The host of the annual UN climate conference, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, defended countries’ rights to exploit their oil and gas resources on Tuesday, opening a summit of world leaders in Baku. Ilham Aliev assumed his expression “gift from God”, to designate the hydrocarbons which have made Azerbaijan rich.
He recalled that the European Union had asked him to supply more gas, after the energy crisis of 2022. “All natural resources, oil, gas, wind, solar, gold, silver, copper: these are natural resources and we should not blame countries for having them and supplying them to the markets, because the markets need them,” Ilham Aliev said. The “fake news media” of the United States, “the world’s leading producer” of fossil fuels, “would do better to look in the mirror”.
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The emissary of Democratic President Joe Biden, John Podesta, is present to reassure his partners. Only a few G20 countries will be represented by a head of state or government, including the United Kingdom with its Labor Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
“It is very important that the United Kingdom shows leadership,” he told reporters in Baku on Tuesday morning. Mr Starmer said he was “glad to work with President Trump, of course, as we do with all international leaders”.
The Europeans are not rushing to Baku. Emmanuel Macron, Olaf Scholz and the president of the European Commission are absent from the summit on Tuesday and Wednesday. The EU will notably be represented by the Hungarian Viktor Orban, who holds the rotating presidency of the Council, Andrzej Duda (Poland), Pedro Sanchez (Spain) and Giorgia Meloni (Italy).
For Switzerland, Minister of the Environment and Energy Albert Rösti will be present in the second part of the conference.
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Some 52,000 participants are expected over the two weeks of COP29, in the Olympic stadium in Baku, on the shores of the Caspian, a sea in which Azerbaijan plans a strong expansion of its natural gas production.
Certainly, between Trump’s re-election, the delay of the first day and the absence of several major leaders, “it is not an ideal situation. (…) But in 30 years of COP, it is not the first time we face obstacles” and “everything is still entirely possible,” Canadian Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault told AFP on Tuesday.
