Tea is a way of life in Azerbaijan and is the focus of COP29. But it is not immune to climate change

BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) Negotiators in the United Nations climate talks may not be cooking up deals yet, but the tea certainly is.

This is one of the clearest reminders that the COP29 climate summit is hosted by Azerbaijan. Attendees walking miles into the indoor venue have plenty of options to stop for sugar and caffeine: Shops pile high mountains of pastries with sweet, hazelnut pakhlava and crescent-shaped shekerbura tinged with cardamom. At the national pavilion of Azerbaijan, women in traditional Baku costume serve visitors a hot drink.

All this, like daily life in the city, revolves around tea, which climate change threatens all over the world. As world leaders head to the capital Baku for climate negotiations, researchers who study tea report that in some parts of the world, tea cultivation could decline by more than half due to the rise temperatures, drought, heavy rainfall and erosion that hit tea plants and land. they grow up. Scientists are studying ways to improve tea varieties and preparing for a future in which some tea production shifts north, along with many other crops hit hard by climate change.

Tea “is a source of livelihood for our region, especially for the local people and tea producers,” Keziban Yazici, a professor who studies the effects of climate change on tea, said in Turkish. We must take necessary precautions against climate change to make this product sustainable. »

Their team worked on developing drought-resistant tea varieties and protecting tea's genetic heritage at Recep Tayyip Erdogan University in Rize, Turkey, one of the major tea-producing regions in the Caucasus region. . Yazici visited Azerbaijan this spring to initiate further cooperation between countries that have many similarities in tea cultivation and in preparing tea crops for the threat of climate change.

The perilous future of this beloved beverage reminds us that if the world fails to meet the global warming goals set out in the Paris Agreement, many places around the world risk losing not only lives and resources. subsistence, but also valuable elements of cultural heritage.

Culture and the future must be aligned,” said Fatima Fataliyeva, senior sustainability manager for the COP29 operating company, who was responsible for the design of the Azerbaijan pavilion at the venue. Ma mother taught me this, so I will (teach) my children, so that it does not disappear.

Fataliyeva described the importance for her team to include Azerbaijani culture on the site. The first thing that comes to your attention, she says, is tea.

From a young age, she learned that drinking tea symbolized hospitality and respect. Tea is to be drunk with family and friends, at home and during meetings. It is a central part of gossip and meetings, of grandfathers playing chess, of festivals and times of mourning. People drink it from pear-shaped glasses called armudu which keep the bottom of the tea warm while cooling the top, sometimes served with a wedge of orange or lemon and a cube of boiled sugar.

When you're happy, you drink tea. When you're sad, you drink tea, said Levent Kurnaz, a professor who studies climate change and ways to combat invasive pests that may increasingly cause damage to tea plants.

Kurnaz attended COP29 in part because he saw it as an important way to communicate about climate change, a topic he said is not as widely discussed in Turkey and Azerbaijan, but which is already critical of the few subject matter experts in the region with extensive discussion. a series of problems, present and future, in areas ranging from agriculture to immigration.

Climate change will seriously affect this region, Kurnaz said, especially for farmers, many of whom are women, who have grown tea all their lives. They don't know what to do when tea production goes sour. But at some point it will.”

Azerbaijan is 25th on the list of major crude oil exporting countries and one of the cradles of the oil industryone of the main sources of carbon dioxide emissions responsible for global warming. The country plans to increase its fossil fuel production over the next decade to meet European demand, and its oil production has been a subject of controversy since the start of this COP.

But President Ilham Aliyev said earlier this year that the country was in a transition phase towards clean energy, as the world continued to need fossil fuels to develop in the near future.

For ordinary people and producers alike, climate change and food and drink choices are closely linked. This is a no-brainer for Rauf Shikhaliyev, owner of a vegetarian and vegan restaurant in Baku called De Rama, also included in the COP29 food court. He felt it was very important to participate in climate negotiations because his plan to create a vegetarian restaurant was strongly linked to climate change, he said.

He added that after years in the restaurant business, he has witnessed the tea culture first-hand: before ordering food, many locals order tea first.

It's fitting for the UN: drinking tea brings people together, he says.

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Frazer reported from Ankara, Turkey.

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Follow Melina Walling on X, formerly known as Twitter, @MelinaWalling.

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Melina Walling and Suzan Fraser, Associated Press