President Aliyev has described the country's rich deposits of natural resources including oil and gas as the "Gift from God". Azerbaijan is rich in both of these fossil fuels. Under his presidency, the country has been roaring ahead with development, driven largely by fossil fuel utilisation. One can understand the discontent of climate activists as to why on earth the COP29 summit is being hosted by an unapologetic regime that has no problems utilising fossil fuels.
President Aliyev isn't totally off the mark when he talks about the hypocrisy that exists in the West. On the one hand, the country he leads has been dubbed a 'Petrostate' and on the other many of the developed nations are also engaged in buying Azerbaijan's oil and gas reserves. Indeed, half of the country's exports comprises these two natural fuels. Hence, it hardly comes as a surprise when this leader is perfectly at home taking a jab at this UN summit against Western media that have apparently subjected him to a "campaign of slander and blackmail".
President Aliyev's sentiments are echoed by many other fossil-fuel rich countries in other parts of the world, including places like Guyana. The alternative argument to the mantra of climate summits is that natural resources like oil, gas, coal ought to be developed to drive forward national development plans in under-developed nations. The counter narrative is based on the fact that it is not these countries that have been responsible for the major global pollution. Now that the advanced economies have reached a development decades ahead of the rest of the world, these nations are putting caps on developing countries by attempting to limit the use of fossil fuels.
The pushback was bound to come sooner or later. The Azeri president has taken a jab at more than Western nations, Western media but turned his wrath against NGOs stating that "fake news media of the country which is (the) number one oil and gas producer in the world and produces 30 times more oil than Azerbaijan, call us 'petrostate'." If one takes a look at the European theatre for instance, EU nations have actually increased their utilisation of fossil-fuels as they weaned their economies away from cheap Russian natural gas after the Russo-Ukraine war started. That created a lot of demand and countries like Azerbaijan helped fill the gap with its fossil fuel exports.
While the UN chief agrees that the G20 countries ought to take leadership in the process of stepping away from fossil fuels, exactly the opposite is happening. Hence, there is one set of rules for rich nations, and another set of rules for countries that have no choice but to tap into natural fuels to bring their economies into the 21st century.
With regards to the climate summit being held in Azerbaijan, climate activists do have a point. Azerbaijan is undoubtedly one of the oil capitals of the world. If the central point of the summit is to limit use of fossil fuels, then it could have been hosted elsewhere. If it was the intention of the organisers to showcase that the host country would have a change of heart about fossil fuels, then that goal has backfired spectacularly.
Regardless of the process by which Azerbaijan ended up hosting the summit, the fact of the matter is that it has opened up a can of worms that will have far reaching consequences. As pointed out by CBC News "It is a conflict of interest to allow a major producer of oil and gas to be custodian of climate talks that are designed to reduce emissions in order to achieve a livable future for everyone." Another major development appears to have eluded the summit organizers altogether and that is the re-election of President Trump who has his doubts about claims being made on climate change, and is a big proponent of fossil fuels. Hence, how G20 leadership will recalibrate its position after this development is anyone's guess. It remains to be seen as to what sort of commitments will be made at this summit, how much watering down of agreements there will be and whether participating nations will be able to find a common ground on fossil-fuel exploration.
Regardless of what climate activists state, pragmatic nations will utilise their natural fossil fuels to propel their economies forward because as has been the experience of countries like Bangladesh, an import-dependent fossil fuel energy plan is akin to driving the economy to near bankruptcy. Notwithstanding claims that renewable energy (RE) is becoming cheaper, even advanced economies like Germany have stepped back from RE solutions because it is both too expensive to produce and cannot replace cheap sources of fuel like coal and natural gas.
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