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The cost of inaction in the face of severe and irreversible climate impacts far outweighs the costs of mitigation and adaptation. COP29 must provide an opportunity for us to change course and for the international community, in particular the countries of the Global North, to commit to making the significant, but necessary investments. 

As socialist activists, we strongly advocate for reform and a reassessment of the selection process for COP hosting. Allowing a petrostate, one recently responsible for brutal ethnic cleansing financed by oil and gas profits, and significantly expanding fossil fuel production—to host this crucial climate summit is deeply inappropriate. This decision undermines the credibility and integrity of the entire process. Fossil fuels make up 90% of Azerbaijan's total exports. These interests will plague COP29, a large number of high-level oil and gas executives sit on the organising committee.

COP29 is expected to mark the adoption of the "New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance", which will replace the existing, insufficient financing goal of $100 billion per year to enable climate action in developing countries. We call on developed countries, including China, to recognise their leading role by setting ambitious goals for themselves, and meeting their commitments. There is a critical need to secure a multilateral outcome, facilitate new ambition towards COP30, and correct the current financing shortfalls. 

Increased funding must facilitate the accelerated development of climate change adaptation and mitigation mechanisms, as well as the implementation of efficient and equitable clean energy technologies in the Global South. We also stress the necessity to protect indigenous communities and uphold their environmental knowledge as a key condition for funding. 

We express our deep concern regarding the current overreliance on carbon markets as the primary tool for addressing the climate crisis. Climate change is a direct consequence of capitalism: solutions rooted in this very system are ineffective as they are seen as an allowance to emit carbon. High-emitting nations such as the U.S.A. have been allowed to avoid pricing carbon emissions, and countless offset schemes have failed to deliver their promised climate benefits, allowing companies to continue polluting,  under false premises of “neutralisation”, poor transparency, and dubious human and labour rights practices. This approach is not only morally questionable but also diverts attention from the urgent and structural actions needed to dismantle dependence on fossil fuels and advance towards a just and equitable transition.

Finally, we draw attention to the need to uphold justice and human rights.  The IUSY and YES express concern about the decision to host COP in Azerbaijan; a country in which fossil fuels, militarisation, and authoritarianism are deeply intertwined. The host agreement between Azerbaijan and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is replete with gaps on rights protections for COP participation. This damages the credibility of COP, and highlights the need to reform the UNFCCC to ensure credibility of the rotating presidency, uninhibited access of key stakeholders in civil society, and introduce a binding veto process. 

In December of 2022, Aliyev’s government launched a humanitarian and energy blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) which resulted in the forced displacement of 120,000 ethnic Armenians from their ancestral land. This created an environmental crisis in the water table, prompted by the dissipation of the region's key reservoir and hydropower plant. It is evident that Azerbaijan will weaponize, and destroy, the local environment to commit atrocities. 

Azerbaijan has increased their prosecution of critical voices in the lead up to COP, arresting outspoken activists, politicians, and academics. Amidst the forced displacement of the indigenous Armenian population  from Nagorno-Karabakh, Aliyev’s forces abducted and illegally imprisoned 8 current and former members of Nagorno-Karabakh’s leadership. The IUSY and YES demand the Azerbaijani Government to release all political prisoners (journalists, activists, and political opponents), as well as all ethnic Armenian POWs, civilian abductees and  hostages immediately and be held accountable for their historic record of war crimes and crimes against humanity, notably carrying out a complete ethnic cleansing of the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh. We stand true to our policy in support of the people’s self-determination and the Armenian population’s right to collective return to their homeland Nagorno-Karabakh. Additionally, we call on Azerbaijan to end hostilities against the Republic of Armenia and commit to durable and sustainable peace in the region.

Azerbaijan has recently committed to doubling fossil exports to Europe by 2027. We demand that the EU and its member states divest from Azerbaijani fossil fuels, honouring the interlinked prerogatives of climate protection, human rights and peacekeeping.

11 November 2024