26-Year Oil Industry Veteran From Azerbaijan To Head Climate Talks In 2024; Oh, And He's Their Environment Minister

Cop29, the next round of UN talks to tackle the climate crisis, will be led by another veteran of the oil and gas industry. Mukhtar Babayev, Azerbaijan’s ecology and natural resources minister, has been appointed the president-in-waiting for the Cop29 climate talks when they take place in the country in November.

Before his entry into politics in the autocratic country in western Asia, once a Soviet republic, Babayev spent 26 years working for the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic (Socar). Close observers of the Cop process will see parallels with the appointment of Sultan Al Jaber, who moonlighted from his role as the chief executive of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company to preside over the summit when it took place in Dubai last year.

Sceptics have already begun to point to Babayev’s appointment as raising questions over the commitment to the global phase-out of fossil fuels in Azerbaijan. The country relied on oil and gas for more than 92.5% of its export revenue last year, according to the US government’s International Trade Administration.

But Babayev does have form in environmental protection, having spent three years as Socar’s vice-president for ecology, in which time he oversaw efforts to remediate Azerbaijan’s contaminated soils. The country is wrestling with a number of severe ecological problems, including, after 160 years of oil production, decades-worth of damage from the petrochemical organisations that operate there.

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/05/cop29-will-be-led-by-mukhtar-babayev-azerbaijan-ecology-minister-who-is-oil-industry-veteran