By Lisandra Paraguassu
BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazil is expected to announce on Tuesday that ambassador Andre Correa do Lago will be president of the 2025 COP30 global climate summit in the Amazonian city of Belem, three people with knowledge of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s plans told Reuters.
Correa do Lago has been Brazil’s negotiator at global climate summits since 2023, a role he also had between 2011 and 2013. He has worked in climate diplomacy and sustainable development since 2001.
In the new role, Correa do Lago would serves as the main facilitator and mediator between country delegations at the November summit, known as COP30.
The presidency is considered essential to the success of the conference, in which leaders from almost every nation in the planet will negotiate how to keep global warming below catastrophic levels, after two years of record heat.
If confirmed, the announcement of Correa do Lago as the president of COP30 will mark a return of the conference’s leadership to the hands of officials with a history of working in climate policy. Both Azerbaijan, which hosted the conference last year, and the UAE, the host in 2023, appointed officials who worked in state-owned oil companies to lead the summit.
The announcement of the president of the summit is the starting point for the Brazilian government to set up the leadership structure that will carry out negotiations for what promises to be one of the most difficult conferences in recent years, with tough disputes over financing the energy transition in developing countries and the new pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions countries have vowed to make.
Brazil is also facing steep challenges to get the city of Belem, in the Amazon rainforest, ready to welcome tens of thousands of people in November. In the next few months, the city will need to at least double the number of beds available in hotels and other accommodation.
Lula, who has vowed to end deforestation in the Amazon, has attached much of his political capital in the global stage to the success of the conference in Belem, the second most populous city in the region.
“I’ve attended COPs in Egypt, Paris, Copenhagen and all people talk about is the Amazon, so I asked: why not host it in an Amazonian state, so you can know what the Amazon really is?” the leftist leader said during the climate summit in Egypt, in 2022. “That is very important.”
Sources in the government told Reuters that Correa do Lago is currently the best candidate, since he is not only familiar with all climate negotiations but also has connections with all sectors involved within the government itself. He was responsible, for example, for resolving the impasse between rich countries and developing ones in the G20 climate negotiations in Rio de Janeiro, which threatened to paralyze the summit communiqué last year.
(Reporting by Lisandra Paraguassu, editing by Manuela Andreoni and Michael Perry)
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