Indigenous people protest in Belm Image: AFP
At a summit to save the Amazon forest in Belm, Brazil, eight countries in South America agreed on Tuesday to form an alliance to combat collection trains in the region.
At a summit to save the Amazon forest in Belm, Brazil, eight countries in South America agreed on Tuesday to form an alliance to combat collection trains in the region. According to host country Brazil, the first meeting of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (Octa) since 2009 adopted a “new and ambitious common agenda” to save the rainforest. For activists, the resolutions did not go far enough.
The group’s members – Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela – signed a joint declaration in the city of Belm, at the mouth of the Amazon, setting out a roadmap to promote sustainable development, end deforestation and end deforestation to fight organized crime.
The Amazon Cooperation Treaty (Octa) was signed in 1978 by Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Guyana, Colombia, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela. Germany and Norway are also represented in Belm as the main supporters of the Amazon Fund.
However, the results of the summit fell short of the expectations of environmentalists and indigenous groups. They had demanded a commitment that Brazil would end illegal logging by 2030 and a commitment from Colombia not to drill any more oil. “It’s a first step, but there are no concrete decisions, just a list of promises,” said Marcio Astrini, head of the Climate Observatory, an association of NGOs in Brazil.
The meeting of representatives from eight Amazon countries was “pioneering”, said Brazilian President Luiz Incio Lula da Silva in online services before the summit. It marks a “watershed moment in the history of Amazon conservation and ecological change.”
Lula attended Tuesday’s meeting with his colleagues from Bolivia, Colombia and Peru, while ministers represented Ecuador, Guyana and Suriname. Venezuela’s President Nicols Maduro was temporarily replaced by his Vice President Delcy Rodrguez.
The Colombian President Gustavo Petro urged a radical rethinking of the global economy and called for a strategy modeled on the “Marshall Plan”, according to which developing countries would have their debts canceled in exchange for climate protection measures.
The Amazon is considered the “green lung” of the planet. Its rainforest absorbs gigantic amounts of carbon dioxide from the earth’s atmosphere and thus counteracts global warming caused by this greenhouse gas. However, scientists warn that the Amazon forest is nearing a tipping point, where its trees would die and the stored carbon dioxide would be released back into the atmosphere. This would have catastrophic consequences for the earth’s climate.
A fifth of the Brazilian rainforest has already been destroyed. Brazil, which contains around 60 percent of the Amazon forest, has pledged to eliminate illegal logging by 2030.
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