Brazil has officially launched a bid for the northeastern city of Belem to host the COP30 international climate summit in 2025.
The UN climate talks are held annually with the last event, COP27, taking place in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt in November. COP28 will be held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates later this year with oil company boss Sultan Al Jaber recently named as president of the talks.
The venue for COP29 hasn’t vet been confirmed but Australia is currently the main candidate.
On Wednesday (11 January) President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said that he was fulfilling a promise he made last year by proposing a Belem to host the climate conference.
Lula, who in November attended COP27 in Egypt as president-elect pledging to recommit the rainforest nation to tackling the climate crisis, said he would name a city in the Amazon to host the 2025 UN climate talks.
A candidate to host the ‘biggest climate event on the planet’
Belem is the capital of the Amazonian state of Para and one of the largest cities in the region by population. It is second only to Manaus, which hosted games of the 2014 World Cup.
Lula said in a video on Twitter that Brazil’s foreign relations ministry had formalised Belem as a candidate to host COP30.
“In Egypt I made the pledge that Brazil could host COP30, and I am happy to know that our (foreign relations) minister Mauro Vieira has formalized Belem’s bid,” Lula said in the video alongside Para Governor Helder Barbalho.
“I hope that we are going to make a beautiful COP.”
Governor Barbalho called COP the “biggest climate event on the planet” and said that Belem will open its doors to debate the Amazon, discuss climate change and find solutions.
Lula has been promising to tackle deforestation in the Amazon, which hit a 15-year-high under former President Jair Bolsonaro. He recently named Marina Silva, who oversaw a significant drop in deforestation during his first stint as president in the 2000s, as his environment minister.
source: euronews
