The Brazilian government has announced that Belém, the second-largest city in the country’s Amazon region, has been officially selected to host the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Conference of Parties (COP) in November 2025.
The Amazon rainforest often dominates conversations at UN climate conferences, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said in a video message. “Why not hold the COP in an Amazonian state, so that [international negotiators] can get to know the Amazon?”
COP hosting duties typically rotate among the UN’s five regional groups. The 2010 and 2014 editions were held in Mexico and Peru, respectively. Brazil was slated to host the conference in November 2019, but abandoned the bid shortly after Jair Bolsonaro won the 2018 election, as the then-president-elect had no interest in bringing climate discussions to Brazil.
Lula in January announced Belém as Brazil’s candidate to host the COP, as part of his broader agenda to bring Brazil back to the forefront of international relations. The bid was almost immediately endorsed by other Latin American countries. As The Brazilian Report showed, however, Belém is far from capable of hosting major international events.
According to the most recent federal estimate, from 2016, Belém has just over 15,000 hotel beds — less than half of the more than 35,000 people who attended COP27 in the Egyptian coastal city of Sharm el-Sheikh. Also according to the 2016 survey, the entire state of Pará had only eight luxury hotels, the kind that VIP guests such as COP attendees tend to pack.
The choice of Belém to host the COP has also been criticized in Brazil, as the state of Pará has led Amazon deforestation rankings for over 15 consecutive years, even though neighboring state Amazonas is 25 percent larger.
Pará Governor Helder Barbalho, who campaigned for Lula ahead of last year’s runoff election, celebrated the news alongside the president and Foreign Affairs Minister Mauro Vieira.
The press office for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), of which the COP is the main decision-making body, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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