The economy of Azerbaijan, host of COP29, relies almost entirely on the fossil fuels that are the main driver of global warming.
Heading into this month’s United Nations-sponsored climate negotiations, the world is contending with rising climate chaos and declining democracy.
It won’t be lost on any of the attendees in Baku, the Azerbaijani capital, that the talks are being hosted by an autocratic government whose economy relies almost entirely on the fossil fuels that are the primary driver of climate change.
How could such a country become the hosts?
As with so much at the United Nations, which is essentially a globe-spanning bureaucracy, the decision came down to protocol. And that protocol, because of particular weaknesses within it, was easily manipulated by Russia, which is itself an autocratic petrostate.
By tradition, the U.N. climate summit is supposed to take place in a different part of the world each year. The Eastern European group, which includes most former Soviet states, was scheduled to anchor COP29, as the 2024 talks are called, and was required to reach unanimous consensus on which of its members would host.
Over months of rancorous debate within the bloc, Russia blocked the selection of every country that had condemned its invasion of Ukraine, vetoing potential candidates like Bulgaria, Slovenia and Moldova.
That left Armenia and Azerbaijan as the final contenders on the table. One problem? They had been locked in their own war for decades.