At the Cop29 climate conference, the president of the host country called oil a “gift from God.” But for many people around the world, it is actually a curse. Maria Armoudian, lecturer in politics and international relations, explains.

During the first week of the United Nations international climate conference (Cop29), the president of the host country, Azerbaijan’s Ilham Aliyev, addressed the conference, calling natural gas a “gift from God” . But for many people around the world, oil and gas are also a curse, as our appetite for oil creates growing human rights crises with more to come. Human rights countries like New Zealand have a duty to respond to crises.

Indeed, on the very day the conference began in Baku, the Azerbaijani capital, Freedom House, the international NGO, published a report on the ethnic cleansing of indigenous Armenians from their ancestral lands in Nagorno-Karabakh (known to them as Artsakh). At the same time, the oil dictatorship bulldozed another monument of its ancestral cultural heritage. Azerbaijan has already attacked the civilian population with banned munitions, white phosphorus and torture, and ultimately forced them to leave their historic lands. Its regular human rights violations include accusations at least 15 journalists with major criminal offenses and imprisonment of political activists and human rights defenders. But the world has turned a blind eye to these human rights violations for one main reason: Azerbaijan’s rich oil and gas reserves.

Indeed, while countries all promised at last year’s COP to combat climate change by moving away from fossil fuels, they all increased their oil production. China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Indonesia, the United States, Iran, Australia, Nigeria, Angola and India have all signed the largest licensing agreements to explore and extract oil and gas. If they move forward, they would emit the equivalent of 15 billion tonnes of CO2, almost twice the combined emissions of the United States and China in 2022. according to IISD.

New Zealand has joined this path to disaster. In June, the New Zealand government announced it would remove a ban on oil exploration beyond Taranaki, as part of an amendment to the Crown Minerals Act. He also seeks to invest more in the oil sector by amending this law. Almost all of the thousands of submissions on the proposed amendments opposed the changes, including recommendations from the Parliamentary Environment Commissioner who stressed that “New Zealand’s policy has always been that all countries should do what they could to reduce emissions.”

The scientists have been clear: new oil and gas deposits will only exacerbate the crisis that is already costing millions of lives and livelihoods and is poised to upend life on this planet. This year, 2024, marks the hottest year on record, for the second year in a row. Scientists’ warnings are already coming true: violent and frequent storms, floods, fires and droughts are destroying homes and communities. And with the new reality, many homes are no longer insurable. As we have seen (with the storms and floods that have hit our own country), New Zealand is not immune to these realities.

With climate change, new and isolated diseases are spreading to areas where they have never spread before. Dengue fever is just one example, spread by mosquitoes that find welcoming areas previously inhospitable due to global warming. But climate change, along with land-use changes, will cause additional viruses to spread, and scientists have identified about a thousand that could infect us.

Is anyone heeding the warning? The UK is. Under new management, it has closed its last coal plant, promised to stop issuing new oil and gas licenses, launched a new state-owned clean energy company, Great British Energy, and is developing ways to recycle these workers to change their skills. .

New Zealand’s Minister for Climate Change, Simon Watts, is leading a delegation to Baku, providing an opportunity to position New Zealand as a forward-looking nation, alongside the United Kingdom, which has become a partner in free -exchange in 2023.

With a focus on financing adaptation and the transition to green energy in developing countries, Cop 2024 offers New Zealand an important role. Given its long history with Pacific nations threatened by sea level rise, New Zealand can, at a minimum, support these low-lying coastal nations within the Alliance of Small Island States by leading this transition and facilitating resilience across the Pacific.

But it must also take into account realities and also mitigate its own emissions, which are among the highest per capita emissions in the world. Because most of them come from agriculture and energy (like road transportation and power generation), New Zealand can simultaneously secure the country’s long-term future and reduce its own contribution to the climate crisis: by working with farmers, our government can target low-emission crops that can ensure affordable, accessible food for people. New Zealand and our overseas customers. It can also take the lead in developing climate-friendly technologies and industries that improve our well-being and our economy and make our transportation, energy and urban designs greener.

These efforts promote health while reducing emissions. Cleaner transportation systems reduce pathogenic pollutants (such as PM2.5 and NO2) and greening the surrounding area with native forests and wetlands supports biodiversity, carbon absorption and human health, by cleaning air and water. Developing our emerging circular economy will reduce the need for landfills, another source of methane and groundwater pollution.

Although much knowledge and technology already exists to reduce emissions, political will is often the missing piece. But governments have moral, and increasingly legal, obligations to act on climate change. Indeed, this year again, in an unprecedented decision, the The European Court of Human Rights has decided that Swiss climate mitigation policy violates human rights. This binding decision, which will be a step towards a legal link between human rights and climate change, will have repercussions. And rightly so: climate and human rights are indelible, here in New Zealand and abroad. New Zealand, which is internationally respected for its human rights policies, can take action accordingly.