Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva announced Friday that the UN has chosen the city of Belem, in the Amazon, to host the COP30 climate conference in 2025.
“It will be an honor for Brazil to receive representatives from all over the world in our Amazon,” Lula wrote on social media.
“I’ve been to the COP before in France, Egypt, and everyone was always talking about the Amazon. So I thought, why not do the conference here, so everyone knows about the Amazon? “, he added, in a video posted with the message.
Capital of the state of Para (north), Belem is a city of about 1.5 million inhabitants located near the mouth of the Amazon.
Alongside Lula in the video, Brazil’s Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira clarified that the UN’s choice dated from May 18.
The country, which is home to more than 60% of the Amazon rainforest, was supposed to host the COP in 2019, but the Brazilian authorities had given up organizing it after the election of far-right president Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022), a climato – notorious skeptic.
The left-wing president, who began his third term as head of Brazil in January, has vowed to make environmental conservation a priority and end illegal deforestation in the Amazon by 2030.
Shortly after his election at COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh last November, Lula was greeted as a hero, saying that Brazil was “back” in the concert of nations fighting against climate change.
05/27/2023 11:29:20 – Brasilia (AFP) – © 2023 AFP