The Caspian has fallen below its Soviet-era low, while Washington is leaving the 1992 climate treaty. Azerbaijan, whose oil is trading at roughly three-quarters above the price assumed in the state budget, is demanding that the world honor the Baku target while building gigawatts of new capacity that will free up natural gas for Europe.
Minus 29.11 meters. That was the Caspian Sea level recorded by Azerbaijani researchers on January 9, 2026, when they announced that the 1978 record had been broken. Exactly eight months later, on September 9, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov opened the Fourth Climate Week of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, CW4, at the Baku Convention Center. When he needed an example showing that the climate crisis had ceased to be an abstraction confined to reports, the minister pointed to the sea retreating from the shores of his own country.
The choice of example says a great deal.
Bayramov had more dramatic stories at hand. By early September, floods in Nepal and China had claimed more than a thousand lives according to official figures, while more than 4,400 people remained missing. The minister chose the Caspian instead. “The effects of climate change are already clearly visible and have become an undeniable reality. We can plainly observe them in our own region as well,” he said. His next point shifted the discussion from ecology to economics: climate change is hitting states directly, which makes economic diversification and energy resilience even more important, according to the foreign minister.
Those two points encapsulate Azerbaijan’s current climate strategy. The sea is shrinking, oil prices are rising because of the war in the Middle East, the United States is leaving the climate treaty, and Turkey is preparing to host the next COP. Baku, which handed the presidency over to Brazil’s Belem ten months ago, is trying to avoid becoming merely the former summit host remembered once a year. So far, it has succeeded. According to Bayramov, more than 2,700 participants from 140 countries came to CW4, the program includes more than 60 events, and the entire first day was devoted to the energy transition and climate finance.
Below the Soviet-Era Low: How Much Has the Caspian Really Lost?
Caspian figures require discipline in the use of sources, so I will examine them in detail. Azerbaijani researchers identify two thirty-year periods of decline, 1948 to 1978 and 1996 to 2026, separated by eighteen years of rising water levels. According to their data, the sea level along the Azerbaijani coast has fallen by more than a meter and a half over the past twelve years. A mass-circulation Russian weekly offered a different estimate in July 2026: minus 29.4 meters at the end of 2025, below the Soviet minimum of minus 29.0 recorded in 1977. I would not take a publication of that kind at its word, but it relies on an article published in a 2026 academic journal on satellite remote sensing of the Earth, volume 23, issue 3, and I trust that reference more than the weekly itself. The difference between the two estimates is 29 centimeters. Hydrologists can argue over that. For a policymaker, the more important point is that both figures are below the twentieth century’s historic low.
The same weekly estimates the total area lost at 28,644 square kilometers, while Albania covers 28,748. The Caspian has surrendered to land an area roughly equal to that of a European state. Along Azerbaijan’s coast, according to data published in March 2026, a 2.5-meter decline exposed about 565 square kilometers of former seabed. Kazakhstan has suffered more severely: the northern Caspian is shallow, and over the past twenty years the shoreline there has retreated by more than 20 kilometers. Russian oceanographers concluded in March that the sea had reached its lowest level in 400 years and was losing between 9 and 35 centimeters annually.
I remember the mid-1990s well, when people in Baku were talking about an advancing sea, not a retreating one. From 1978 to 1995, according to regional climate calculations, the Caspian rose by an average of 13 centimeters a year, gaining about two and a half meters overall. The idea that thirty years later we would be discussing the reverse process would have seemed strange then.
Even earlier, the Soviet authorities had managed to conduct an engineering experiment on the Caspian that is rarely remembered today. In 1980, the Kara-Bogaz-Gol Gulf, into which a substantial portion of Caspian water flowed and evaporated, was sealed off from the sea by a solid dam. The logic seemed sound: block the giant evaporator and halt the falling water level. Within a few years, the gulf had almost dried up and turned into a salt desert, while the sea, as if mocking the planners, began rising on its own. In 1992, independent Turkmenistan demolished the dam.
