Lula offers to host COP30

Brazil’s President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has offered to host the 2025 edition of UN climate summit, COP30, and to put the venue in the Amazon rainforest, rather than the more populous coastal region.

Lula, who received a warm welcome at the COP27 summit in Egypt on Wednesday, pledged to recommit the rainforest nation to tackling the climate crisis and offered to hold future U.N. climate talks.

“I am here to say to all of you here that Brazil is back in the world,” he said, speaking at an event alongside governors of Brazilian Amazon states.

“It’s important for it to be in the Amazon. It’s important for the people who defend the Amazon, the people who defend the climate, to closely get to know what the region is,” said Lula, who is due to take office in January.

The country had been set to host the annual U.N. summit in 2019 until Lula’s predecessor – right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro – refused to go ahead with it.

Brazil’s 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro set the stage for all major international environmental agreements since, with the signing of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is aimed at preventing extreme climate change and was the foundation of the COP meetings.

Lula won office last month over Bolsonaro, who appointed climate skeptics as ministers and saw deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest spike to a 15-year high.

His choice to make the COP27 summit the focus of his first international visit since being elected to the presidency last month has helped to energize this year’s talks in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh.

Also Read: Lula wins Brazil presidential election 

Lula reduced deforestation to near-record lows in his first presidency from 2003 to 2010.

For his new administration, he has promised a sweeping plan to restore environmental law enforcement that eroded under Bolsonaro and create green jobs.

On Tuesday, Lula met U.S. Climate Envoy John Kerry and China’s chief climate negotiator Xie Zhenhua. He was expected to meet EU climate policy chief Frans Timmermans on Wednesday.

On Thursday, Lula will meet with civil society and indigenous groups, as well as United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. He departs on Friday for Portugal to meet government authorities there.

Zainab Sa’id