SAO PAULO (AP) — Brazil’s president announced Friday that the United Nations has chosen his country to host the 2025 U.N. climate change conference, though the world body has not yet publicly confirmed the decision.
Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said Brazil would hold the conference, known as COP 30, in the Para state city of Belem in the heart of the Brazilian rain forest. The venue reflects Lula’s intention to bring attention to the Amazon region.
The latest climate conference was hosted by Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh, and this year’s will take place in Dubai.
“It will be a honor for Brazil to welcome representatives from all over the world in a state of our Amazon,” Lula said in a video published on his social media channels. “I went to COPs in Egypt, in Paris, in Copenhagen, and all people talk about is the Amazon. So I said, ‘Why don’t we go there so you see what the Amazon is like?’ ”
Brazil’s foreign minister, Mauro Vieira, says in the video that the decision was made at the U.N. on May 18. The U.N. has yet to confirm the venue.
Lula’s announcement comes in a week that his administration’s environmental governance has faced headwinds from Brazil’s congress. Lawmakers by a large majority approved a measure that eroded the environment ministry’s control over licenses for construction in forested and coastal areas, and other development.
Also this week, the congress is debating whether the state-run oil giant should be allowed to drill off the coast in the Amazon states of Amapa and Para,