The main international conference on climate change is held in a new country each year, and Azerbaijan has become the third consecutive COP host state to be accused of harassing activists and restricting the legal right to protest.

Meanwhile, Climate Action Network, an alliance of nearly 2,000 environmental organizations around the world, says civil liberties are necessary to slow the climate crisis.

Human rights organizations are calling for a review of the COP29 selection process: they say Azerbaijan has seen an alarming increase in the number of environmental prisoners of conscience.

Natalia Nozadze of Amnesty International told the BBC that since the announcement that the country would host COP29, it has become more difficult to protest against the authorities' policies in Azerbaijan.

“We are seeing a sharp rise in arrests and suppression of speech on all issues deemed critical or contrary to their political agenda by the authorities,” she says.

According to the organization For Freedom of Political Prisoners in Azerbaijan, the number of political prisoners in the country has exceeded 300 for the first time since the early 2000s. Among them are journalists, environmental activists and political opponents.

Gubad Ibadoghlu, a 53-year-old professor at the London School of Economics, studies Azerbaijan's oil and gas sector and environmental issues. In the summer of 2023, he was arrested in his home country on fraud charges.

More than a year later, he is still under house arrest. Human Rights Watch has called the charges against Ibadoglu “dubious,” and his daughter has asked British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to help secure her father's release.

“I think it is one of the rules of an authoritarian state to detain and arrest people who can influence public opinion,” Ibadoglu said.

The professor believes his life is in danger due to health problems.

Anar Mammadli was arrested in April on smuggling charges. This came just two months after he co-founded an organization that calls on Azerbaijani authorities to implement the Paris Agreement to reduce carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere.

Environmental activists want Azerbaijan to become less reliant on oil and gas. The industry now provides about 60% of the country's budget.

But in January it became known that Baku, on the contrary, plans to expand natural gas production in the next ten years. And on Tuesday, the country's President Ilham Aliyev called oil and gas “God's gift” during a climate summit.

“COP29 was conceived as an open and accessible platform for environmental action, but the conference is taking a completely different shape,” said Mammadli's close friend Bashir Suleimani.

Nazim Beydemirli, 61, was sentenced to eight years in prison on extortion charges in October this year. He was arrested last year after protesting against gold mining near his village. Beydemirli's lawyer Agil Lajic says the charges against his client are baseless and fit into a general pattern of suppression of dissidents in Azerbaijan in the run-up to COP29.

The countries that hosted the previous two COP29 summits - the UAE and Egypt - have also been criticized for suppressing civil liberties.

“In my opinion, it is a huge mistake to allow countries like Azerbaijan, the UAE or Egypt - which regularly violate human rights - to host a climate summit,” says Emin Huseynov, an Azerbaijani journalist and environmental activist.

“President Aliyev has nothing to do with climate change, but he wants to use COP29 to 'whitewash' and 'green' himself and his toxic image,” he adds.

Elchin Amirbekov, a senior Azerbaijani diplomat and President Aliyev's representative for special assignments, told the BBC ahead of the summit that he “does not accept accusations of this kind because they are not based on facts.”

The Climate Summit is held every year in a new region of the world, and the host country is approved by consensus by all countries in the region. How they can prevent the selection of a country hostile to civil society is unclear.

In response to calls from human rights activists to include a clause on the right to protest in the contract with the organizing country, the UN responded, “This year, for the first time, the contract with the organizing country included human rights clauses, and we welcome this as a positive step forward.”

“It's not for the UN to tell the organizing country what they can or cannot do about human rights, that's the problem,” says Climate Action Network Executive Director Tasneem Essop.

She believes it's up to other summit countries to raise the issue, but agrees it's hard to expect many of them to do so.

In October, members of the EU Parliament condemned the “repression” of activists, journalists and oppositionists in Azerbaijan and said that COP29 should not be held in that country. But Emin Huseynov believes that the international community has largely “given up”. He notes in particular the lack of reaction from the UK government - unlike in previous years, when it publicly criticized the COP27 host country, Egypt.