Brazilian president-elect Lula announced on Wednesday in Sharm el-Sheikh his wish to hold the UN climate conference in 2025 "in the Amazon."
"We will talk to the UN Secretary-General and ask him to hold COP30 in the Amazon," said Lula, who will take office on 1 January and is making his first trip abroad since his election at the end of October to COP27, which runs until 18 November in Egypt.
"In the Amazon, we have two states ready to host this kind of international event, Amazonas and Para," he added. "Brazil should not be isolated on the international scene," he said, as the country had turned inward under the outgoing far-right president Jair Bolsonaro.
Brazil had been selected to host COP25 in 2019, but reversed this decision after the election of Mr. Bolsonaro in late 2018.
COP25, under Chilean presidency, was finally held in Madrid. The outgoing Brazilian president had promoted policies that favoured agribusiness and mining, leading to a massive increase in deforestation. Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, on the other hand, has promised to fight for “zero deforestation.”
He is due to deliver a much-anticipated speech in Sharm el-Sheikh late Wednesday afternoon.
Next year's COP28 will be held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Three civil society organisations filed a case last week before the International Criminal Court (ICC), claiming that crimes against humanity have been committed in the Brazilian Amazon. There have been over 12,000 land or water-related conflicts in the Brazilian Amazon over the past 10 years (2011 – 2021) according to the Communication filed to the Prosecutor’s office at the ICC.
According to the evidence presented by the organisations, an organised criminal network has carried out a widespread or systematic attack against rural land users and defenders in the Amazon region. The crimes have resulted in 430 murders, 554 attempted murders, 2290 death threats, 87 cases of torture, and over 100,000 expulsions or evictions.
