Azerbaijan has an opportunity to show genuine climate leadership by focusing debate on the decarbonization dilemmas of petrostates, and by using UNFCCC dialogues to recruit the world’s expertise and ingenuity in exploring solutions. However, given Azerbaijan’s current trajectory,
this opportunity looks likely to be lost.
This paper was prompted by Azerbaijan’s unexpected assumption of a position at the centre of global climate governance, as host of the UNFCCC’s flagship 2024 climate change conference, COP29. It will be the first major multinational political event in the country, and preparations for the 11–22 November summit are bringing scrutiny not only to Azerbaijan’s climate credentials but to other aspects of its politics and society.
As we have shown, the odds seem stacked against Azerbaijan providing strong and genuine climate leadership. Despite, or perhaps because of this, the UNFCCC secretariat, civil society, the scientific community and some parties to the Paris Agreement on climate change are likely to do whatever they can to help Azerbaijan make a success of COP29, its Troika membership, and UN World Environment Day 2026. However, with support also comes scrutiny, likely over time to include international lobbying for incremental improvements in the country’s climate commitments and more consistency and accountability in its implementation of them. As the world’s main multilateral mechanism for negotiating governmental plans to address climate change and its impacts, COP summits are not easily written off. These events are too important. This is particularly true of COP29, given its agenda of boosting global climate finance at a crucial point in the Paris process.
Despite the authors’ scepticism on prospects for success, it is not out of the question that the scrutiny that comes with COP29 and Troika membership could have a galvanizing effect on climate ambition and action in Azerbaijan. As this paper has shown, the country has strong incentives to rapidly upscale resilience-building and transition, though these are counterbalanced by competing imperatives to maintain the status quo. Azerbaijan is also well versed in managing the often competing needs and interests of disparate stakeholders. Plus, the government has experience of hosting large international events, albeit in sport and entertainment rather than climate diplomacy. Then again, a climate COP is not Eurovision, and participants and observers at COP29 will need to look beyond official rhetoric for evidence of significant reform on environmental and other governance issues. Those hoping for signs of progress should remember that Azerbaijan’s climate governance institutions are shallow and not designed to facilitate change, that its civil society is forcibly constrained, and that its broader political environment is generally hostile to change and designed to withstand it.
Despite initial claims that Baku could host 80,000 delegates, this year’s COP may be a slimmed-down affair. Attendance has reportedly been capped at 40,000; with just weeks to go before the conference, many world leaders have not yet confirmed their attendance; observer organizations report being allocated fewer ‘badges’ to access the conference; and companies are reportedly nervous of an event at which the credibility of both the host and the Paris Agreement is on the line. The optics of having an authoritarian petrostate presiding for the second consecutive year (after the UAE in 2023) over the world’s most important climate summit are challenging, particularly given the UNFCCC’s commitment to principles of international cooperation and civic inclusion. If the organizing committee fails to set the right tone, Baku in November 2024 may not be the best place for corporates (and other non-state actors) to burnish their green credentials. Concerns over a potential PR fiasco at Baku would be amplified if Donald Trump, a vehement climate change denier, wins the US presidential election just a few days before COP29 opens.
Threats both real and invented are regularly invoked by Baku. But there is no greater, more systemic threat than climate change. COP29 represents an opportunity to set Azerbaijan’s future political and economic trajectory. The host’s aspirations to make COP29 a ‘peace COP’ may have more credibility if that ‘peace’ includes measures likely to prevent climate- or resource-related conflict, rather than ambivalent commitments to peace with Armenia combined with procrastination on an actual agreement.
Battening down the hatches
Change is coming to Azerbaijan, whether it wants it or not. The question of whether the political leadership is willing to accept that inevitability – and to channel it into constructive climate diplomacy and domestic energy sector reform – has been a thread running through this paper.
