Letter from Azerbaijan: Net-zero strategy to reshape South Caucasus

ExxonMobil’s MOU with SOCAR, unveiled in Washington alongside the peace agreement with Armenia, highlights how the Karabakh net-zero zone is part of a wider strategic realignment

In the mountains and valleys of Nagorno-Karabakh, the guns have fallen silent, replaced by the busy sounds of construction machinery, articulated transport and industrial activity in a once-predominantly rural and agricultural landscape. In the city of Aghdam—dubbed the ‘Hiroshima of the Caucasus’ after it was systematically ravaged during 30 years of occupation—housing, hotels, schools, hospitals and industrial sites are being built anew, at the expense of the government in Baku. The same is true of many of the towns that lay in Karabakh and the occupied surrounding areas of the country. It is not simply a matter of reconstruction. The declaration that the territory—contested between Armeni