Oil and gas are a “gift of god”, Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliyev told the Cop29 climate conference on Tuesday. Speaking to delegates at the United Nations summit, held in the capital city of Baku, Mr Aliyev defended his nation’s fossil fuel resources after some campaigners had criticised holding the event in Azerbaijan.
He added that “countries should not be blamed for having [oil and gas] and should not be blamed for bringing the resources to the market, because the market needs them”.
“As a president of Cop29 of course, we will be a strong advocate for green transition, and we are doing it. But at the same time, we must be realistic,” said Mr Aliyev, who has labelled his country’s oil and gas resources a “gift from god”.
“Azerbaijan’s share in global gas emissions is only 0.1 per cent”, he told the conference.
The declaration stunned many at the summit, where global leaders, thousands of delegates and campaigners have assembled to push for a transition away from oil and gas.
Azerbaijan’s role as the host was already controversial. Before the start of the summit, recordings highlighted in a report by the BBC allegedly showed the chief executive of Azerbaijan’s Cop29 team, Elnur Soltanov, discussing “investment opportunities” in the state oil and gas company with a man posing as a potential investor.
“We have a lot of gas fields that are to be developed,” he appears to say. Azerbaijan’s Cop29 team have not commented on the allegations.
However, Mr Aliyev said “western fake news media” was unfairly targeting the country.
“I have to bring these figures to the attention of our audience, because right after Azerbaijan was elected as a host country of Cop29, we became a target of a coordinated, well-orchestrated campaign of slander and blackmail,” Mr Aliyev says.
“Western fake news media and so-called independent NGOs and some politicians ... as if [they] were competing in spreading disinformation and false information about our country,” he adds.
President Aliyev and his administration are accused by human rights organisations of spearheading a crackdown on freedom of speech ahead of the climate summit, including against climate activists and journalists.
Ahead of Cop29, Azerbaijan’s authorities extended the pretrial detention of at least 11 journalists from the country’s remaining independent news outlets on currency smuggling charges related to alleged funding from Western donors.
Alex Rafalowicz, executive director of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative, said: “Countries are not to blame for their natural resources, but they are responsible for the threat they pose to humanity by extracting them from the ground and driving climate impacts. This is betraying the nations that are present here in these negotiations.”
Meanwhile, United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres told world leaders on Tuesday to “pay up” to prevent climate-led humanitarian disasters, and said time was running out to limit a destructive rise in global temperatures.
“On climate finance, the world must pay up, or humanity will pay the price,” Mr Guterres said in a speech. “The sound you hear is the ticking clock. We are in the final countdown to limit global temperature rise to 1.5C and time is not on our side.”
This year is set to be the hottest on record. Scientists say evidence shows global warming and its impacts are unfolding faster than expected and the world may already have hit 1.5C (2.7F) of warming above the average pre-industrial temperature – a critical threshold beyond which it is at risk of irreversible and extreme climate change.
The conference was already facing a muted start, with many world leaders missing. The recent re-election of Donald Trump in the United States has cast doubt on US climate commitments, with Mr Trump’s team indicating a probable withdrawal from the Paris Agreement once he assumes office.
This uncertainty has left many delegates anxious about the outcome of Cop29 where the task at hand is to create a trillion dollar fund for climate action.
Joe Biden, the US president, Emmanuel Macron, the French president, Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, Anthony Albanese, the Australian prime minister, and Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister, have all missed the summit.
Mr Aliyev’s statements echo Azerbaijan’s broader stance on fossil fuels, as the nation continues to rely heavily on oil and gas revenues. Earlier this year, he announced plans to increase gas production.
