The 28-member COP29 committee is tasked with preparing and implementing an Action Plan related to the organization and conduct of the summit.
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The organising committee for November’s 29th Conference of the Parties (COP29) announced Saturday by Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliyev comprises 28 men and no women.
Azerbaijan – a highly fossil fuel-dependent state and the oldest oil-producing region in the world – was picked as the conference’s host country last month, becoming the third petrostate in a row to host the critical UN-led climate talks after the United Arab Emirates (UAE) last year and Egypt in 2022. The country is set to boost its gas production by a third over the next decade, an analysis revealed last week.
The 28-member organizational committee – which figures government ministers and officials as well as the director of Azerbaijan’s state gas distribution network Azerigas – is tasked with preparing and implementing an Action Plan related to the organization and conduct of the summit, the 19th session of the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol, and the 6th session of the Meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement.
In a statement published on X (formerly Twitter), global movement SHE Changes Climate highlighted the “critical importance” of inclusion and diversity at COP29, calling the move a “regressive step in the journey towards gender parity in climate.”
“We … ask for equal representation in the governance of this year’s climate talks, because climate change affects the whole world, not half of it,” the statement read.
Historically, women have always been underrepresented at the UN climate summit, with only five women serving as presidents in 29 years of COPs.
The news came days after Azerbaijan’s ecology minister Mukhtar Babayev was announced as the president-designate of the upcoming summit. Before his appointment as minister of ecology and natural resources in 2018, Babayev, a member of the ruling right-wing New Azerbaijan Party, worked at the state-owned oil and gas company Socar for more than two decades, during which he also briefly served as the company’s vice-president for ecology.
Babayev’s links to Socar reignited debates over the role of fossil fuels in the UN’s yearly climate summits. Last year’s summit, COP28, was led by Sultan Al-Jaber, head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc), a state-owned company that pumps almost all the crude oil in the UAE and produces about 3.2 million barrels a day.
“To share seats with the Big Polluters in climate change conversations is to dine with the devil,” said Ogunlade Olamide Martins, Program Manager at the Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa (CAPPA). “This unholy matrimony will only endorse “conflict of interest” and further facilitate the silence of honest agitation. COP’s conclusions must be independent of industries’ parasitic influences and must only address the concerns of the vulnerable masses.”
Featured image: Wikimedia Commons.
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