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The president of Azerbaijan, host of this year’s UN climate summit, lashed out at Western critics of his country’s oil and gas industry on Tuesday.
In his keynote address at the Cop29 climate summit, where nearly 200 nations are negotiating global action on climate change, President Ilham Aliyev described his country as a victim of a “well-orchestrated campaign of slander and blackmail”.
Within moments, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres took to the stage to say that doubling down on fossil fuels was an absurd strategy.
The opposing views underscored the challenge at the heart of the climate negotiations: while nations are urged to shift to green energy sources, many, including wealthy Western nations, continue to rely on fossil fuels.
Azerbaijan’s finance ministry said the share of oil and gas as a contribution to the economy was declining as the country diversifies.
“As a president of Cop29 of course, we will be a strong advocate for green transition, and we are doing it. But at the same time, we must be realistic,” said Aliyev, who has labelled his country’s oil and gas resources a “gift from god”.