New President of COP29 in Baku announced amid upset by environmentalists as it was revealed he spent 24 years running Azerbaijan’s oil and gas sector
The government of Azerbaijan has appointed its ecology and natural resources minister Mukhtar Babayev as the president of the United Nations COP29 climate talks to be held in Baku in November.
The appointment was announced by the COP28 United Arab Emirates presidency in a post on the social media platform X.
Before taking office in 2018, Babayev spent 24 years at Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil and gas company Socar, according to his LinkedIn profile, during which time he also briefly served as the company’s vice-president for ecology.
The selection of Babayev continues the contentious trend of those with deep ties to the oil and gas industry helming UN climate talks. Last year’s summit held in Dubai was presided over by Sultan Al Jaber, the current chief of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.
Azerbaijan is also a large exporter of natural gas. In a meeting with reporters last month attended by Reuters, Hikmet Hajiyev, foreign policy adviser to President Ilham Aliyev, touted the country’s gas potential.
The country has an estimated 2.5 trillion cubic metres of natural gas reserves, according to the 2021 BP Statistical Review of World Energy, and it aims to double its gas exports to Europe by 2027.