Whether for Azerbaijanis themselves or external observers, the country’s internal complexity and geopolitically pivotal position offer cause for a mixture of justified despondency at the lack of reform prospects, and optimism at Azerbaijan’s obvious potential. The name ‘Aliyev’ has ruled in Azerbaijan for over 30 years, with few discernible improvements in democracy, governance or human rights, and many observable declines. Yet the country is largely regarded by many in the ‘West’ as a necessary friendly rampart in wider struggles with Russia and Iran. Azerbaijan is also ostensibly stable and independent-minded. Its population has no desire for a further war with Armenia, and the political leadership understands, at some level, that Azerbaijan’s long-term future lies neither with hydrocarbons nor with Russia.
What is less clear is whether change will come to Azerbaijan through combinations of external pressure and wider systemic forces, leading to a renewed impetus for progressive reform; or whether change will be accompanied and driven by social unrest, as has happened (and will continue to happen) with so many of its neighbours or near-neighbours. Climate change will make Azerbaijan hotter, drier, poorer and less stable; unequal distribution of fossil fuel wealth will do little to cushion society from these blows.
Within a decade, Azerbaijan’s energy paradox – wedded to oil and gas but propelled towards renewables – is likely to result in the country simply pursuing both to the greatest extent possible in an attempt to maintain its geopolitical position, preserve its economy and, most of all, sustain the ruling elites.
With a significant boost to his domestic legitimacy as a result of Azerbaijan’s military victory in 2020, President Ilham Aliyev has had an unprecedented opportunity to adjust Azerbaijan’s course and prepare the country for the future, including for the climate-related pressures it will feel. That opportunity, however, is being squandered due to a lingering political aspiration to total control, the structural underpinnings of which – oil and gas rents – are environmentally damaging as well as impermanent. The inherent insecurity of the country’s elites, their overriding imperative of political survival, and the accompanying logic that meaningful, systemic transformation would be contrary to self-interest as currently perceived by the Aliyev government mean that Baku is attempting to stave off change for as long as possible.
A ‘gift from god’ and an obligation to humanity
President Aliyev says that oil and gas are ‘a gift from god’. Azerbaijan’s claims of climate leadership now demand that his country grapple with, and help other nations grapple with, the consequences of that ‘gift’.
Greenhouse gas emissions from Russian and US fossil fuels vastly exceed emissions from countries like Azerbaijan. Meanwhile, the EU, in some respects less vulnerable than Azerbaijan to the effects of climate change, encourages Azerbaijan to drill deeper than it ever has before. Within a decade, Azerbaijan’s energy paradox – wedded to oil and gas but propelled towards renewables – is likely to result in the country simply pursuing both to the greatest extent possible in an attempt to maintain its geopolitical position, preserve its economy and, most of all, sustain the ruling elites.
While coal, oil and gas reserves can be delineated by country, the atmosphere that must absorb greenhouse gases from their use cannot. All countries, including Azerbaijan, will suffer when that atmosphere is overburdened. Whether emissions are domestic or exported is only relevant to the extent that hydrocarbon revenues may support some countries in becoming resilient to climate impacts, while other countries will remain vulnerable. Azerbaijan will be in the latter camp for as long as it continues to neglect adaptation and seeks in effect to ‘free-ride’ on the climate change mitigation of others. No matter where emissions from oil and gas production occur – whether in Azerbaijan or elsewhere – cascading climate impacts will flow across borders and through systems to the detriment of all.
A role for the West?
Autocratic, hydrocarbon-rich states are less likely to engage in democratic and social reform than are authoritarian states without large energy reserves. In its domestic and foreign policies, Azerbaijan is definitively moving further away from the Western community of nations – as seen in its withdrawal from PACE in response to the European body’s decision not to ratify its credentials (see Chapter 4). Its growing preference for Turkic- and Russian-mediated forums over Western counterparts is manifest in its recent application for membership of the BRICS grouping.
The West, meanwhile, unlike Russia, will not fully ignore Baku’s human rights record or its kleptocratic business practices. Yet Western countries are not without leverage considering their importance to Azerbaijan as a bulwark against Russia, their soft power and market power, and Azerbaijan’s concern for its own reputation. The UK has a potentially important role in this respect, considering the prominence to date of the British financial services sector in managing wealth originating in foreign autocracies.
