By Alejandra Garcia on August 8, 2023
Assembly of the Peoples for the Amazon make demands to leadership summit. photo: Hannah Letícia
Today, the summit of Amazon countries kicked off in the Brazilian city of Belém amid great expectations for reaching agreements to halt the destruction of the largest tropical rainforest on the planet. It is no coincidence that Brazil is the ideal place for this event, now that President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has committed himself to the protection and care of the Amazon since his return to power last January.
The eight countries of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO), represented by their political leaders, Indigenous leaders, and environmental activists, will discuss strategies against deforestation, organized crime, and sustainable development of this vast region, which is home to about 10 percent of the planet’s biodiversity.
The presidents of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Guyana, and Peru, along with high-level representatives from Venezuela, Ecuador, and Suriname, are expected to sign a joint declaration for rainforest preservation at the close of the event on Wednesday.
The eyes of the world are on this imperative regional meeting since it is the first to be held by ACTO members since 2009. In these years of inaction, the scientific community has warned with alarm that the destruction of the Amazon is at risk of reaching a point of no return or ecological tipping point. From that point on, the Amazon would emit more carbon dioxide than it can absorb. Today, the leaders relocated to Belém, the gateway to the Brazilian Amazon, where they will seek to design a preservation protocol to avoid reaching that point.
Considered the lungs of the planet, the Amazon is a territory of 6.3 million kilometers with the largest reserves of fresh water. It is home to about 50 million people, including more than 400 distinct Indigenous peoples.
“We have to preserve the Amazon, not as a sanctuary, but as a source of learning for science around the world, to find a way to make money but not at the expense of the environment, so that the people living here can live with dignity,” Lula said during an official act in Santarém, another Amazonian city in Pará, Brazil, on the eve of the summit.
The main objective of the southern countries will be to change course. There is renewed hope now that President Lula is taking steps forward to reverse the damage and deforestation left by his predecessor, the ecocide Jair Bolsonaro who opened the doors of the Amazon to all sorts of illegal and corrupt projects that led to massive destruction to the land, water and air quality.
According to official figures, the Amazon rainforest endured in 2022, the last year of Jair Bolsonaro’s administration, a record 10,267 kilometers of deforestation, an extension equivalent to half of Tucumán, the largest province in northern Argentina. Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research estimated that carbon dioxide emissions from the Amazon territory increased by 117% in 2020, compared to the annual average between 2010 and 2018.
Amazonian countries are committed to “not allowing the Amazon to reach a point of no return,” Brazil’s Environment Minister Marina Silva said during a meeting of ministers before the summit.
The first day was fruitful, since the leaders urged to create a military and judicial treaty to prevent any action against the Amazon rainforest in compliance with the sovereignty of each country. They also demanded an initiative to create a common Amazon scientific research center and they debated the viability of continuing to extract oil from this region, which is fundamental for the planet’s equilibrium.
“Taking care of this forest does not only imply thinking about zero deforestation, the solution lies in leaving carbon and oil, and that decision lies in the countries of the North,” Colombian President Gustavo Petro emphasized.
Assembly of the Peoples of the Earth for the Amazon
Last week thousands of people also gathered in Belém for the Assembly of the Peoples of the Earth for the Amazon, in an activity called the Amazon Dialogues that brought together indigenous peoples, landless peoples, traditional communities, peoples of the countrysides of the Amazon along with international environmental activists. The event was to insure that their voices be heard at the Summit through a list of 29 demands calling for all necessary measures to avoid the point of no return. Including in these demands was one calling for an end of the corporate plunder of the Amazon by multi national corporations who have had their way making super profits with no regard to what they left behind and in most cases paid little or no taxes on the minerals they extracted. This has to be ended, not gradually, but now due to the global emergency that the Amazon finds itself in.
Source: Resumen Latinoamericano – English