By hosting COP29 from November 11 to 22, Azerbaijan is preparing to pass an examination of sincerity in front of an international jury far from being taken for granted, made up of diplomats and environmental defense experts. Although faced with severe climatic risks, the economy of this country of 10 million inhabitants has remained, since its independence in 1991, firmly based on two legs: gas and oil from the Caspian Sea. Hydrocarbons alone account for 92% of the country's exports.
This is not the only paradox that is obvious as this event approaches. COP29 appears to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliev as an opportunity to improve the reputation of his country, which suffers from a serious image deficit. The Aliyev family has monopolized power for thirty-one years, imprisoning opponents and muzzling the media. The country is listed at 130e world rank of the Economist Democracy Index and 164e world position out of 180 in the Reporters Without Borders ranking. The reconquest by force of its territorial integrity came at the cost of a bloodbath in 2020 and ended, in 2023, with the brutal exodus of 100,000 Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh.
Despite this heavy liability, it was enemy Armenia which allowed Baku to organize COP29. At the end of a long diplomatic tussle behind the scenes of the COP28 in Dubai, Yerevan lifted at the last minute and to everyone's surprise its veto on the candidacy of its enemy neighbor. Since then, the Azerbaijani government has presented the Baku summit as a “Peace COP” resulting from a “truce” unexpected with Yerevan.
Growing water deficit
However, environmental issues are among the many disputes between the two countries. For several decades, Baku has criticized the Armenians for deliberately depriving its farmers of the important aquifer resources of the very mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh. Subsequently, in a much less sincere manner, the Azerbaijani government used the defense of the environment to organize the blockade of the 100,000 Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh from December 2022. Posing as activists protesting against the impact environment of a gold mine, agents of the Azerbaijani government blocked the only road linking the enclave to Armenia for almost ten months.
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Ecological problems that cannot be attributed to Armenian enemies have not received the same responses from those in power. In March 2023, when 200 villagers in the central Saatli district protested against severe water shortages in the nearby Kura and Aras rivers, police dealt with the problem by firing rubber bullets into the crowd. . The repression increased in the run-up to COP29 with a series of 30 arrests of opponents, journalists and trade unionists in recent months. So much so that there are no longer any independent environmental defense organizations active in Azerbaijan.
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