Western policy towards Azerbaijan today is beset by paralysis. This is the worst of all worlds. It would be better for Western governments to abandon the pretence that Azerbaijan is aligned with Western objectives much beyond energy security, and to concentrate instead on assisting more promising would-be allies, than to continue current arrangements. Better still, however, would be a new, heavily conditional, but more positive foreign policy offer and vision – not only for Azerbaijan but, crucially, for its two South Caucasus neighbours, Armenia and Georgia, as well. New Western approaches to engagement with Baku, which could include assistance funds and investment for development, climate change adaptation and the energy transition, would need to take care to ensure international norms are respected while also being advantageous to all South Caucasus parties. The recommendations at the end of this research paper propose possible first steps along this path.
Settling bills, settling scores
COP29’s remit is one of transparency, nationally determined progress on climate action, and equitable financing that supports the most vulnerable countries. In terms of anticipated negotiating dynamics, the climate finance agenda at COP29 ties in with the movement to address inequities established in the age of empires, so that rich countries with the greatest historic responsibility for emissions now take a due share of the financial responsibility for helping poorer countries pay for climate action. All of these elements speak powerfully, in one way or another, to the Azerbaijan leadership’s narrative about the country and its governance. Yet to be even remotely credible on climate leadership, Baku must at least begin an inspirational narrative of change for the country, back this up with ambitious commitments and concrete actions, and gather other nations behind its example.
The COP process is consensus-driven. Negotiations rely on movement from the most reticent governments. As Azerbaijan is among this number, it may enjoy more credibility with countries facing similar dilemmas, or harbouring reservations about overcommitting on their climate actions, when it comes to advocating a higher ‘floor’ of ambition at COP29. A willingness to discuss its own challenges openly could enable Azerbaijan to push through an agreement that, while inevitably involving compromise, could offer benefits so comprehensive that delegates cannot turn it down. Conversely, pressure towards backsliding on hard-won ambition is ever-present at the COP. Azerbaijan’s own ambivalence risks emboldening vested interests’ attempts to secure a watered-down agreement that delays transition and further damages trust between countries. In this case, high-ambition countries and international civil society will need to work hard to hold the presidency and others to account.
Growing energy transition risks, combined with insufficient international collaboration to manage these risks and to meet – or, at least, strive towards meeting – climate commitments under the Paris Agreement, mean that no developing nation can be secure in setting its own direction and destiny while oil and gas continue to dominate economically. Azerbaijan’s own climate vulnerability, the transition risks it faces, and its attempts to assume a position of global climate leadership all require it to move rapidly away from the fossil fuels that it has considered a boon and a birthright. Azerbaijan should use its COP presidency to help the world find the finance to make the low-carbon transition. The true cost of oil and gas dependency must be counted and paid for at some point. As COP29 host and president, Azerbaijan is tasked with presenting the international community with ‘the bill’, as it were, and helping countries negotiate a path to paying it. The challenge will be to do so in a way that meets the needs of Global North and Global South alike, former colonial powers and former colonies, fossil fuel-funded stakeholders and advocates of fossil fuel-free economies.
A new vision for Azerbaijan
With a prime seat at the multilateral table, Azerbaijan holds a strong hand, but the country must play it well. It has stability, natural resources that potentially bridge the fossil fuel and renewables eras, education and youth (over 90 per cent of the 10-million-strong population is under 65). Moreover, the country is geopolitically positioned neither in the East nor the West, neither in the Global North nor Global South, and has no game-changing dependencies on any major power.
An opportunity therefore presents itself for Azerbaijan: to stand out in the region, and the world, and to lead by example as a prosperous, greening nation, at peace with itself and with others.
This possible optimistic future for Azerbaijan requires a new and genuine commitment to institutional reform, market liberalization and societal freedoms.
