Azerbaijan's Minister of Ecology, Mukhtar Babayev, was appointed on Friday by his country as president of COP29, which will be held in Baku in November. This politician and veteran of the oil industry is little known to the public, but his appointment worries several NGOs, dissatisfied with the fact that the Emirati Sultan al-Jaber, another oilman, presided over the last world climate summit.
First modification:
4 min
Another face of the oil industry will chair a climate conference. Following the appointment of Sultan al-Jaber as head of COP28 in the United Arab Emirates, Azerbaijan this Friday appointed Mukhtar Babayev as president of COP29, which will be held in Baku from November 11 to 22.
“His Excellency Mukhtar Babayev has been appointed president-designate of the 29th session of COP29,” Rashad Allahverdiyev, an official at the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources of Azerbaijan, where the new COP president has worked since 2018, wrote to AFP.
At 56, Mukhtar Babayev follows in the footsteps of his Dubai predecessor, Sultan al-Jaber, who chaired the climate conference while being the head of the Emirati oil major, ADNOC. The Azerbaijani minister will play the same role next November, despite having worked for the national oil and gas company Socar for 16 years.
Although COP presidents do not play a decisive role, they are essential in guiding negotiations and proposing compromises. A key role, therefore, that will be occupied for the second consecutive time by a man from the oil industry.
This symbolic appointment worries NGOs seeking progress in the fight against climate warming. Alice Harrison of Global Witness said she had a “feeling of déjà vu” with a “former oil official from an authoritarian petro-state.”
16 years in the Azerbaijan oil industry
The largest NGO network at the COP, the Climate Action Network, also called on Mukhtar Babayev to “reinforce the COP28 outcome on the fossil fuel transition and, in particular, make the financing of this transition in developing countries development a big priority of COP29”.
According to the British network BBC, “little” is known about Mukhtar Babayev, except that he is the new president of COP29 and is “much less known by climate diplomats” than his Emirati predecessor.
Before dedicating himself to the oil industry, he studied in Moscow and worked in several Azerbaijani administrations.
From 1994 to 2003, he joined Socar (State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic) in the Department of Foreign Economic Relations, before moving to the marketing and economic operations division. He then became vice president in charge of the oil company's ecological division, between 2007 and 2010, a position that led him to organize an international conference on the rehabilitation of contaminated soils in 2008, according to the newspaper 'Le Monde'.
Mukhtar Babayev's career took a political turn in 2010, when he became a deputy under the colors of the New Azerbaijan Party, Yap, the country's main political force led by the autocratic Azerbaijani president, Ilham Aliev.
In 2018, he became Minister of Ecology, then represented his country at the latest climate conference in Dubai. It was then that a “general consensus” emerged to accept Azerbaijan's candidacy as organizer of COP29. Until then, the country's designation had been blocked for months by Armenia and Bulgaria, who finally withdrew their candidacies.
An economy dependent on hydrocarbons
From a veteran of the oil industry to a politician in charge of the ecology portfolio, Mukhtar Babayev could focus criticism on himself that points to a risk of conflict of interest, as has been the case with Sultan al-Jaber.
COP29 in Azerbaijan will also remember, in some aspects, that of the Emirates. While the burning of oil, gas or coal accounts for more than 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions, Baku was one of the world's oil capitals at the end of the 20th century.
The country developed large oil and gas fields in the Caspian Sea starting in the 1990s. Today, gas is more important than oil to Azerbaijan, and is mainly exported to Europe.
“Today the country remains very dependent on hydrocarbons, which represent a little less than 50% of its GDP, a little more than 50% of its budgetary income and a little more than 90% of its export income,” explained Francis Perrin. , energy specialist at the Institute of International and Strategic Relations.
The decision to organize climate conferences in countries that are large producers of fossil fuels makes many NGOs fearful. “At some point (…) the question of credibility” of the appointment process will have to be raised, Romano Ioualalen, from Oil Change International, emphasizes to 'El Mundo'. “To achieve this, there must be a very strict separation between their oil interests and the COP presidencies,” he concludes.
Adapted from its French original
#Mukhtar #Babayev #oil #executive #president #COP29 #Azerbaijan
