TODAY.AZ / Politics

Demons of propaganda and COP29

29 July 2024 [13:30] - TODAY.AZ
By Leyla Tarverdiyeva, Day.Az

Answering the questions of the participants of the Shusha Global Media Forum, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said that he had been warned that LITTER would become a big headache for Baku. "We clearly understood that we would be the target of attacks. We could not predict what the topics of the accusations would be, but we were sure that there would be enough of them," the head of state said.

Azerbaijan is mainly accused of the fact that the Lord God gave it oil and gas. But now there are other motives that would be difficult to figure out. For example, we are accused of allegedly destroying the environment in the liberated territories (?!), and everything that is being done there is being done only to "polish" our green status on the eve of COP29. These insinuations are even more outrageous and absurd than the claims about hydrocarbon resources made, by the way, by those who buy them from us themselves.

The German edition of TAZ recently published an article in which the history of the Karabakh conflict is interpreted in a peculiar way. We don't know what else needs to happen for the pro-Armenian verbiage in the Western media to stop. Most of the authors are clearly out of the subject, do not have their own idea of the subject of analysis, and try to clumsily portray equidistance, which they fail to do. TAZ also tries very hard to keep a balance, telling its readers why the Karabakh conflict was a war over water. And not even the whole conflict, but the liberation by Azerbaijan of its territories, which the author calls nothing else than "disputed".

The author wants to support Armenian narratives and at the same time, not appear to be an Armenophile. It's a painful job, and we can only sympathize with a colleague. It is possible to understand what all this is written about only towards the end. It is there that the most remarkable things are collected, for which the author undertook, or rather, took up a topic that was clearly unfamiliar to her. There is no doubt that a young freelance journalist from the Netherlands, writing about ecology, has no idea about the Karabakh conflict and the South Caucasus in general and writes from hearsay. Being clearly out of touch, she is trying to answer the question with what calculation Azerbaijan undertook to build hydroelectric power plants in the liberated territories. Here we naively think that this is being done to provide the region and the country with clean electricity, but it turns out that this is not the case at all. We don't even realize how treacherous we are and how much we don't care about the fate of the Karabakh forests.

"It remains to be seen whether Azerbaijan's hydropower plans are more than just a PR stunt for both the international community ahead of COP29 and the local population," the author writes. Admittedly, we were waiting for the climate conference in Baku to be mentioned. Thanks to Zuse Nazaruk, I did not disappoint. It seems that the author believes that hydroelectric power plants are being built in different countries for different purposes: in her native Netherlands for electricity, and in Azerbaijan for PR.
Let's see what the experts say, whom the author calls to witness his conclusions. Dr. Jennifer Sering, associate professor of Water Resources Management and Diplomacy at the Delft Institute of Water Education IHE (Netherlands), quoted by her, says that hydroelectric power plants are often "very closely linked to the development of government structures and national identity. It's something modern, massive infrastructure, and the government can demonstrate that it's doing something."
You can go crazy with such an argument. But then the question arises, what about nuclear power plants? In Europe, in the Netherlands, a stake is placed on nuclear power plants, and this, I'm sorry, is such a "modern massive infrastructure" that it cannot be compared with small hydroelectric power plants being restored and rebuilt in the liberated territories by Azerbaijan. So, the governments of European countries just want to show that they are doing something. Well, let's write it down.

The dynamics of Azerbaijan's restoration of the liberated territories irritates and worries circles negatively disposed towards the country, and this irritation spills out into various reports and expert assessments. They are especially relevant in connection with the holding of the climate summit in Baku. I must say that for some reason, various European environmental activists, environmental publications and NGOs traditionally take a strictly critical position towards Azerbaijan. And all of them are now lining up to do their bit. A certain Observatory for Conflict and the Environment (CEOBS) claims that "the speed with which Azerbaijan is building Karabakh may have negative consequences for the environment." CEOBS in its report is very concerned about deforestation for highway construction. And one of the authors of this report, quoted by TAZ, says about the reconstruction of hydroelectric power plants: "We cannot find any evidence that environmental impact studies are being conducted. This can be especially risky for long-term water supplies and biodiversity."

So, what do we see. We see how, as part of a propaganda attack on Azerbaijan on the eve of COP29, a group is forming to "protect" the ecology of the liberated territories. To protect it from Azerbaijan, of course. Critics and demagogues try to look independent and objective, but for some reason it is hard to believe in their independence and objectivity.

