COP29: New president of the conference is linked to oil – 01/04/2024 – Environment

The next UN conference on climate change, COP29, in Baku, Azerbaijan, already has a president. It will be Mukhtar Babayev, current Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources of the host country, a nation that is highly dependent on oil and gas.

The announcement was made this Thursday (4) by the COP28 organization, through its social media profiles.

COP29, which will take place from November 11 to 22, 2024, will be the second climate conference in a row to be hosted in a country that is a major oil producer. COP28 took place in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, a member state of OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries), the oil cartel.

Azerbaijan, in turn, also with a strong oil presence, is a member of OPEC+, which includes OPEC members and allied oil producers.

COP30, therefore, should be the third conference to take place in a member country of the organization, considering that the event will take place in Belém, Pará, and Brazil recently announced its entry into OPEC+.

Another oil similarity between the last COP and the current one is precisely the conference presidency. COP28’s president was Sultan al-Jaber, who runs the company Adnoc, a state-owned company in the United Arab Emirates — a country that, according to a document obtained by the BBC in partnership with the Center for Climate Reporting, planned to use talks at the conference to close oil deals .

According to his official profile on the website of the ministry he heads, a large part of Babayev’s career is linked to Socar, the state-owned oil company in Azerbaijan. With training in Russia and also in his home country, Babayev began his career at Socar in 1994, holding several positions, including vice-president for ecology.

Babayev has headed the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources since 2018.

The chief negotiator for COP29 was also announced, who will be Yalchin Rafiyev, one of the deputy ministers at the Azerbaijani Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a position he has held since September last year.

Rafiyev graduated in international relations at Baku State University, followed by studies at other European institutions. He began his stint at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2007.