The Story: The COP29 summit, the world’s latest attempt to address climate change, is around the corner and this time it is happening in Azerbaijan in the South Caucasus.Around 50,000 people are expected to travel to the capital, Baku, for the event next month . Considering that 95% of Azerbaijan’s export revenues come from oil and gas, this might strike you as ironic. And the Azeri government seems set on greenwashing its international image in the run-up to the climate conference, by the simple method of censoring and throwing in jail journalists who dare to investigate climate corruption and environmental crime in their country.
Case in point: In June last year, residents in western Azerbaijan began demonstrating against a proposed new reservoir to store toxic waste from a British-owned goldmine near the village of Söyüdlü. The Azeri regime accused first the West, and then Russia, of organizing the protest. The mine, operated by a UK company called Anglo-Asian Mining, uses cyanide to separate gold from the bedrock, and then dumps the toxic sludge — which locals say is leaching into their soil and rivers. Residents in the area have been complaining of respiratory illnesses from the fumes and say lung cancer rates have increased, too.
Journalists from one of Azerbaijan’s few independent news outlets, Abzas Media, came to investigate, and began publishing stories about the mine and the environmental damage it was inflicting on the local community. Then, in late 2023 — as COP28 in Dubai was getting underway — the Azeri authorities arrested the outlet’s founder Ulvi Hasanli, followed by four of its reporters.
Context: Last week, Leyla Mustafayeva, the acting editor-in-chief of Abszas Media – who now lives in exile – spoke at a Climate Disinformation Summit in Copenhagen,’ run by the European Journalism Centre. I joined a disturbed, rapt audience as she described how her colleagues were languishing in pre-trial detention, while their relatives were threatened and their bank accounts frozen. The village itself has been cordoned off by police,with no outsiders,bar state-approved journalists, allowed to enter and talk to residents.
Mustafayeva told the Copenhagen summit how “COP29 helps Azerbaijan’s government greenwash their fossil fuel exports” while protecting Western corporations. We’ll be watching closely to see how Azerbaijan continues to scrub its image in the run-up to COP.
Connecting the Dots: If you think this story sounds far away from you, the gold mined in this place could well be in your iPhone, your laptop, or that Tesla you bought to help the planet.
What to do about it all? Stay informed. That’s the least you can do. Mainstream media no longer have bureaux or correspondents in the South Caucasus, and local journalists are under enormous pressure from the authorities. Working with exiled Azeri journalists, the French nonprofit Forbidden Stories is trying to fill the gap, gathering 40 reporters to continue investigating the impact of gold mining in Azerbaijan and keep the story alive.
What to Watch For: nearly 200 countries are due to discuss a new plan to provide financial assistance to developing countries suffering the effects of climate change. But it’s not clear whether the United States, the world’s largest economy, will back the plan, with the summit taking place five days after the American presidential election.. As a result, many leading financial institutions are not bothering to send representatives, according to the FT, because, as one finance executive put it “You only go to the party if everyone is going.”
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