During the period of the Armenian occupation, no one was interested in the environmental disaster in Karabakh and Eastern Zangezur. Throughout the years of occupation, Armenians cut down Karabakh forests and polluted rivers. And this is proved by images from space. During the construction of the canal to the Sarsang reservoir, the invaders cut down a significant area of forests in the Terter district. We don't know if Zuza Nazaruk knew where Armenia was on the map in those years, but no one told her about this fact during her May trip to Yerevan. Although the Armenian side definitely has statistics. So, before the war, the Armenian media published data according to which in 2014-2018 more than 400 thousand cubic meters of forest were cut down in Karabakh - almost three times more than in Armenia! In the last days of the Second Karabakh War, realizing that defeat was inevitable, the Armenians set fire to and cut down forests, which has a lot of documentary evidence. But for some reason, the voices of environmental activists were not heard then.

Human imagination is boundless. Especially when there is a specific order.  
Climate Home News once published an article in which it accused Baku that the construction of "smart villages" and a bet on green energy in Karabakh and Zangezur is nothing more than "large-scale efforts to polish its "green" reputation before the UN COP29 climate summit." Of course, the publication attracted a person with an Armenian surname as an expert to comment on the issue. Who would doubt it. Anna Ohanian, Senior Researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for Russia and Eurasia Program, told Climate Home that Azerbaijan's work on the green transition is "a green laundering of ethnic cleansing, in its purest form." Azerbaijan, the Armenian woman said, "puts a seal on this territory in order to legitimize the conquest." Fortunately, the publication had the decency to turn to the Azerbaijani side, to the representative of COP29, for comment. The appeal was briefly and clearly stated that the voiced point of view has no basis, and Azerbaijan is restoring homes for its internally displaced citizens in accordance with UN sustainable development standards.

By the way, before linking the construction of the "smart village" of Agala with COP29, it would be useful for critics to turn to Google. You can learn a lot of interesting things there. For example, that the village began to recover after the Armenian occupation in a "green" format long ago - in the first post-war year. At the same time, the President of Azerbaijan declared the liberated territories a green energy zone. Former internally displaced persons began returning to Agaly two years ago. Azerbaijan became the host of the climate summit only in December last year. It seems to be not so difficult to draw the right conclusions.

Returning to the strange position of the author of the publication in TAZ regarding hydroelectric power plants in the liberated territories, we recall that during the years of occupation by the separatists, as many as 36 small hydroelectric power plants were built. It is not difficult to imagine the condition of the water sources. Thus destroying the ecosystem of the region, the separatists also earned money by selling electricity to Armenia. In the same territories where Armenians did not settle, hydroelectric power plants were destroyed. Like the whole ecological environment. The highways that the Observatory of Conflicts and the Environment cares about are built on the spaces that the Armenians turned into a scorched desert. There are no forests there, all of them have already been cut down and sold abroad by Armenian companies. Visual evidence is publicly available on the Web. But no one seems to be interested in them.

Both journalists and experts draw their conclusions from thin air. It's not professional. If they were aware of the situation, they would know that hydroelectric power plants in the liberated territories are mostly being restored, not built. Three months after the Victory, the President of Azerbaijan opened the restored Gulabird hydroelectric power station in Lachin. The station, built before the conflict, was destroyed by the Armenians before leaving Lachin. 5 power plants were destroyed in Lachin district, 12 in Kalbajar district. All this is property owned by Azerbaijan and built once at its expense. 

Now he is restoring the energy infrastructure of the region, while simultaneously working to eliminate the consequences of the ecocide committed by Armenia during the years of occupation. International environmentalists should think about the latter in depth. And best of all, let no one interfere. Let everyone take care of their own problems, and if the international fighters for the environment are restless, they can fight for the Armenian ecosystem. That's where the real environmental disaster is, that's where the real water crisis is. And not because the rivers have dried up, but because the water sources are polluted, and also because this country is not able to create the required infrastructure. Reservoirs and canals built in Soviet times with money and by the forces of other Union republics have fallen into disrepair. Armenia has been using the resources of the occupied territories for almost thirty years, now it's time to build something of its own, but it has neither money nor personnel for this. That is, again, someone else has to do it for the Armenians.

There is still time before COP29. And we need to be prepared for the fact that everything that is being done in the liberated territories will be demonized and distorted. But we are used to it. Azerbaijan has been through this more than once. He will cope with this "headache" now.
URL: http://www.today.az/news/politics/251174.html

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