According to the Brazilian president, the UN will hold a climate conference in Brazil in 2025

SAO PAULO — Brazil’s president announced Friday that the United Nations has chosen his country to host the 2025 climate change conference, although the world body has yet to publicly confirm the decision.

Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said Brazil would hold the conference known as COP 30 in the city of Belem in the state of Para, in the heart of the Brazilian rainforest. The location reflects Lula’s intention to raise awareness of the Amazon region.

The last climate conference was hosted in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, and this year’s conference will take place in Dubai.

“It will be an honor for Brazil to welcome representatives from all over the world to one of the states of our Amazon,” Lula said in a video posted on his social media channels. “I went to police stations in Egypt, Paris, Copenhagen, and all people talk about is the Amazon. So I said, “Why don’t we go over there to see what Amazon is like?” “

Brazil’s foreign minister, Mauro Vieira, says in the video that the decision was made on May 18 at the UN. The UN has not yet confirmed the location.

Within a week, Lula announced that his administration’s environmental stewardship had faced headwinds in Brazil’s Congress. Lawmakers overwhelmingly approved a measure that eroded the Department of Environment’s control over permits for construction and other development in forested and coastal areas.

Also this week, Congress is debating whether the state oil giant should be allowed to drill off the coast of the Amazon states of Amapa and Para.