.
Azerbaijan has no tradition of actively participating in climate negotiations and is one of the ten most oildependent economies. 64% of its GDP (gross domestic product) comes from revenue from the production and export of the commodity. The dependency is even greater than that of the current COP host, the United Arab Emirates, which generates 52% of its economy in this sector. The data comes from the Carbon Tracker analysis.
Azerbaijan is also a member of OPEC+, an expanded group of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, which Brazil is also expected to join.
Like the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, where the edition took place last year, Azerbaijan lives under an authoritarian regime President Ilham Aliyev has ruled the country since 2003.
COP29 was scheduled to take place in the city of Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. The country's government claims that the city has good infrastructure to host the conference, which should compensate for the short deadline for the organization.
Participation in climate conferences has increased in recent years. Issues dedicated to technical topics which were not about creating a new milestone used to have an audience of around 20,000 people. At key moments in the negotiations, such as COP21 in 2015, which led to the Paris Agreement, 45,000 people were accredited.
As the climate crisis worsens and organizations become more involved in the agenda, COPs have become excessive, even in expenditures of low relevance.
At a major international meeting, subnational actors, researchers, activists and business people use the agenda to discuss the climate agenda in events parallel to the diplomatic negotiations.
Last year, COP27 on climate in Egypt brought together 35,000 participants. The COP28 organization has accredited more than 90,000 participants.