By Dare Akogun
Azerbaijan’s Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources Mukhtar Babayev, has been named as president-designate of the UNFCCC COP29 climate conference.
Babayev previously headed Azerbaijan’s state oil company, SOCAR, before being appointed minister in 2018.
He will be the second consecutive oil executive to head a COP conference, after United Arab Emirate’s Sultan al-Jaber, the head of state oil company ADNOC chaired the conference last year.
Environmentalists saw Sultan al-Jaber as a “ridiculous” choice for the COP presidency, pointing to him having a clear conflict of interest as someone who ran the UAE’s national oil company.
However, he ultimately oversaw a breakthrough global agreement at the summit to transition away from fossil fuels, converting some skeptics into fans.
Baku’s presidency over the next COP conference was the result of “fraught negotiations” The Guardian reported.
The decision has garnered criticism from some environmentalists, who worry about the presidency being granted to another oil and gas-reliant nation.
“The world will need more action to phase out fossil fuels at COP29 and, as a major oil producer, Azerbaijan will need to listen to its critics,” one advocate said.
Shortly after winning the presidency, Azerbaijan touted its natural gas reserves — an estimated 2.5 trillion cubic meters — and said that it believed the fuel would be paramount to the energy transition.
