Risky place for activists: Bloomberg on Baku’s COP29

Javid Gara is a 32-year-old, self-employed electrician who moved from Baku to England’s Manchester three years ago. He also runs Azerbaijan’s only independent climate group, campaigning to clean up the environment and cut emissions, Bloomberg writes.

Activism of any kind is a rarity in Azerbaijan, which is this week hosting thousands of climate campaigners, scientists, diplomats, executives and world leaders for the COP29 climate summit. Draconian laws restrict local civil society groups and how they’re funded, leading to dozens of arrests in the past decade.

The government cracked down even further on political dissent in the runup to COP29, limiting free speech and the activities of opposition parties, according to Florian Irminger, president of Progress & Change Action Lab, an advisory group. That atmosphere of fear led dozens of lawyers and human rights defenders to flee Azerbaijan in the weeks before the conference, Irminger says.

Gara says his organization, Ecofront, isn’t officially registered and receives no funding so it can’t be accused of smuggling foreign money — a common charge leveled against activists when they’re arrested. That’s why he and his colleagues have other jobs to pay the bills. The group uses drones to gather evidence of ecological destruction, then uses social media and direct action to push for change. The approach has successfully halted the chopping down of some forests to make way for farming, Gara says.

“The treatment of activists in Azerbaijan runs contrary to the stated aim of democratic countries and the United Nations climate change secretariat to help civil society push their governments to take more aggressive steps to cut carbon emissions and achieve the Paris Agreement goal of keeping global temperatures in check,” Bloomberg writes.