Good COP, bad COP: Azerbaijan's climate charm offensive is backfiring - POLITICO Europe
Good COP, bad COP: Azerbaijan’s climate charm offensive is backfiring - POLITICO
Azerbaijan scored a major diplomatic victory when it won the right to host this year’s COP29 U.N. climate talks.
Now it’s experiencing the downside of this newfound prestige — heightened scrutiny of the regime’s murky foreign influence peddling, jailing of critics, political crackdowns and unrepentant fossil fuel dealmaking.
The most recent example came Friday, when the U.S. indicted Congressman Henry Cuellar on charges he took hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from Azerbaijan to act as its “foreign agent” in Washington. According to the indictment, the Texas Democrat actively lobbied for Azerbaijan’s oil firm SOCAR while working with the country’s ambassador to advance the nation’s interests.
Related Knowledge Center: Climate diplomacy: COP 27
The 27th Conference of the Parties (COP 27) produced a groundbreaking agreement to create a “loss and damage” fund to help developing nations cope with the impact of climate change.
But the conference, held from Nov. 6 to Nov. 20, 2022, in Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt, fell short of a hoped-for agreement to speed reductions of greenhouse gas emissions.