(CNN) The United Nations has chosen Brazil to host the international climate meeting, COP30, in the Amazonian city of Belém do Pará in 2025. The country’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, announced this Friday.
“I have attended 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] know it, see its rivers, its forests, its fauna?” Lula said in a video posted on Chirping.
Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira said the United Nations approved Brazil’s bid to host COP30 on May 18, following a request made by Lula during last year’s COP27 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.
Pará Governor Helder Barbalho said in the same video that it is a “great privilege for the whole country” to host the event, saying it “increases accountability” for Brazil’s climate agenda in relation to the rights of indigenous peoples and the environment.
Lula has vowed to fight deforestation in the Amazon and repair the damage done to the Amazon by his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, under whose presidency deforestation has intensified.
But in recent days, the Lula government has come under fire for backtracking on its climate-related campaign promises. His government helped Congress pass a bill stripping the ministries of the environment and indigenous peoples 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, where 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 United Nations. The UN calendar still doesn’t include anything after that event.

Stock photo. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva gestures during a ministerial meeting to celebrate the first 100 days of his rule 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 must reduce greenhouse gas emissions by almost half by 2030 .
However, the attempt to tackle the biggest source of emissions from global warming 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 only coal.