COP29 Had One Bright Spot. Climate Activists Rebuffed It.

While last month’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29) in Azerbaijan was widely deemed a failure, one bright spot emerged: Israeli diplomacy through clean tech innovation. Rather than cheer on this rare success, climate activists actually tried to stop it.

Israel is often referred to as “startup nation,” with its climate solutions startups in particular earning Israel a No. 6 ranking on the 2017 Global CleanTech Innovation Index. But Israel is also facing extreme climate vulnerability and heightened international scrutiny due to its wars with Hamas and Hezbollah, making COP29 a critical forum for Israel to initiate climate progress and build international bridges. They did just that. Twenty of the nation’s clean tech startups appeared at the Israeli pavilion, and countries around the world approached and expressed interest in partnerships. Instead of praising these emerging friendships, many activists did the exact opposite, calling on countries to place trade embargoes on Israel and criticizing Israel’s presence at the conference altogether. This response not only deprives the world of Israel’s groundbreaking climate solutions, but also undermines the very peace and security in the Middle East that these activists claim to support.

When Israel is denied the chance to build many friendships, it becomes overly reliant on a few, such as its controversial alliance with Azerbaijan, COP29’s host country. Rather than fostering division, the climate movement should start encouraging and celebrating initiatives like Israel’s clean tech diplomacy, which not only address environmental crises but also promote peace and collaboration among the fastest warming nations on Earth.

Experiencing harsh desert conditions and warming at a rate nearly twice as fast as the global average, Israelis took matters into their own hands — developing desalination and drip irrigation, planting over 250 million trees, and launching over 850 climate solutions companies. At COP29, many attendees took notice. Turkish and Egyptian delegations actively engaged with startup MARINE EDGE to explore cutting fuel consumption on cargo ships through machine learning. British farmers visited startup Terra to learn about turning dried peatlands into carbon capture projects. A group of women from Zambia’s Development Agency sought agricultural tech to help with drought. Ghanaian representatives took part in a pavilion event on government-to-government engagement. Costa Rica and Israel even formalized a cooperation agreement for environmental protection, aiming to foster joint projects addressing climate change, water resource management, and air quality. This is precisely the point of a UN Climate Conference: put people in a room, find common ground, and tackle climate change together.

Yet, this COP29 accomplishment seems to have received no international recognition; and in fact, many stakeholders spent their time fighting it. Writers at TRT World and The Electronic Intifada advocated Israel’s exclusion from COP29 altogether, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan even denied Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s flight access to Turkish airspace, forcing him to cancel his trip. Meanwhile, The Guardian quoted three demands from pro-Palestine climate activists: “For countries to stop selling energy to Israel, for countries to stop purchasing gas from Israel, and for companies to withdraw from participation in the extraction of gas from illegally occupied Palestinian waters.” Let’s ignore for now the reality that Israel’s offshore gas extraction is off the coast of Haifa and not near any Palestinian territory. Placing such energy sanctions on Israel would deprive innocent Israeli and Palestinian civilians from their basic needs (Israel provides Palestinians most of their electricity), isolate Israel and its businesses from the world, and make a climate-vulnerable region of the world more unsafe. All of these outcomes would actively threaten peace in the Middle East and fly in the face of COP29’s objective.

To understand the consequences of decrying diplomacy and isolating Israel, one need not look further than Israel’s current alliance with Azerbaijan. A relationship born of realpolitik, Israel’s partnership with the contentious country is based on necessity, rather than shared values. Facing hostility from nearly every other nearby petrostate, Israel relies heavily on Azerbaijan for oil and gas supplies. Azerbaijan also provides Israel a strategic foothold near Iran, whose regime poses an existential threat to Israel and the broader region. But in return, Israel has served as a primary weapons provider for Azerbaijan, implicating Israel in Azerbaijan’s recent ethnic cleansing of 120,000 Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh.

As a Jew, I find this situation deeply distressing. On its face, ethnic Armenians living in their ancestral land in Nagorno-Karabakh should have the right to self-determination, and they have made clear for decades they do not want to be part of Azerbaijan, making Israel’s culpability in Azerbaijan’s invasion extremely frustrating. Moreover, Jews and Armenians have a lot in common, and should be the best of friends. We both have experienced genocide, we both have large diasporas, and we both have small democratic countries surrounded by authoritarian Muslim theocracies. The world’s oldest Armenian diaspora community is in Jerusalem’s Old City, which I had the pleasure of visiting this summer. 

Add to these similarities that our challenges are increasingly ignored by the international community, as COP29 starkly showcased. World climate leaders were happy to convene in Azerbaijan where at least 23 ethnic Armenians are being held hostage. While there, they awarded a brand new “Solidarity for Justice” prize to “the Palestinian people,” while 100 Israelis are being held hostage in Gaza, some in Palestinian civilians’ homes.

While I always find it admirable, even desirable, for Israel to build bridges with theocratic neighbors, it should not require the blatant disregard of our history and values that this particular alliance with Azerbaijan demands. And, yet, there’s not much choice when — unlike with Azerbaijan’s other arguably complicit allies in Turkey, Europe, and elsewhere — Israel’s energy supply and security are so inordinately reliant on it.

To reduce an overdependence on an ally like Azerbaijan, Israel must keep making friends and diversifying its energy sources. Time and again, climate action proves to be the perfect solution for this — and time and again, the climate community stands in the way. A little over a year ago, Israel, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates had negotiated a water-for-solar-energy deal, but environmentalists criticized it for “normalizing Israel.” After October 7, the plan fell apart. At last year’s COP28 in Dubai, more than 100 Israeli companies and more than 1,000 Israeli individuals planned to go, but following October 7, only 28 Israelis could attend with tight security as world leaders used the event to bash Israel. At COP29, after Costa Rica and Israel signed their exciting new bilateral climate agreement, the Climate Action Network — a coalition of more than 1,900 civil society organizations in over 130 countries — awarded Costa Rica a dreaded “Fossil of the Day Award” dishonorable mention for “strengthening their friendship with Israel.”

Climate collaborations won’t singlehandedly solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, or any other. But clean air, clean water, and a healthy environment are universal needs. When two groups share a struggle, there’s opportunity for dialogue and empathy. With more such bridges, countries won’t be forced into inextricable realpolitik alliances nearly as often, and the world becomes a bit more peaceful.

Climate change does not pause in times of conflict, and neither should climate solutions. Initiatives like Israel’s clean tech diplomacy are not a distraction from humanitarian crises, but rather a pathway to reducing their drivers and forging peace. By rejecting these opportunities, the climate movement only deepens divides, and by isolating nations like Israel, it entrenches overreliance on problematic relationships in the region.

In a world facing war and climate destruction, building bridges is the only path forward.