{"id":49856,"date":"2024-01-16T16:50:44","date_gmt":"2024-01-16T16:50:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.climatechangenews.com\/?p=49856"},"modified":"2024-01-19T14:59:29","modified_gmt":"2024-01-19T14:59:29","slug":"azerbaijan-appoints-fossil-fuel-execs-and-scandal-hit-officials-to-all-male-cop29-committee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.climatechangenews.com\/2024\/01\/16\/azerbaijan-appoints-fossil-fuel-execs-and-scandal-hit-officials-to-all-male-cop29-committee\/","title":{"rendered":"Azerbaijan appoints fossil fuel execs and scandal-hit officials to all-male Cop29 committee"},"content":{"rendered":"

Update: Three days after this article was published, the government of Azerbaijan added<\/a> 12 women and two men to the commitee. They did not comment on the reason for the change.<\/em><\/p>\n

Azerbaijan has appointed fossil fuel executives and controversial government officials to the committee tasked with organizing the Cop29 climate summit.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The 28 members of the all-male group include senior executives from state-owned oil and gas giant Socar and electricity producer Azerenerji, the president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev has announced<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The government had earlier selected<\/a> its environmental minister Mukhtar Babayev as the Cop29 president. Babayev spent 26 years at Socar before joining the government.<\/p>\n

Collin Rees, a campaign manager at Oil Change International, said Azerbaijan’s personnel decisions are “pushing us closer to the abyss”.<\/p>\n

“The climate movement demands a process free of fossil influence, including real conflict of interest policies to keep fossil interests from co-opting the talks”, he added.<\/p>\n

The oil and gas executives will sit on the committee alongside government ministers and officials whose families have been accused of participating in controversial offshore financial schemes.<\/p>\n

Women absent<\/h3>\n

Azerbaijan gets roughly two-thirds of its income<\/a> from oil and gas. European states are its biggest customers. It is one of the countries most economically reliant on fossil fuels in the world and has plans to increase its fossil fuel production by a third over the next decade, according to Rystad data<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Veteran<\/strong> US and Chinese climate envoys step down<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As the country gears up to host Cop29 in November, Aliyev has put the organising committee in charge of drafting an “action plan” for the summit. The group will also be tasked with setting up an operational company responsible for the logistics of the event.<\/p>\n