Armenia pips foe Azerbaijan to host 2026 biodiversity COP: summit vote

Parties to the UN Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) voted in Colombia Thursday for its next Conference of Parties (COP), in 2026, to be held in Armenia -- which had vied for the privilege with foe Azerbaijan.

Armenia won with 65 votes out of 123 cast in a secret ballot at the CBD's 16th Conference of Parties (COP16), winding down in the city of Cali, the meeting's president Susana Muhamad announced.

The inharmonious neighbors both put forward offers to host COP17 in two years' time, and representatives presented detailed pitches, complete with videos highlighting their countries' natural beauty, to fellow delegates earlier this week.

It had been decided at COP13 in Cancun, Mexico, that COP17 will be hosted in a country from the central and eastern European region, which includes Azerbaijan ally Russia.

Uzbekistan had also been in the running, but pulled out.

This was the first time the CBD parties had voted on the next host from among two candidates, according to spokesman David Ainsworth.

In the past, parties had reached consensus on a candidate to put forward, but this time, the appointed host region was unable to agree on one.

Former Soviet republics Azerbaijan and Armenia have seen decades of war and tension over Nagorno-Karabakh, a breakaway ethnic Armenian region in Azerbaijan.

After a series of slow-moving negotiations, Azerbaijan rushed in troops last year and swiftly seized back the area, whose entire population of nearly 120,000 people fled to Armenia.

The next, 29th, annual COP on climate change will be held in the Azerbaijani capital Baku in November.

The international community has been ramping up pressure for an agreement between the neighbors before COP29.

Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Azerbaijan in August.