The 2024 edition of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29) will commence in Azerbaijan's capital of Baku — the windy city — on November 11, 2024. For Asian countries like Azerbaijan, hosting COP29 is a step in the right direction to combat climate change as many former Soviet republics were victims of Soviet policies which caused the slow death of the Aral Sea; Kazakhstan's people suffering from radiation exposure due to nuclear tests; and conflicts over water in Farghana Valley between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
The conference is another opportunity for practising green criminology in this region. Green criminology refers to the practice of holding governments and private companies accountable for widespread environmental destruction, which was taken seriously by the international community after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power station accident in the former Soviet Union. Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, had admitted that more than launching Perestroika (restructuring of the Soviet political economy), Chernobyl was the real cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Since then, the international community has taken steps to prevent such incidents from repeating. The International Chernobyl Disaster Remembrance Day is observed on April 26, acknowledging that environmental and health recovery cannot be separated from the development task. The Chernobyl Forum, by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), generates consensus and reviews all the scientific evidence on the impact of the Chernobyl accident on human health and the environment.
States attending COP29 must recognise environmental rights as human rights, strive towards achieving the 1.5°Celsius agreed target, and preserve their cultivatable lands as the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has warned about how only 60 years of harvest remain in the world due to soil depletion.
The role of the international community is very important in developing international environmental law, as the UN General Assembly (UNGA) on March 29, 2023, adopted a resolution initiated by the Republic of Vanuatu to request the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for an 'advisory opinion' on the legal obligations of countries under international law in relation to climate action. In May 2024, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) ruled in favour of nine small island states that greenhouse gases emissions into the atmosphere constitute pollution of the marine environment and countries had an obligation under the Convention on the Law of the Sea to take measures to mitigate their effects on oceans. COP29 can provide countries with an opportunity to support such states and also call upon the UN Security Council to enforce the environment-related legal verdicts of ICJ, ITLOS and UNGA's resolution.
Countries withdrawing from international legal instruments like the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Climate Agreement and obstructing the implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) must face censure and sanctions from the international community.
Pakistan has recently recognised the environmental right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment under the 26th constitutional amendment
Coming to Pakistan, Islamabad has always supported Azerbaijan in international relations, and this conference has provided Pakistan with an opportunity to contribute on the challenges of climate change. The 2022 super floods in Pakistan killed some 1,739 people, and caused ₨3.2 trillion in damage and ₨3.3 trillion in economic losses. Most of Pakistan's environmental disasters have been manmade, including housing projects and expressways, which have caused massive displacement of the indigenous population, reduction of greenspaces in Sindh, and frequent urban floodings in Karachi.
In July 2024, the Peshawar High Court showed concern over using agricultural lands for housing schemes, and directed Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government to resolve the issue of establishing industrial estate in Swabi and housing schemes on agricultural lands in Charsadda within six months.
Simultaneously, the illegal mining at Karoonjhar Hills in Sindh violated court orders prohibiting such illegal activities by private and multinational companies. Fortunately, in July 2024, the Sindh government declared the Karoonjhar Hills a cultural heritage site.
It is pertinent to note that Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif was nominated as the vice president of COP27 — held in 2022, on the issue of compensation for developing countries facing environmental impact. Ironically, just before attending the conference, he inaugurated the second phase of commercial coal-mining operations, contradicting the resolution of COP26 of 2021, which had called for a transition to clean energy, especially the rapid 'phase-down' of coal, which had replaced the term' phase out' due to opposition and betrayal by India and China.
Pakistan has recently recognised the environmental right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment under the 26th constitutional amendment. The vacuum, in the absence of such a constitutional right was previously filled by the high courts and the Supreme Court of Pakistan (SCP), mostly attributed to the decisions by Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah in Asghar Leghari v. Federation of Pakistan; DG Khan Cement Company v. The Government of Punjab; Raja Zahoor Ahmed v. Capital Development Authority; and the Province of Sindh v. Sartaj Haider. Justice Shah also represented Pakistan at Rio de Janeiro in 2016, organised by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in collaboration with the UN Environment Programme, and was applauded for taking environmental initiatives, including constituting a green bench at the Lahore High Court. In May 2024, he headed a bench of the Supreme Court of Pakistan and ordered the government to establish the authority envisioned under the Pakistan Climate Change Act, 2017 and complete establishing a fund to address climate change-related dangers.
However, all is not well as the chief executive of COP29 was found agreeing to facilitate fossil fuel deals at the climate summit, which is disheartening and demoralising for all climate campaigners who have raised concerns about the role of fossil fuel lobbies at the climate change summits. Lobbying by the coal, oil and gas industries was no secret at COP27 in 2022, when fossil fuel delegations jumped to 25% since COP26. It was reported that more delegates at COP26 associated with the fossil fuel industry were present than from any single country, which was even larger than the combined total of the eight delegations from the countries worst affected by climate change in the past 20 years.
Thus, by hosting COP29, Azerbaijan can invite other states, especially Iran and Armenia, with whom it does not enjoy cordial relations, to unite against climate change, and a country like Pakistan, being its ally, can play a pivotal role at the international and domestic level, but the lack of sincerity and helplessness to stop fossil fuel lobbies is concerning, and pointing towards a bleak future.