This possible optimistic future for Azerbaijan does not imply or require membership of Western- or Russian-led blocs like the EU or the Eurasian Economic Union. Nor does it imply adoption of a ‘Western’ set of values, whatever that may mean. But it does require a new and genuine commitment to institutional reform, market liberalization and societal freedoms. It’s an achievable vision for a leader with few constraints on his power. However, President Aliyev will need to diffuse that power to cement his legacy, and ultimately bequeath it responsibly to assure his county’s future. This is the historic opportunity that Azerbaijan has, yet which seems to be passing it by.
Recommendations
Ruth Townend, Laurence Broers, Arzu Geybulla, Glada Lahn, Jody LaPorte, James Nixey and Ľubica Polláková
The following recommendations – jointly developed by the authors of this paper – propose avenues through which Azerbaijan could amplify its climate leadership role internationally and optimize the benefits of a COP legacy at home and in its neighbourhood. The recommendations also aim to support the global community in engaging with Azerbaijan’s COP29 presidency, Troika role and national green transition objectives.
1. Azerbaijan’s government should openly acknowledge its dilemmas around fossil-fuel reliance and climate vulnerability, and should solicit support from the global climate community in addressing them.
- In preparing for its COP29 presidency, Azerbaijan has shown signs that it is willing to move past its customary hostility to ‘outside interference’. In a growing spirit of openness, the government should further leverage the resources, expertise and ingenuity of the global climate community, while supporting broader expertise at home (see Recommendation 3). Azerbaijan needs to understand and face the reality of its climate and transition dilemmas, while soliciting support and funding to overcome them.
- Reducing dependence on fossil fuels will take Azerbaijan many years. Azerbaijan’s government must ‘bite the bullet’ with an ambitious revision of its NDC and a correspondingly ambitious National Adaptation Plan (NAP). Officials should use the multilateral climate leadership spotlight to promote the country’s successes, while transparently disclosing its challenges and needs.
How the international community can help:
- Technical and financial support for Azerbaijan’s low-carbon transition and climate change adaptation could help the country to become a vanguard of reform. Given the poor governance environment and Azerbaijan’s poor scores on corruption indices, the efficacy of international support will depend on rigorous accompanying monitoring mechanisms and incentives for governance reform.
- Businesses and governments partnering with Azerbaijan – particularly the UK, which remains the largest single foreign investor in the country, and the EU, as the main market for Azerbaijani gas – should advocate for meaningful governance reforms, and for diversification and decentralization of Azerbaijan’s economy.
2. As Troika members, the UAE, Azerbaijan and Brazil should be open about the geopolitical challenges of the energy transition. They should continue to break down taboos around fossil fuel production in the negotiations, and make it part of their mission to plot a viable path to a resilient future for current producers.
- At recent COPs it has gradually become more possible to ask politically difficult questions about the future of fossil fuels. Azerbaijan and its Troika partners should ensure these questions are brought to the centre of the debate at COP29 and COP30. Particular attention should be paid to the following:
- How to increase transparency in long-term oil and gas demand-side signals from importing countries so that supply-side planning can adapt accordingly and in time. Change will also depend on developing incentives for new markets.
- How to support economic resilience during the energy transition for fossil fuel producer countries (including, but not limited to, members of the Troika), and the priorities for different types of producer in planning successful transition pathways.
- How to collaboratively manage an orderly transition at the global economic level, reorienting incentives and structural factors that currently drive extractives-led export growth over other forms of wealth creation.
- How the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) on climate finance can include revenues from fossil fuels. Such an inclusion should be proportional to the scale of the climate and transition challenges developing countries face, and should channel financial flows away from extraction and towards transition and resilience.
How the international community can help:
- Transition pressures are increasingly affecting, and affected by, geopolitics. This is exemplified by Azerbaijan’s incentive to increase production to meet EU demand as a result of Russia’s strategic withdrawal of gas supplies (see Box 3). Failure to address production of fossil fuels head-on in global negotiations to date is becoming increasingly untenable. Production needs to be on the table, alongside demand, and the Troika is well placed to put it there. Developed and developing producer countries and consumer countries must engage constructively, or risk a ‘prisoner’s dilemma’ playing out to the detriment of all.
