Brazil leads Amazon summit in new push to save vital rainforest
BELEM, Brazil — Amazon rainforest nation leaders met Tuesday for the first time in 14 years to find common ground between fueling economic development and protecting an ecosystem vital to the battle against climate change.
Assembling Tuesday and Wednesday in the Brazilian city of Belem are members of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization, a 45year-old alliance that has met only three times before.
Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has said he hopes the summit will spur far-reaching and effective action.
“It has never been so urgent to resume and expand that cooperation. The challenge of our era and the opportunities that arise will demand joint action,” Lula said as the event began.
The Amazon stretches across an area twice the size of India, and two-thirds of it lie in Brazil. The seven countries and one territory that share the remaining third are represented at the summit by the presidents of Colombia, Peru and Bolivia; Guyana’s prime minister; Venezuela’s vice president; and the foreign ministers of Suriname and Ecuador.
All of the countries at the summit have signed the Paris climate accord, which requires them to set targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But that’s about as far as their shared policy goes.
One issue on the agenda is organized crime. Few border areas are well policed, and there has been scant international cooperation as rivals compete for routes to traffic drugs. Drug seizures have increased in Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia and Peru over the last decade, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reported in June.
Homicide rates in Amazon municipalities are sometimes two to three times greater than already-high national averages, said Rob Muggah, founder of the Igarape Institute, a security-focused think tank.
And traffickers have diversified into ventures such as “narco-deforestation” — laundering drug profits into land for agriculture — as well as illegal gold prospecting that lays waste to the forest and poisons waterways, according to the U.N. report.
This is Lula’s second attempt to form an Amazon bloc. He tried at the last Amazon summit in 2009, during his first presidency, but was joined only by President Bharrat Jagdeo of Guyana.
Leaders will also address how to prevent the Amazon from reaching the point at which the carbon dioxide it releases is out of control. Some scientists say this will happen when 20% to 25% of the forest is destroyed. The resulting decline in rainfall would transform more than half of the Amazon into a tropical savanna, with immense biodiversity loss.
Brazil and Colombia have pledged to stop deforestation by 2030, but other countries have not. Other notable goals include:
8 Lula has said he will create 14 new Indigenous territories and has already created six. He also plans to restore Brazil’s official climate commitment — 37% lower emissions than in 2005 by 2025 — which was weakened by his predecessor.
8 Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s administration has laid out a strategy for reaching carbon neutrality by 2050 and reducing greenhouse gases by 51%.
8 Ecuadorean President Guillermo Lasso has said he’ll lead his country in an ecological transition to zero carbon emissions by 2050. By 2025, Ecuador aims to reduce deforestation to avoid 16.5 million tons of emissions. The country also aims to create a bio-corridor so wildlife can roam.
Cross-border cooperation in the Amazon has historically been scant, undermined by low trust, ideological differences and the lack of government presence. Increasing environmental consciousness and recognition of the Amazon’s importance in arresting climate change have invigorated the drive for a paradigm shift.
In 2018, Latin American nations signed the Escazu agreement, which established the public’s right to environmental information and participation in decision-making and protected environmentalists. But several countries, including Brazil, have not yet ratified it. The following year, they signed the Leticia Pact to better coordinate environmental protection.
Lula said he hopes a “Belem Declaration” — already drafted — will be the nations’ shared call to arms before November’s global climate conference in Dubai.
This summit also reinforces Lula’s strategy to leverage global concern for the Amazon. After a 42% drop in deforestation in his first seven months back in office, he has sought international financial support for forest protection. The leaders of Norway and Germany, large contributors to Brazil’s Amazon Fund for sustainable development, were invited, as were counterparts from other rainforest regions: Indonesia, Republic of Congo and Democratic Republic of Congo. France’s ambassador to Brazil is representing the Amazonian territory of French Guiana.
Outside the summit, some 20,000 Indigenous people and others from Amazon countries have held 400 parallel events. In hours-long sessions, they presented demands to ministers from Brazil, Colombia, Peru and other countries. On Tuesday, they also delivered a summary of these discussions to assembled presidents and officials, including a proposal that governments commit to preserving at least 80% of the Amazon. Maisonnave and Biller write for the Associated Press. AP writers Carla Bridi in Brasilia; Paola Flores in La Paz, Boliva; Gonzalo Solano in Quito, Ecuador; Franklin Briceño in Lima, Peru; Manuel Rueda in Bogota, Colombia; and Jorge Rueda and Regina Garcia Cano in Caracas, Venezuela contributed to this report.