Minus 21 Meters: The Forecast No One Wants to Print
Forecasts for the end of the century differ radically. In October 2023, a group of researchers writing in one of the journals in the Nature portfolio ran 15 CMIP6-generation climate models. The result was a decline of about 8 meters under the moderate SSP2-4.5 scenario and roughly 14 meters under the high-emissions SSP5-8.5 scenario, with an overall range of 2 to 21 meters. Russian oceanographers offer an even darker benchmark: most contemporary projections, they say, converge around 20 to 21 meters. Another paper in the same journal, published in April 2025, found that even a 5-to-10-meter decline could reduce the area of protected marine zones in the Caspian by as much as 94 percent. For sturgeon and the Caspian seal, already surviving on the edge, that would mean the loss of almost their entire protected habitat within a single human lifetime.
I will also present the opposing view. Baku-based environmental specialists noted in July 2026 that the Caspian has repeatedly defied long-term forecasts throughout its history and that the current decline could stop within the coming decades. That is a serious objection, and the history of Kara-Bogaz-Gol supports it: in the late 1970s, the sea was also being pronounced doomed, yet it rose for nearly twenty years. Still, a state cannot build policy on the hope that the water will simply return on its own. What failed the Soviet planners was overconfidence, not concern.
The region has a precedent before its eyes. In the middle of the last century, the Aral Sea was the fourth-largest lake on the planet. Today, the Aralkum Desert lies where much of its seabed once was. The Caspian contains dozens of times more water, and there is no need to push the comparison to absurdity. The underlying logic, however, is shared: an endorheic basin depends on the balance between inflow and evaporation, and when evaporation grows faster than precipitation, the sea begins counting its losses in meters.
Those losses are already being measured in tons as well. For the Middle Corridor linking China with Europe across the Caspian, falling water levels are becoming a question of vessel draft: the shallower the approaches to Kazakhstan’s Aktau and Kuryk ports, the less cargo each ferry can carry to Alat.
A Border Drawn Along Water That No Longer Exists
At this point, climate becomes a matter of international law. The Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea, signed in Aktau on August 12, 2018, relies on the minus 28-meter benchmark under the Baltic height system. Baselines are measured from that level, and so are the outer boundaries of internal and territorial waters, fishing zones, and national sectors. The actual sea level today is more than a meter below that benchmark. In northern Kazakhstan, where the shoreline has retreated by twenty kilometers, the legal edge of the sea now runs across former seabed. Between the map signed by presidents and the water seen by fishermen lies a strip of dry land.
Azerbaijan’s interests in the seabed and hydrocarbon fields are secured by bilateral documents: the delimitation agreements with Kazakhstan and Russia from the early 2000s and the January 21, 2021 memorandum with Turkmenistan on joint exploration and development of the Dostlug field. But a water balance cannot be fixed by a bilateral agreement. According to regional estimates, the Volga accounts for 86.1 percent of river inflow into the Caspian, meaning the key variable lies within the territory of one of the five littoral states, and every cubic meter retained by the chain of reservoirs on the Volga and Kama is a cubic meter that will never reach the delta. On February 17, 2026, at ADA University, Nazim Mahmudov, head of Azerbaijan’s National Hydrometeorological Service, put the matter without diplomatic ornament: effective management of the Caspian’s hydrometeorological regime, he said, directly depends on the level of interstate cooperation. Without a five-party mechanism, any national measures will remain half-measures.
In March, it became clear that a five-party mechanism was also insufficient for security. On March 18, 2026, Israeli aircraft struck an Iranian naval base in Bandar Anzali, and the following day the Israel Defense Forces confirmed that five vessels had been hit: four missile boats and one patrol vessel. For the first time, the Caspian became an area of Israeli strikes. Article 3 of the Aktau Convention establishes the principle that armed forces belonging to non-littoral states must not be present on the sea. Formally, the principle was not violated: no foreign vessels entered Caspian waters. The convention protected the water’s surface, but the strike came from the air. According to reports that were never officially confirmed, the port served as a link in Russian-Iranian weapons logistics.
