Azerbaijan defends oil and gas at COP29 climate summit

Oil and gas are “God’s gift” and countries that have them should not be blamed, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev claimed on Tuesday as he received some 75 leaders at the COP29 climate summit.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that poor countries, who have a majority in the 29th Climate Conference, should not leave it empty-handed.

The two leaders, who followed each other on the COP29 platform, reflected on the great contrast with the reality faced by developing countries with hydrocarbons.

“Oil, gas, wind, sun, gold, silver, copper, all… are natural resources and countries should not be blamed for owning them or bringing these resources to market because the market needs them.” ,

“You can quote me when I say it is a gift from God. “I want to repeat it here today, in front of this audience,” he declared.

Although climatologists and environmentalists insist that hydrocarbons are irrelevant in the fight against climate change, Aliyev recalled that the EU itself asked him two years ago to double Azerbaijani gas exports.

“They asked us for help and we said yes, we will help Europe with its energy security,” he recalled.

– Climate Finance –

Following the host president, Guterres pointed to the essential objective of this COP29, which brings together some 53,000 participants: securing new financing for the climate fight.

Currently, industrialized countries, which developed because of fossil fuels, provide more than $100 billion in loans and aid to developing countries annually, bilaterally or through international institutions.

This money is used to mitigate climate change and adapt to its consequences.

Weak countries and experts say that now the matter is to increase this figure by at least ten times. “Developing countries should not leave Baku empty-handed.” An agreement is necessary,” Guterres said.

Without these financing mechanisms, “what we declare will remain just words,” declared Brazil’s Environment Minister Marina Silva.

Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley insisted that the only way out was to impose taxes on fossil energy extraction, transportation and even shares of hydrocarbon companies.

The Baku climate summit, which continues on Wednesday, will include only a handful of leaders from the G20, the club of the world’s major economies.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is missing from Baku meeting; French President, Emmanuel Macron; the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz; and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva himself.

– Skeptical Trump –

In the United States, the newly elected President, Donald Trump, is an avowed skeptic of climate change, and a defender of fossil energy as part of his country’s supply sources, without disparaging clean sources.

This discussion has been maintained by other oil producing countries including Brazil.

Azerbaijan is the second hydrocarbon-rich country to host the COP, after the United Arab Emirates last year.

But as the leader of the world’s leading power, Trump goes further and is hostile to the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement, which laid the foundation for the current climate talks.

The United States had already left that agreement for a time during Trump’s first presidency.

The Brazilian minister said in this regard, “The policies will not be stopped and we hope that the pressure that society is exerting within each country will force governments and companies to increase their efforts.”

The world is on track to break its average temperature record in 2024, as it did last year.

According to the European Climate Observatory Copernicus, one of the pillars of the Paris Agreement is to ensure that the increase in the planet’s average temperature does not exceed +1.5 ºC, something that will happen for the first time this year.

br-jz/mb