Brazilian President,LuizInácio Lula da Silva, announced last Friday that the UN has chosen the city of Belém, in the Brazilian Amazon, as the venue for the COP30 climate conference in 2025.”I am convinced that it will be a great event (…) the people of the state of Pará will enchant the world”, said the president in a video posted on his social media. “I have already participated in this conference in Egypt, in France and everyone was talking about the Amazon. So I said: Why not hold a conference there, so they know what the Amazon is?”, Lula said about his proposal to host the world event.
Belém is the capital of the Brazilian state of Pará (north), and is located in the Bay of Marajó, a few kilometers from the mouth of the Atlantic Ocean, in the northeastern region of the Amazon jungle. According to Brazilian Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira, the United Nations chose it as the venue for the conference on May 18th.
Changing environmental policies
Brazil had been selected to host the COP in 2019, but the authorities withdrew after the election of the far-right candidateJairBolsonaro (2019-2022), a skeptic of climate change and accused of dismantling environmental policies. Lula, who assumed his third term as head of Brazil last January, promised to strengthen mechanisms to protect the environment and eradicate illegal deforestation in the Amazon by 2030.