- Recent COPs have made leaps forward in broaching the production and use of fossil fuels. The inclusion of text on ‘phase-down of unabated coal’ and ‘phase-out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies’ at COP26 broke new ground. The COP28 agreement on ‘transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a just, equitable and orderly manner’ has the potential to be transformative. Backsliding on these gains needs to be avoided at all costs.
- Developing-country hydrocarbon producers should push for an NCQG that addresses the current incentives for them to resist transition. This should also be raised as part of the associated Bridgetown Initiative for reform of the international financial architecture in terms of addressing developing-country indebtedness and ensuring that vulnerable countries have access to low-cost capital which supports Paris-aligned sustainable development.
3. Azerbaijan’s government needs to engage with domestic civil society on climate and environmental action. This would help the country to benefit from the innovation, plurality and on-the-ground connections local actors
can bring.
- Azerbaijan’s government should provide genuine space for Azerbaijani CSOs, and stop harassing and restricting domestic civil society. Azerbaijan will struggle to achieve inclusive or progressive climate leadership or action while environmentalism in the country is politicized and oppressed.
- Given transboundary climate risks in the South Caucasus, dialogue and cooperation with Armenia will be necessary. Armenian CSOs and their Azerbaijani interlocutors would be well placed to assist with the necessary bridge-building, continuing attempts that have been ongoing in one form or another for years. But Azerbaijani practitioners should be able to engage without the threat of treason charges over such cooperation.
How the international community can help:
- Given the low likelihood of Azerbaijan creating genuine space for civil society, it is important that overseas CSOs, national governments and the UN speak up for Azerbaijani civil society.
- Those with the platform to do so should highlight how the constraints on, and impoverishment of, civil society in Azerbaijan undermine prospects for effective climate action:
- Commentary and critiques should take advantage of moments when civil society voices might expect to be raised: Baku Climate Action Week, from 30 September to 4 October, was one such opportunity (though coverage of, and comment on, the week were muted); COP29 in Baku, COP30 in Belém and World Environment Day 2026 in Baku are others.
- Advocates for civil society should cite evidence of the disappearance of civic space around climate action in Azerbaijan, including the politicization of study of climate action and energy transition in academia.
- Rights watchdogs and climate organizations should continue to highlight Azerbaijan’s record on human rights and political and civic freedoms.
- The UK government, the European Commission, the UN, consultants, overseas civil society groups, and other organizations working with the Azerbaijani government should exert pressure for just and transparent treatment of civil society in the country.
- While many in Azerbaijan have been coerced or sentenced into silence, there are opportunities to work with exiled media and civic groups, which remain committed to holding the leadership in Azerbaijan to account.
4. To bolster the credibility of the ‘peace COP’ agenda, Azerbaijan’s government should emphasize the links between cross-border, cascading climate risks, conflict and security.
- There remains a risk that efforts to associate COP29 with regional peace will lack substance or sustainability. This might involve signatures of a shallow bilateral agreement or ‘basic principles’ that resolve little, either before or at COP29 or afterwards. Such an agreement, which would merely postpone the resolution of contentious issues to an uncertain future, should be avoided. Instead, a focus on shared environmental issues as a starting point will make the peace agenda more meaningful, and provide opportunities for confidence-building and normalization of Armenian-Azerbaijani relations:
- The ‘peace COP’ agenda can be made more substantive through a focus on cascading risks and instability, and through international collaboration on the management of transboundary risks in a spirit of mutual self-interest.
- Cooperation on shared environmental challenges in the wider South Caucasus could serve to entrench a cycle of confidence-building measures. This could help to normalize joint Armenian-Azerbaijani action on environmental problems, particularly transboundary water issues, with benefits for regional security and stability.
