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Feeling shut out of the COP29 climate conference opening in Baku on November 11, a coalition of more than 50 Armenian environmental and civil society organisations has issued a joint statement calling on delegates to publicly challenge Azerbaijan’s rights and environmental record — a call that is unlikely to find many takers given the legal terms under which the summit is being held.
The statement was drafted by the Yerevan-based non-governmental organisation Ecolur and signed by over 50 other Armenian entities. It accuses the Azerbaijani government of exploiting the high-profile climate gathering to construct a “greenwashing” narrative that obscures what the signatories describe as ongoing rights violations and damage to regional ecosystems.
Deforestation and land mines in occupied territory
The most specific environmental charge in the statement concerns territory that came under Azerbaijani military control following Baku’s reconquest of Nagorno-Karabakh. The NGOs accuse Azerbaijan of conducting “mass deforestation” in those areas, and say road construction and the laying of land mines are “devastating ecosystems” while restricting the movement of nearby Armenian residents and cutting off their access to water.
The statement also urges conference participants to raise what it calls “violations of humanitarian law, ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Armenian population and the destruction of Armenian historical and cultural heritage” in Karabakh.
Azerbaijani officials deny allegations of rights violations against Karabakh Armenians, pointing to a series of United Nations Security Council resolutions that affirm Baku’s sovereignty over the enclave.
A hosting agreement that may silence critics
The practical prospects for the statement’s appeal appear limited. The hosting agreement between the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Azerbaijani government contains language that, according to the Eurasianet report on which this article is based, potentially enables the hosts to take legal action against anyone who voices public criticism of government policies during the event. That provision is expected to discourage most delegates from raising non-environmental topics on the conference floor.
Armenian environmentalists said they did not feel safe attending the conference in person, a concern that shaped the decision to issue the statement from Yerevan rather than from inside the summit.
Criticism of the UNFCCC’s choice of host
Beyond the specific allegations against Azerbaijan, the statement takes aim at the UN body itself for selecting Baku. “The decision to hold COP29 in Baku was problematic in itself, considering not only the fact that such an event is being held in a country with a fossil fuel-based economy, but also the reality that this state uses profits from these resources to expand military aggression and blatantly violate international law,” the statement reads.
The criticism reflects a broader tension that has accompanied several recent COP host selections: the question of whether countries whose economies depend heavily on hydrocarbon revenues can credibly lead global climate negotiations. Azerbaijan is a significant oil and gas exporter, and critics have argued that its presidency of COP29 creates an inherent conflict of interest, a point the Armenian NGO coalition is now pressing in formal terms ahead of the summit’s opening.