Azerbaijan has appointed its Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources Mukhtar Babayev, formerly of the oil company Socar, as president of the 29th UN climate conference, which will be held in November in Baku.
“His Excellency Mukhtar Babayev has been appointed president-designate of the 29th session of the Conference of the Parties,” Rashad Allahverdiyev, a ministry official, wrote to AFP on Friday January 5 in an email.
This will be the second year in a row that a COP on climate has been chaired by a man with senior responsibilities in his country’s national oil company.
Last year, the United Arab Emirates, hosts of COP 28, chose Sultan Al-Jaber, boss of the national company Adnoc, to chair the UN conference, which concluded in Dubai with a historic call for a “transition” away from fossil fuels, the first time that a COP has launched such a call.