How the international community can help:
- The international community should support good governance in Azerbaijan and constructive regional diplomacy, including on climate risks. This should include encouraging Azerbaijan and its South Caucasus neighbours to act in a spirit of cooperation and reciprocity.
- Political leaders in Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia should recognize the risks the three countries share, and their joined interests in effective climate action, and act correspondingly.
- Good-neighbourly water diplomacy efforts could be a positive legacy coming out of the COP process, and could be supported through the existing regional agendas (e.g. through the UN Economic Commission for Europe).
5. Azerbaijan’s COP platform should be leveraged to build wider stability and support sustainable development in the South Caucasus and Caspian Sea region, and to draw attention to specific regional challenges. Political leaders in Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia should also acknowledge their joint interest in effective climate action in a way that is independent of, but complementary to, Azerbaijan and Armenia’s bilateral peacebuilding efforts.
- Part of the logic for a rotating presidency of the UNFCCC’s climate talks is to highlight different regional challenges and opportunities, and to bring differing perspectives to the table at each summit. As part of its claims to climate leadership, Azerbaijan should take the opportunity to prioritize regional ‘ownership’ of shared environmental challenges in the South Caucasus and Caspian Sea region.
- Baku understands that regional cooperation with Armenia and Georgia is essential for addressing transboundary issues such as managing water resources, conserving or restoring biodiversity, and reducing air pollution. Azerbaijan needs to provide genuine climate leadership to enhance regional cooperation on such issues, in a way that is independent of, but complementary to, peacebuilding efforts with Armenia.
- The Caspian Sea, which Azerbaijan shares with Russia, Iran, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, is shrinking, highly polluted, and contaminated from oil drilling, shipping and military conflict. A concerted effort to clean up this shared asset and restore its ecology would be a major success, with dividends for all littoral countries. Again, this would help with confidence-building.
How the international community can help:
- COP29 can help regional decarbonization efforts by bringing international attention and investment to the South Caucasus, and by promoting an Azerbaijani role as a hub for green energy and trade and as an enabler of broader regional decarbonization.
- International actors, including the US, the EU and the UK, should support cooperation by committing to a ‘regional environmental fund’ and calling for international investment in it. Such a fund could provide financial resources and incentives for Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia to tackle shared environmental challenges, potentially stimulating foreign investment.
6. Parties to the UNFCCC should mandate the secretariat to develop best practice and guardrails for the COP presidency. Guidance developed should seek to realize the benefits and limit the potential damage from the system of rotating the COP presidency between regional blocs and designating a new president for each COP.
- The role of the COP presidency has grown in scope and symbolism. Given recent criticism about alleged ‘capture’ of the process by governments less than committed to climate action, parties should mandate the UNFCCC secretariat to review what purpose rotation of the presidency serves, how the presidency role has changed, and what can reasonably be expected of a COP presidency country, which might only have a year – or, as in Azerbaijan’s case, less – to prepare for the role. Allaying such concerns is vital, given that faith and trust in the UNFCCC, the Paris Agreement and the COP process are the bedrock of multilateral climate ambition. With all its faults, this system provides the world’s last, best hope of some level of coordinated climate action.
- If the UNFCCC process is to benefit from continued rotation of the COP presidency, then summit presidents and hosts need to more adequately represent the interests not just of their own country but of the wider regional blocs they come from.
- New mechanisms of collaboration and representation are needed to achieve this end. Parties should mandate the UNFCCC secretariat to consider how it can support this through the COP president candidacy and induction processes, without adding further complexity or burdensome bureaucracy.
How the international community can help:
- Previous COP presidents and a spread of countries from across regional blocs should work with the UNFCCC secretariat to develop proposals for enabling gains from, and for limiting the downsides of, the COP presidency rotation. Such mechanisms need to ensure that expectations of the COP president are realistic, and that the annual figureheads of the COP can be best enabled to promote progress under the Paris Agreement. Mechanisms proposed would need to be negotiated and agreed upon by parties at the COP, most likely at COP30 or COP31.