For Baku, the conclusion is practical. The shrinking Caspian remains a rare issue on which the interests of Moscow, Tehran, Astana, Ashgabat, and Baku coincide completely, because no one benefits from the sea’s retreat. Climate is becoming one of the few languages the five states can still speak together while war continues on the southern shore.
$300 Billion: The Figure Some Were Too Quick to Bury
The second half of Bayramov’s speech focused on money, and this was where the minister used his strongest language. The Baku finance goal adopted at COP29, he said, is a commitment on which trust among the parties depends and must therefore be properly implemented. “Its ambition must exceed $300 billion. The ability to mobilize more than $1 trillion in climate finance is also demonstrated by the Baku-to-Belem Roadmap,” the foreign minister said.
For readers unfamiliar with the mechanics of climate negotiations, some explanation is necessary. The New Collective Quantified Goal agreed in Baku in November 2024 calls for $300 billion annually by 2035, with developed countries taking the lead, while urging all participants to scale financing from public and private sources to at least $1.3 trillion. Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, repeated both figures in a video message to participants in the same ceremony. According to him, investment in clean energy already exceeds $2 trillion a year, while renewable energy has overtaken coal and become one of the world’s principal sources of electricity. “Baku holds an exceptionally important place in the recent history of international climate cooperation,” Stiell said on September 9.
Skepticism about sums of this magnitude is understandable, and it has a history. In December 2009 in Copenhagen, developed countries promised to reach $100 billion a year in climate finance by 2020. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, that threshold was crossed for the first time only in 2022, when financing reached $115.9 billion. Two years late. That is why Bayramov’s insistence on “proper implementation” sounds more pointed than it may seem from the outside: Baku remembers how the previous target remained unfulfilled for years.
I remember the night of November 24, 2024, when the COP29 plenary session at Baku Olympic Stadium approved the $300 billion figure. By the next morning, Western commentators were calling it insufficient while barely mentioning that the Copenhagen $100 billion pledge had itself been fulfilled late. Less than a year passed before Belem incorporated Baku’s groundwork into its own final package.
The facts are these. COP30 in Belem, held from November 10 to 21, 2025, ended with the adoption of 56 consensus decisions. The final Mutirao decision recognized the Baku-to-Belem Roadmap to $1.3 Trillion, while the parties completed the Baku Adaptation Roadmap by establishing a work program for 2026 through 2028. Baku’s name ultimately appears on two documents from the Brazilian summit. The conference also called for adaptation finance to be tripled by 2035, and international lawyers immediately pointed out the weakness: the text specifies neither the sources of the money nor a target amount. Ahead of Belem, the United Nations Environment Program reported that international public adaptation finance had fallen from $28 billion to $26 billion between 2022 and 2023. Against that backdrop, the demand for “proper implementation” becomes highly practical.
America Minus One: Who Will Fill the Gap After February 2027?
There is a separate factor that the minister did not mention aloud, although no serious analysis can ignore it. The United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Agreement took effect on January 27, 2026. Earlier, on January 7, the Donald Trump administration announced its withdrawal from the Framework Convention itself. According to available information, that withdrawal will take effect on February 27, 2027, making the United States the first country to formally leave the 1992 treaty. This is the world’s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases and the country responsible for the largest cumulative emissions since the mid-nineteenth century.
For Baku, the American withdrawal poses a direct threat to its own legacy. Without Washington, the Baku goal risks repeating Copenhagen’s fate, but from an even weaker starting position: in 2009, the United States was at least sitting at the table. Under these circumstances, Bayramov’s statement that multilateralism remains the most powerful instrument for addressing global climate challenges sounds like a policy position, not routine diplomatic courtesy.
The subtlety is that Baku has no intention of quarreling with Washington, nor should it. On August 8, 2025, at the White House, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan signed the Washington Declaration, whose anniversary Donald Trump publicly recalled in early September. Defending the multilateral climate process while preserving Azerbaijan’s best relations with an American administration in years, even as that administration leaves the process, is a task requiring extraordinary precision. Bayramov handled it in the most economical way possible: the American withdrawal simply did not appear in his speech.
Who will fill the gap Washington leaves after February 2027? No answer to that question was given in Baku.
