() The United Nations has chosen Brazil to host the international climate meeting, COP30, in the Amazon city of Belém do Pará in 2025. This was announced this Friday by the country’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
“I have participated in COP in Egypt, in Paris, in Copenhagen and they only talk about the Amazon. So why not hold the COP in the Amazon so that [la gente] get to know it, see its rivers, its forests, its fauna?” Lula said in a video posted on Twitter.
Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira said the UN approved Brazil’s candidacy to host COP30 on May 18 following a request Lula had made during last year’s COP27 meeting in Egypt.
Belém do Pará is a city in northern Brazil located on the edge of the Amazon jungle. It is the capital of the state of Pará, located on the coast of the Amazon River estuary.
The governor of Pará, Helder Barbalho, said in the same video that it is a “great privilege for the whole country” to host the event, stating that it “increases the responsibility” of Brazil’s climate agenda in relation to the rights of indigenous peoples. and the environment.
Lula has promised to fight Amazon deforestation and repair the damage done to the Amazon by his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, under whose presidency deforestation intensified.
But in recent days the Lula government has been criticized for backtracking on its climate-related election promises. His administration helped Congress pass a bill that strips the environment and indigenous peoples ministries of some powers, weakening oversight of environmental protections and the demarcation of indigenous lands in the Amazon.
The COP is the annual United Nations Conference on Climate Change, in which States discuss and agree on measures to address environmental issues. This year the 28th edition of the conference will be held in Dubai, according to the UN. The UN calendar still doesn’t include anything after that event.
File photo. Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva gestures during a ministerial meeting to celebrate the first 100 days of his government at the Planalto Palace in Brasilia on April 10, 2023. (Photo by EVARISTO SA / AFP)
At last year’s climate summit, negotiators from nearly 200 countries took the historic step of agreeing to create a “loss and damage” fund to help vulnerable countries cope with climate disasters and agreed that the Planet needs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by almost half by 2030.
However, the attempt to tackle the biggest source of global warming emissions and the climate crisis ended in fiasco after several nations, including China and Saudi Arabia, blocked a key proposal to phase out all fossil fuels. , not just coal.
