By hosting the UN climate negotiations in 2024, and vigorously pursuing further environmental leadership roles, Azerbaijan has turned a spotlight on its own climate vulnerability, governance challenges and economic reliance on fossil fuels.
As 2023 drew to a close, amid record-breaking temperatures and global wrangling over climate action, Azerbaijan propelled itself unexpectedly into a role of climate leadership. A heavily oil- and gas-dependent country of 10 million people, sandwiched between Russia and Iran, Azerbaijan was chosen as host of the UN’s flagship 2024 climate change summit, COP29. To succeed in its bid for presidency of this ‘Conference of the Parties’ (COP), Azerbaijan’s government was willing to bear criticism over its human rights record from international civil society, to take on considerable expense and inconvenience, and to come to a public agreement with its arch-rival, Armenia.
Azerbaijan has secured an influential position in international environmental policymaking – at a time of rising pressure around crucial issues such as climate finance – until at least mid-2026. In addition to being awarded the presidency of COP29, which will take place in the country’s capital, Baku, from 11 to 22 November 2024, Azerbaijan has formed a ‘Troika’ arrangement with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which hosted COP28 in 2023, and Brazil, which will preside over COP30 next year. The three countries will coordinate agendas and pool resources to promote continuity across consecutive COP negotiations under the heading of the ‘Roadmap to Mission 1.5°C’.
Further to this, Azerbaijan has been appointed host of the UN’s World Environment Day in June 2026. The government has also established ‘Baku Climate Action Week’, in collaboration with London Climate Action Week, as a feature of the international climate calendar and as an intended contribution to ‘the foundations for a successful COP29’. And finally, the country has recently submitted a bid to host the COP17 summit of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in November 2026. If Azerbaijan’s claims to climate and environmental leadership amount purely to ‘greenwashing’, as some have suggested, the government seems confident it can keep up the façade for some time.
Azerbaijan has secured an influential position in international environmental policymaking – at a time of rising pressure around crucial issues such as climate finance – until at least mid-2026.
For a small country, these roles offer an opportunity to benefit from a rapid learning curve in diplomacy, from increased international cooperation in its economic development, and from exposure to a global pool of skills and knowledge. Together, these could help Azerbaijan manage its own climate risks and related energy transition.
Azerbaijan is neither the first authoritarian state nor the first petrostate to host a UN climate summit, but concerns nonetheless remain over how effective the country’s stewardship of COP29 will be – and whether Azerbaijan’s responsibility for an agenda of global consequence could delay or undermine climate action. At one level, there is a basic question of readiness, given the unusually short preparation time and the country’s acknowledged lack of experience of climate leadership. Officials presiding over these summits need to be extraordinarily well briefed on multilateral procedure and technical climate issues. In addition, Azerbaijan’s own ambivalence towards the transition from fossil fuels has understandably invited suspicion that its hosting of the conference is not motivated by real commitment to progress in the climate negotiations. There is concern that the country will struggle to lead parties towards ambitious policy commitments where more committed and credible hosts have failed. Azerbaijan and nearly 200 other governments agreed to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems at COP28 in 2023, yet the country’s leadership remains vocal about the fact that it sees no reason to wind down hydrocarbon gas production while demand remains.
There is some political logic to this. Azerbaijan knows that the days of its oil and gas bonanza are numbered, given the country’s declining oil reserves, a limited period in which exporting gas to Europe is likely to be economically feasible, and the wider global shift to low-carbon energy systems. At the same time, Azerbaijan’s hydrocarbon resources are part of the nation’s historical identity and have long been the mainstay of its economy. They have also served as a kind of ‘Swiss army knife’ for the government in tackling domestic and foreign policy challenges – allowing Baku to foster business links with Western energy majors, secure energy export routes that bypass Russia (thus lessening Azerbaijan’s dependence on its neighbour), boost military spending, and exercise patronage-based control over members of the elite. Azerbaijan has no other asset that could replace hydrocarbons in all these roles.
According to Ilham Shaban, head of the Caspian Barrel Oil Research Center, ‘Azerbaijan’s goal is to get the maximum money from its hydrocarbon resources before Europe reaches its decarbonisation objective’. However, without a viable pathway for sustainable national economic diversification, this approach risks locking in investment in high-emissions infrastructure. It also creates ‘opportunity costs’ for society, as policy support for high-carbon sectors delays or prevents the introduction of incentives for greener ones. In only a few years, a long-term decline in demand is expected to begin in global oil and European gas markets. The urgency of this timeframe is not reflected in Azerbaijani policymaking.
Like many other states, Azerbaijan will need international financing to adapt to and mitigate climate change. In principle the country should, therefore, be motivated to deliver a solid New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) on climate finance at COP29: one of the government’s headline responsibilities as conference president (see Chapter 2, Box 2). However, Baku is likely to be less keen on a climate finance deal that includes transparency requirements, conditionality around strong climate policies and good governance in recipient countries (which such countries may find hard to meet), or down-scaling of any financial flows that run counter to the goals of the Paris Agreement (as this might restrict investment in fossil fuel expansion).