Oil at $113: A War That Fills the Budget and Frightens Energy Planners
The energy section of the speech came against the backdrop of war in the Middle East, and its chronology must be kept in mind. On February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel began coordinated strikes against Iran. The day before, on February 27, Brent crude closed at $72.48 a barrel. Before the war, approximately 20 percent of global liquid hydrocarbon consumption passed through the Strait of Hormuz, along with all of Qatar’s liquefied natural gas exports. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps declared the passage closed, and since April 13 the Americans have been blockading Iranian ports. The ceasefire collapsed during the summer, and prices began climbing in a second wave.
On July 2, a barrel of Azeri Light cost $72.46. By August 13, it was $95.50, and by September 8 it had reached $107.31. The day after the minister’s speech, September 10, it rose by another $5.14 to $113.32. Azerbaijan’s 2026 state budget is based on an oil price of $65 a barrel, meaning the actual price is nearly three-quarters higher than the budget assumption. Azerbaijani oil, moreover, does not depend on Hormuz: the 1,768-kilometer Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline carries it to the Mediterranean, bypassing both the Persian Gulf and the Bosporus.
Francesco La Camera, director-general of the International Renewable Energy Agency, explicitly linked developments in the Middle East to the vulnerability of energy systems during his CW4 address on September 7. The security of an energy system, he said, depends on the extent to which it is exposed to disruptions beyond its control. Azerbaijan has been through these price swings before and remembers their cost. In the summer of 2014, oil traded above $100 a barrel. By early 2016, it had fallen below $30, while the manat underwent two devaluations in 2015, one in February and another in December. Oil rent is generous today. The Caspian is shrinking at the same time, and Baku understands perfectly well that one fact does not cancel out the other.
For Europe, whose Qatari liquefied natural gas supplies have become hostage to Hormuz, the memorandum on strategic energy partnership with Azerbaijan ceased long ago to be a diplomatic formality. Signed with the European Commission on July 18, 2022, the document provides for gas supplies to increase to at least 20 billion cubic meters by 2027. Every cubic meter Azerbaijan no longer burns at its own power plants can instead flow through the Southern Gas Corridor. This is precisely where the climate component of Bayramov’s speech converges with the economic one.
Tripling, Baku Style: Testing the Minister’s Arithmetic
“We are determined to demonstrate that traditional energy-producing countries can become pioneers of a green and sustainable future,” Bayramov said, emphasizing that this entire effort is based on the long-term strategic vision of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. Then came the central figure in the speech. “By 2030, agreements already signed provide for the creation of approximately 6 gigawatts of additional solar and wind power capacity. With the implementation of these plans, Azerbaijan is prepared to surpass the ambition of the first global agreement to triple worldwide renewable energy capacity by 2030.”
Let us test that arithmetic. During a thematic session at COP30 in November 2025, Milli Majlis Speaker Sahiba Gafarova said renewable sources accounted for approximately 18.8 percent of Azerbaijan’s installed power capacity, or about 1.8 gigawatts. Add 6 gigawatts under signed agreements and the figure rises to roughly 7.8 gigawatts, a 4.3-fold increase. The tripling commitment adopted at COP28 in Dubai calls for global renewable capacity to reach at least 11,000 gigawatts by 2030. Azerbaijan’s multiplier is higher than the global benchmark, so the minister’s statement withstands a numerical check. Hydropower accounts for most of the existing 1.8 gigawatts, meaning that the increase in solar and wind capacity specifically, which was what the minister was discussing, will be several times greater. For scale, consider IRENA’s figures: in 2025, the world added a record 692 gigawatts of renewable capacity, and by the end of the year renewables accounted for 49 percent of all installed electricity generation capacity worldwide.
