For years, the raging climate emergency has been a factor – not the only one – in conflicts. Now for the first time, it is part of a peace deal. A long-time standoff that had turned the choice for next year’s COP29 into a mystery resolved as part of a prisoner swap settlement.
In its announcement about a prisoner exchange, the governments of Armenia and Azerbaijan noted: “The Republic of Armenia supports the bid of the Republic of Azerbaijan to host the 29th Session of the Conference of Parties … by withdrawing its own candidacy.”
“There Is Nothing Inherently Wrong With That”
The deal has set the stage for the COP29 talks in 2024 to be in a city where one of the world’s first oil fields developed 1,200 years ago: Baku, Azerbaijan. Climate talks historian Jonna Depledge of Cambridge University said, “there is nothing inherently wrong with that.”
Meanwhile, Ani Dasgupta, head of the World Resources Institute and a former Baku resident, said it’s nice for climate change to be part of peace for the first time, adding that “the fact they want to step up and be a climate leader is a positive thing.”
The UN moves the location around the world with different regions taking turns. The ongoing COP28 Summit in Dubai was planned more than a couple of years in advance. But the Baku decision is coming just 11 months before the negotiations are supposed to begin.
Baku Well Equipped To Handle COP29 Summit
Aykhan Hajizada, a spokesperson at Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told Reuters on Friday that Baku in Eastern Europe was well equipped to handle the Summit, highlighting the country’s plans to diversify its energy sources to include more solar and wind power.
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The decision on who would host COP29 had been held up after Moscow vowed to veto any bid by a EU country. On Dec 11, COP28 approved a proposal to hold the next iteration of the Summit in Azerbaijan. The country won support of Eastern Europe on Dec 9.
