Azerbaijan’s Minister for ecology and pure sources and previously an govt at state oil firm SOCAR Mukhtar Babayev (C) visits on the Norm cement plant in Baku, on February 23, 2023. Azerbaijan named on January 5, 2024, Mukhtar Babayev minister to preside over the November 2024 COP29 assembly, in Baku, on January 6, 2024.
Tofik Babayev | Afp | Getty Images
A former govt of Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil and gasoline agency SOCAR has been picked to lead U.N. climate talks in Baku later this 12 months, prompting critics to decry a “unhealthy case of déjà vu.”
Mukhtar Babayev, who serves as Azerbaijan’s ecology and pure sources minister, was named Thursday by the COP28 United Arab Emirates presidency because the COP29 president-designate.
Babayev will take over from Sultan Al-Jaber, who was seen as a controversial choice to lead COP28 talks in Dubai late last year provided that he additionally works as the top of the state-run Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.
It signifies that a minister with huge expertise in oil and gasoline will lead negotiations on the U.N.’s greatest and most necessary annual climate convention for the second consecutive 12 months. The COP29 convention is scheduled to happen in Baku in November.
Little is thought about Babayev, though he spent greater than 24 years working at Azerbaijan’s state oil agency SOCAR in a spread of roles via to April 2018, in accordance to his LinkedIn profile.
Campaign group Global Witness mentioned Babayev’s appointment because the particular person to lead COP29 discussions was a “unhealthy case of déjà vu.”
“We now have a former oil govt from an authoritarian petrostate in cost of the world’s response to the disaster that fossil gas companies created,” Alice Harrison, fossil fuels marketing campaign chief at Global Witness, said Friday in a press release.
“We once more name for the [United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change] to urgently intervene and kick massive polluters out of climate talks, to make sure the talks are held in good religion, and to take away these individuals who need to make a revenue on the expense of the world’s most weak folks,” Harrison mentioned.
Spokespersons for Azerbaijan’s authorities and the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change weren’t instantly obtainable to remark when contacted by CNBC.
Turkish Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Bekir Pakdemirli (L) meets Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources of Azerbaijan Mukhtar Babayev (R) in Baku, Azerbaijan on March 17, 2021.
Anadolu | Anadolu | Getty Images
Separately, Collin Rees of Oil Change International, an advocacy group, described Babayev’s appointment as “outrageous” and “deeply worrying.”
“We want a shift away from the business-as-usual threatening lives and wrecking the climate, however Azerbaijan appointing one other lifelong oil man to lead the next UN climate talks pushes us nearer to the abyss,” Rees said Friday in a press release.
Climate finance
U.N. climate chief Simon Stiell welcomed Babayev’s appointment, saying in a letter that he hoped the COP29 president-designate and Azerbaijan Deputy Foreign Minister Yalchin Rafiyev, the lead negotiator of the talks, would ship a “profitable” climate summit.
Teresa Anderson, world lead on climate justice at ActionAid International, a improvement charity, said Monday in response to Babayev’s appointment as COP29 president-in-waiting that the position of any COP president is to steer world leaders in the suitable path.
“Babayev’s precedence, beginning in the present day, should be to make sure that the world’s rising urge for food for climate motion is matched by the mandatory funding,” Anderson mentioned in a press release.
“COP29 wants to ship the finance desperately wanted to make the transition from fossil gas to renewable vitality,” she added.