Seen from the walls of a medieval castle the view couldn’t have been more dissonant. As far as the eye could see it was a dystopian, post-apocalyptic landscape of oil-soaked ponds and rusting Soviet-era oil pumps. A low plume of smoke drifting in front of the city skyline marked a huge landfill which had been burning for years. Many have criticized the choice of Azerbaijan as host for last month’s 29th Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP29), especially as it was the second “petro-state” in a row to do so. Yet Baku is the birthplace of the modern petroleum industry and its history has environmental lessons to offer.
Natural Solutions
It’s been seventeen years since I was in Baku for a “Caspian Dialogue” session, followed by a few days of exploring. Much has changed since then but my impressions remain vivid. The city is a fascinating cultural mix of “East meets West”; ancient and modern. The Old Town – Icheri-Shekher – offers Islamic architecture dating to the 11th Century, with meandering streets and residences that sport elaborate mashrabiyas – the elaborately latticed windows projecting out above the street – providing privacy and energy-free cool air to those inside.
As a stop along the ancient Silk Road, Baku was known for its hammams (public baths) at which travellers and residents could cleanse and indulge themselves. It is a custom that still flourishes and is still high on the visitors list. The older ones have ingenious cupolas on the roof with with holes designed to let the steam out without allowing rain in.
A defining geological feature of Azerbaijan’s Abşeron Peninsula is crude oil bubbling to the surface. I’ve written earlier about sacred places for fire-revering Zoroastrians. The phenomenon came to the attention of Europeans in the 13th Century when the Italian adventurer Marco Polo noted oil oozing and sometimes gushing to the surface. It wasn’t good to eat, he noted, but was useful as lamp oil and a “salve for men and camels affected with itch or scab.”
Petroleum Industry Firsts
With the Industrial Revolution came a demand for that easily accessible oil. Russia’s Czar Nicholas I financed the world’s first mechanically drilled oil well near Baku in 1846. Then, in the 1870s, two Swedish brothers invested in creating a petroleum extraction industry – Ludvig and Robert Nobel. A third brother, Alfred made his fortune with dynamite, bequeathing it to fund the prizes in his name. Ludvig and Robert built the world’s first oil pipeline to move crude oil from wells to refinery. They had the world’s first oil tanker, appropriately named Zoroaster, constructed at a Swedish shipyard. By 1900 Azerbaijan was producing half of the world’s oil. It was a dirty process but no one worried much about the land becoming soaked with it. The city was full of flamboyant architecture and a rich European-style cultural life.
After the Second World War, Stalin ordered construction of the world’s first offshore oil platform 55 kilometres beyond the Caspian Sea coastline and 100 kilometres from Baku. The crude oil was at first brought ashore by tanker until pipelines could be laid. This place known as Oil Rocks (Neft Daşları) would grow into an entire town on stilts with hotels, dormitories, bakery and power station, all on seven hectares of artificial islands connected by some 300 kilometres of trestle bridges. It was a closely guarded security zone in Soviet days and even today Google Maps cannot zoom in on it. No one worried much about spilling oil into the sea.
As if oil pollution wasn’t enough, the city of Sumqayit, 40 kilometres from Baku, was once the largest concentration of petrochemical industries in the Soviet Union. In 2007 it was listed among the world’s ten most polluted cities. The most melancholy memorial to the complete disregard for the effects of pollution is the notorious “Baby Cemetery” which contains the graves of hundreds of infants born with defects ranging from deformity to fatally suppressed immune systems.
Mixed Prospects
Azerbaijan has been left with a horrendous pollution legacy from the Soviet period but its record of response is mixed. On the positive side, a “Baku Waste-to-Energy” project is addressing the burning landfill problem although the surrounding countryside remains soaked in oil. The offshore town of Oil Rocks is crumbling and, as the producer of a 2016 documentary observed, authorities must soon decide to “dismantle the city at enormous cost, turn it into a vacation resort or simply abandon it, paving the way for a major ecological disaster.” Sadly, the host of COP29 has increased its gas production, weakened its national climate target and increased its methane-producing gas flaring, putting thousands at risk. It seems yet another example of human intelligence and ingenuity apparently no match for human folly and greed. Comfortable in the sophisticated city of Baku it is easy to forget the dysfunction beyond.
Tourists looking online for “Top Ten” attractions or activities in Sumqayit certainly won’t find the Baby Cemetery mentioned. Perhaps the best way to honour those hundreds of tiny unfortunates would be to encourage visitors, and especially those unconcerned about Donald Trump’s “drill Baby, drill” rhetoric or Vladimir Putin’s rosy dreams of resurrecting a Soviet-style Imperial Russia, to find the place, sit down for a while and think.
Photos:
The photos are mine except for the “Baby Cemetery” which is from the article by Lala Aliyeva.