COP29, an announced flop with few leaders present. Greta Thunberg: “It’s a mere act of greenwashing”

by Marzio Pelù

BAKU – Rather than COP29, it should be called FLOP29. In fact, the annual United Nations summit on climate change, which began today in Baku, Azerbaijan, risks being a resounding failure.

An announced failure, given the premises, with the newly elected American president Donald Trump making it known, on the eve of the summit, that one of his first acts will be the withdrawal of the USA (among the biggest polluters on the planet) from the agreement of Paris signed in 2015 that it should commit “the world” to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius and continue efforts to keep it below 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Not only that: few European leaders will be in Baku these days (the Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni will be there, instead). And the Brazilian Lula da Silva, the Colombian Gustavo Petro and even Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping from the super-polluting countries India and China will be missing. On the other hand, there will be a delegation from the Afghan Taliban government.

Not even the world star of climate activism, Greta Thunberg, will be there, but she made her voice heard through an editorial published today by The Guardian, where she explains the reasons for her non-participation in COP29, which she defined as “a mere act of ‘greenwashing’ for Azerbaijan, an authoritarian oil state with no respect for human rights” which “is using COP29 as a facade” and which “is increasing control with a false ‘green’ agenda, strengthening its grip on power, escalating regional tensions”.

“Azerbaijan’s entire economy – writes Greta Thunberg, who in these days is taking part in the ‘anti-COP29’ protest in Tbilisi, Georgia – is built on fossil fuels, with the state-owned oil company Socar’s oil and gas exports accounting for close to 90% of the country’s exports. Despite what it might claim, Azerbaijan has no ambition to take climate action. It is planning to expand fossil fuel production, which is completely incompatible with the 1.5C limit and the goals of the Paris agreement on climate change. Many attenders of this year’s Cop are scared to criticise the Azerbaijan government. Human Rights Watch recently published a statement explaining how it couldn’t be certain that attenders’ rights to peacefully protest would be guaranteed. In addition, Azerbaijan land and sea borders will remain closed during Cop29, making it only possible to travel in and out of the country by air, which causes pollution and which many Azerbaijan citizens can’t afford. The reason given for closing borders at all Cops since the start of the Covid pandemic is to maintain “national security”, but I’ve heard many Azerbaijanis describe the situation as being “kept in a prison”. The Azerbaijan regime is guilty of ethnic cleansing, humanitarian blockades and war crimes, as well as repressing its own population and cracking down on the country’s civil society. The independent watchdog Freedom House ranks the country as the least democratic state in Europe, with the regime actively targeting journalists, independent media outlets, political and civic activists, and human rights defenders”, write Greta Thunberg in the editorial on The Guardian.

And then: “The “Cop of peace” is one theme chosen for this year’s climate conference by the host, which wants to encourage states to observe a “Cop truce”. It is gut-wrenching, to say the least, to talk of global peace after the terrible human rights violations committed by Azerbaijan’s Aliyev regime against ethnic Armenians living in the Nagorno-Karabakh/Artsakh region. Furthermore, Azerbaijan is planning to greenwash its crimes against Armenians by building a “Green Energy Zone” on territories where the population has been ethnically cleansed”, writes Greta Thunberg, adding that “meanwhile, the EU continues to buy fossil fuels from Azerbaijan and plans to double its import of fossil gas from the country by 2027″.

Canada is also participating in COP29, with the federal Minister of the Environment, Steven Guilbeault, who published a video on social networks (here below), writing: “Here at #COP29 to build bridges and drive action in the fight against climate change” …and in the video he added: “It’s a difficult forum, with more than 190 countries, but we can do it, we have to do it. Canada is here to do its part and to work with all countries”.

Meanwhile, today, on the inauguration day of COP29, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) announced that 2024 is on track to become the hottest year ever recorded, and the first in which the 1.5 degree warming limit to pre-industrial levels will be exceeded . “Record floods, deadly heat, drought are unfortunately our new reality” commented WMO secretary Celeste Saulo. The secretary, however, pointed out that having exceeded the average temperature increase threshold by 1.5 degrees centigrade compared to pre-industrial levels does not mean not having respected the commitments contained in the Paris Agreement, which in fact envisages maintaining increase the long-term global average surface temperature to below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit warming to 1.5 degrees. But it’s not a good signal, of course.

“Those who desperately try to delay the inevitable end of fossil fuels will lose – declared UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, at the opening of the conference – The economy is against them”.

For his part, the host, COP29 President (and Azerbaijan’s Environment Minister), Mukhtar Babayev, declared that COP29 is a “moment of truth” for the 2015 Paris Agreement. “We are on the road to ruin. And these are not future problems. Climate change is already here” Babayev stressed. “Now we have to demonstrate that we are ready to achieve the goals we have set ourselves. It is not an easy task”.

In the pic above, António Guterres and Mukhtar Babayev today at COP29 in Baku (photo from Twitter X – @COP29_AZ)