Azerbaijan Is The Host Of The Un's Climate Conference, Shining A Spotlight On The Petrostate

The spotlight is on Azerbaijan as the small petrostate in the South Caucasus hosts the U.N.'s biggest climate conference.

Diplomats from across the world will descend on the capital Baku for the annual climate summit, known as COP29, to discuss how to avoid increasing threats from climate change in a place that was one of the birthplaces of the oil industry.

It was in Baku where the world's first oil fields were developed in 1846 and where Azerbaijan led the world in oil production in 1899.

Sandwiched between Iran to the south and Russia to the north, Azerbaijan is on the Caspian Sea and was part of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1991. Nearly all of Azerbaijan's exports are oil and gas, two of the world's leading sources of planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions. President Ilham Aliyev described them in April as a "gift of the gods."

Aliyev is Azerbaijan's authoritarian leader. He is the son of the former president and has been in power for more than two decades, overseeing a crackdown on freedom of speech and civil society. The Associated Press was not granted permission by Azerbaijan's authorities to report in the country ahead of the conference.