Amazon hosts COP30.

Amazon hosts COP30.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has announced that the city of Belém, located in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest, will host the annual United Nations Climate Change Summit in 2025. The UN decision to hold the COP30 summit, as the summit is known, in Brazil is the latest boost to efforts. The leftist leader’s efforts to assert a global leadership role in environmental issues.

“Lola,” he said in a tweet on Twitter, while announcing the United Nations’ selection of his country: “It would be an honor to receive representatives from all over the world to a state in our Amazon region.” Lula proposed the city in the northern state of Para as a host during the COP27 summit last year in Egypt. “This selection increases our responsibility to show that Brazil is prepared and that it prioritizes the environmental agenda,” Helder Barbalho, governor of Para, said in a video accompanying the announcement.

Lula has won global acclaim for promising to reverse years of increasing rates of deforestation, in sharp contrast to former President Jair Bolsonaro, who faced international disapproval for his complacency in protecting forests. Since Lula took office last January, the United States and the United Kingdom have pledged to start contributing to the Amazon Fund, a Brazil-led initiative created in 2008, with other countries in talks to join.

That agenda is now facing increasing challenges in Brazil, especially after a congressional committee moved to strip some powers of the Environment Ministry and its head, Marina Silva, this week. The decision had tacit support from Lula, according to local press reports, as part of larger legislative negotiations over the structure of his government and the approval of his new financial plan. The COP30 summit is expected to take place in November 2025. The event brings together world leaders to discuss climate measures and efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Last year’s event resulted in an agreement to create a fund to help poor countries hit by the effects of climate change.

Simon Iglesias*

*Journalist for Bloomberg Team in Brazil.

Published by special arrangement with The Washington Post Leasing and Syndication Service.