Azerbaijan’s political economy remains a key obstacle to reforms that might aid climate action in the country. During his 21 years as president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev has consolidated authoritarian governance through crackdowns on political rivals, critics, civil society and independent media. His government’s responses to external criticism of its human rights record have been increasingly bold. Scholars have characterized Azerbaijan’s political system as one of ‘hegemonic authoritarianism’, in which political opposition to the Aliyev government is technically legal but in practice almost impossible. Azerbaijan is a rentier state, dependent economically and politically on oil and gas income, and the country scores poorly on governance indicators such as Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. Political power is also concentrated around the ruling family and its allies. A 2016 referendum removed a two-term presidential limit and gave ‘unprecedented’ powers to the president.
This poor governance environment is not conducive to boosting foreign direct investment and entrepreneurship, nor, given the administration’s claims of climate leadership, is it conducive to preparing climate policies that are appropriate and effective across society. Arguably, an authoritarian political system is not an insurmountable obstacle per se to effective climate action, as autocratic states (China, for instance – see Chapter 4, Box 10) may have more freedom to enact socially disruptive policies with little resistance. But nor can the presence of an authoritarian system easily be dismissed as unimportant. For one thing, it is contrary to the principle of whole-of-society participation that underpins protocol in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). For another, social inclusiveness is considered critical in development of robust and politically sustainable national climate plans.
As a result, Azerbaijan is more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. While preparations for COP29 have started focusing the government’s attention and rhetoric on climate risks, adaptation measures in the country remain in their infancy. Climate change is already affecting Azerbaijan. Land degradation, environmental damage and extreme weather threaten the long-term livelihoods of the 36 per cent of Azerbaijanis who work in agriculture. Water scarcity, a shrinking Caspian Sea and changes to prevailing winds will complicate plans for a transition towards hydroelectric and wind power. Water security is also threatened by the fact that Azerbaijan is a ‘downstream’ state in a volatile neighbourhood (see also Chapter 3), relying for 50–70 per cent of its fresh water on upstream sources outside its borders. Climate-related water stress will exacerbate existing political tensions with neighbouring countries, potentially increasing hard security risks for Azerbaijan.
Baku has publicly acknowledged the need to resolve or prevent such increases in conflict risk by declaring the COP29 summit to be a ‘peace COP’, and by suggesting that the summit could be the venue for a breakthrough agreement with long-term adversary Armenia (something Armenia has also suggested but with different conditions). Azerbaijani officials have also called for a ‘COP truce’, incongruous in the context of Azerbaijan’s own initiation of war in Mountainous Karabakh in September 2020, six months after UN Secretary-General António Guterres had called for a global ceasefire in all conflicts. Since 2020, Azerbaijan has made extensive use of coercive tactics, including repeated military escalations and incursions, to enforce its preferred outcomes in negotiations with Armenia. This culminated in Azerbaijan’s military takeover of Mountainous Karabakh in September 2023, following a nine-month blockade of the Karabakh Armenians’ access to Armenia. While both sides say a peace agreement is in the offing, critical issues have been dropped, and prospects for resolution of these issues are uncertain.
The long-standing political utility, from the Azerbaijani government’s perspective, of conflict with the Armenians also raises questions about the durability of any peace agreement or detente. For decades, the Aliyev government has used rivalry with Armenia to rally popular support. Ongoing antagonistic rhetoric towards Armenia suggests the Azerbaijani government is not ready to relinquish this tool or let society move on now that a peace of sorts (see Chapter 5) has arrived.
Azerbaijan is seeking a global leadership role at an especially challenging time not just for the country, but for multilateral climate action as a whole.
Azerbaijan is seeking a global leadership role at an especially challenging time not just for the country, but for multilateral climate action as a whole. Temperature records are repeatedly being broken and climate impacts are escalating, while the capacity and willingness of governments worldwide to fund climate action remain stubbornly flat. The geopolitical context, too, is difficult, not least with neighbouring Russia continuing its war on Ukraine and conflict raging in the Middle East. The implications of the latter for Israel and Iran – the former a key partner for Baku and the latter a key player in Azerbaijan’s neighbourhood – are highly uncertain.
About this paper
With these factors in mind, this research paper analyses Azerbaijan’s domestic and foreign challenges and policies in the context of the country’s claims – and, distinctly, its opportunity – to be a climate leader. The opportunity is defined by Azerbaijan’s hosting of COP29, by its membership of the UAE–Azerbaijan–Brazil Troika, by its hosting of UN World Environment Day in 2026, and by its bid to host the 2026 UN biodiversity summit. The paper looks at Azerbaijan’s interests, capabilities and constraints in respect of both international climate diplomacy and domestic climate change mitigation and adaptation, and examines the government’s potential to fulfil the climate leadership role it has so actively sought.
We offer ideas for how Azerbaijan might strengthen its resilience in the face of climate change and start a lasting transition to cleaner energy, but our analysis does not shy away from identifying the very real barriers to achieving this. Our analysis includes consideration of climate change and the energy transition, governance and human rights, the political economy, and the Armenian-Azerbaijani
peace process.
We make recommendations for how Azerbaijan might act with genuine climate leadership at COP29 and beyond. Azerbaijani diplomats are aware of the weight they carry in being expected to facilitate more ambitious action on the climate crisis – principally in terms of securing equitable financing for such action. Despite the short lead time Azerbaijan has had for the COP29 conference, failure would be a diplomatic embarrassment. A lack of genuine climate leadership on Azerbaijan’s part would also squander valuable opportunities for much-needed domestic sustainable development and resilience-building. Azerbaijan has a stake in this. The climate and energy transition risks the country faces are very real, and insufficient progress on addressing these risks will exacerbate existing vulnerabilities and store up extensive trouble for the near future.