The composition of Azerbaijan’s new gigawatts can be seen in specific projects. In October 2023, the United Arab Emirates’ Masdar completed the 230-megawatt Garadagh Solar Power Plant. On January 8, 2026, with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in attendance, Saudi Arabia’s ACWA Power inaugurated the 240-megawatt Khizi-Absheron Wind Power Plant. It is expected to generate around 1 billion kilowatt-hours annually, save 220 million cubic meters of natural gas, and prevent the emission of more than 400,000 tons of carbon dioxide each year. Masdar’s 445-megawatt Bilasuvar and 315-megawatt Neftchala solar plants are being built jointly with SOCAR Green: the first panel in Bilasuvar was installed on October 2, 2025, and in late June 2026 the Energy Ministry agreed with Masdar to accelerate commissioning, scheduled for the end of the year. For 2027, the Renewable Energy Agency has scheduled the 240-megawatt Absheron-Garadagh wind farm, the 240-megawatt Shafag solar plant, the 50-megawatt Ufug project, and the 50-megawatt Shams project.
One detail about Shafag deserves attention because it is rarely mentioned. BP is building the plant in liberated Jabrayil, and its electricity will be supplied through a virtual transfer model: Azerenerji will receive the kilowatt-hours in Jabrayil and deliver an equivalent volume to the Sangachal Terminal near Baku. An oil and gas facility handling Caspian crude will therefore be formally powered by solar energy generated on liberated land.
Now to the criticism. Western monitoring organizations that are consistently skeptical of hydrocarbon-producing states argue that 2 gigawatts by 2027 will barely be enough to achieve the stated 30 percent share by 2030, and they point to the 1.3-gigawatt gas-fired power plant in Mingachevir. I do not share the tone of that criticism, but I will not dispute the arithmetic: the first phase does indeed cover only the original target. That is precisely why the key figure in Bayramov’s speech was 6, not 2. Those same critics, incidentally, acknowledge that Azerbaijan produces less than 1 percent of the world’s oil and gas, a detail worth remembering for everyone fond of calling Baku an “oil state.” The most candid assessment of the difficulties came from SOCAR Green CEO Elmir Musayev, who acknowledged on September 7 that integrating 2 gigawatts would place additional strain on the grid and said that the Energy Ministry and Azerenerji, together with consultants, were already studying modernization of the power system.
Back in June 2024, Energy Minister Parviz Shahbazov outlined the parameters of the first phase: more than $2 billion in investment, 5.3 billion kilowatt-hours of generation, 1.2 billion cubic meters of natural gas freed up, and an increase in the renewable share of installed capacity to 33 percent by the end of 2027. With oil above $110 a barrel, natural gas freed from domestic power generation ceases to be an environmental abstraction and becomes an export commodity worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually even at moderate European prices. In Azerbaijan’s model, green generation supports the state budget through the gas it saves, and that is the answer to those who see a contradiction between the country’s producer status and its climate agenda.
157 Gigawatts Above the Water: The Caspian as Europe’s Power Outlet
The export potential here is on an entirely different scale from domestic demand. At the opening of the Khizi-Absheron facility, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev recalled that international estimates put the wind energy potential of Azerbaijan’s sector of the Caspian at 157 gigawatts. Based on the proportions cited by Gafarova, the country’s entire installed power capacity today remains below 10 gigawatts. Gafarova also cited an onshore estimate: technical potential of 135 gigawatts, with economically viable potential of about 27 gigawatts.
At this point, the shrinking sea unexpectedly begins working in favor of engineers. The shallower the water, the cheaper the wind turbine foundations, so for offshore wind developers the retreat of the Caspian improves project economics, even as it remains a disaster for fishermen and port operators. It is hardly a consolation, but it will have to be factored into calculations.
The route to consumers has also taken shape. The approximately 1,195-kilometer Black Sea submarine cable agreed by the leaders of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Romania, and Hungary in Bucharest on December 17, 2022, has received European Union Project of Mutual Interest status. At CW4, La Camera described Azerbaijan as a potential regional hub linking the markets of Central Asia and Europe, while the Accelerated Partnership for Renewables in Central Asia, APRECA, was launched at COP29. In 2026, Azerbaijan sits on the IRENA Council, and in 2027 it will serve as vice president of the agency’s seventeenth Assembly.
The Baton Was Not Dropped: From the World Urban Forum to Antalya
Bayramov separately listed what Baku has done since the presidency passed to Brazil. In May, the capital hosted the thirteenth session of the World Urban Forum, where Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev announced at the opening that more than 45,000 participants from 182 countries had registered. According to UN-Habitat, the previous forum in Cairo brought together more than 25,000 people from the same number of countries. According to the minister, the outcomes of the Baku forum helped shape the high-level meeting in July on the midterm review of the New Urban Agenda. In June, Baku became the global host city for World Environment Day, which the United Nations General Assembly established in 1972. CW4 continues the sequence: Climate Week in Yeosu, South Korea, brought together about 1,500 participants in April, while Baku Climate Action Week, now being held for the third year, has for the first time been combined with the UN Framework Convention format.
The Turkish section of Bayramov’s speech was the most emotional. “At this time of shared responsibility, I would like to reaffirm Azerbaijan’s unwavering fraternal support for Turkey as it prepares to host the next COP,” Bayramov said, describing cooperation between the COP29 and COP31 presidencies as a vivid example of regional solidarity that ensures continuity in the climate agenda.
COP31 will be held at Antalya Expo from November 9 to 20. Turkish Minister of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change Murat Kurum has been appointed president, Fatma Varank will serve as executive director, while negotiations, under an unprecedented arrangement, will be led by Australian Climate and Energy Minister Chris Bowen. For the first time, the leaders’ summit has been moved to the third and fourth days of the conference, November 11 and 12. The pre-COP session will take place in Fiji from October 5 to 8, with a leaders’ event in Tuvalu.
Azerbaijan’s role in this structure is institutional, not decorative. Elchin Allahverdiyev, director of the Foreign Ministry’s Department of Climate Diplomacy, is a vice president of the COP31 Bureau and a member of the Adaptation Fund Board. On September 7 in Baku, Samad Aghirbash of the COP31 team said explicitly that the team had learned a great deal from Azerbaijan’s presidency. Australia’s chief negotiator, David Higgins, said on the day of Bayramov’s speech that work was underway on a new action plan to expand access to climate finance, an especially acute issue for small island developing states and least developed countries, adding that the effort was being carried out together with Pacific partners and Turkey. Baku’s formula for fulfilling the finance target and Australia’s plan for improving access to money describe the same problem from opposite ends: the first is about how much money should exist, the second about why it fails to reach the poorest countries.
Mukhtar Babayev, Representative of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan on Climate Issues and president of COP29, added a methodological qualification on the sidelines of the week. Extreme heat, droughts, floods, and wildfires, he said, are placing pressure on cities, water supplies, food systems, and economies, meaning international cooperation is taking place under more difficult conditions than in previous years. Climate policy, Babayev argues, should not compete with national priorities but should help address energy security, economic development, food security, and water security. Bayramov emphasized informal diplomacy in his speech as a means of overcoming disagreements, and the following day recalled that Azerbaijan had provided international assistance to more than 140 countries over the past fifteen years. “Baku Climate Week is focused on practical implementation,” he said on September 9.
Stakes That Can Be Tested
The 445-megawatt Bilasuvar Solar Power Plant will be connected to the grid by December 31, 2026, and Azerbaijan will enter 2027 with the region’s largest solar facility. The COP31 final package, which is due to be adopted by November 20, will not raise the $300 billion figure. Instead, Antalya’s principal financial outcome will be the plan to broaden access to climate finance described by Higgins, with the Baku target serving as its starting point.
Baku’s arithmetic is made up of quantities measured in different units. The sea is counted in centimeters, generating capacity in gigawatts, money in billions, and trust in years of delay. Azerbaijan’s position follows directly from that arithmetic: a producer that finances its own transition with its own gas and builds solar power plants on land liberated in 2020 has the right to demand that wealthy countries fulfill what they promised. After February 27, 2027, the Baku goal will have fewer defenders than signatories. The weight of a country whose name appears on the climate process’s financial decisions will then be measured not in gigawatts, but in persistence.
Systematic measurements of the Caspian Sea level have been conducted in Baku since 1837. Over 189 years, Baku observers have recorded both the Soviet-era low and the current record. In January 2027, there will be a new figure. My bet is that it will be lower than minus 29.11.