President Gustavo Petro invited his Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, this Saturday to reflect on the advisability of hydrocarbon exploration and exploitation in the Amazon Forest, at the close of the preparatory meeting called “Road to the Amazon Summit”, held in Leticia, with the aim of defining some of the parameters that will be taken to the event that will be held next August in Belém de Pará, in the neighboring country.
“Today we are aware that the world‘s forests are fundamental climatic pillars. The Amazon Basin is the third. If this pillar is removed, like the Pillars of Hercules, humanity collapses. Therefore, a change of thought is imposed on us”, assured the President.
And, addressing his Brazilian counterpart, present at the meeting, he added: “The challenge of protecting life goes through very difficult discussions, for example, are we going to let hydrocarbons be explored in the Amazon Jungle? to deliver them as exploration blocks? Is there wealth or is there the death of humanity? A decision that we would have to make together”.
The Colombian president clarified that although each nation is sovereign to make use of its natural resources, the climate crisis and the deterioration of the Amazon Basin demand radical actions and a transformation of the current world economic system.
“Each country has lived on these resources, the majority. We have lived on oil and coal for the last 40 years. If we change, then what are we going to live on? We can live from the brain, from science, from another type of development, opening paths of unity, from tourism, from the bio-economy, ”she emphasized.
Both presidents participated, at the headquarters of the National University of Leticia, in the closing plenary of the scientific technical meeting of the Amazon, a space with representatives of eight nations and members of indigenous communities and researchers on the environmental deterioration of the Forest.
Said instance sought to agree on a strategy that guarantees the integrity of the Amazonian ecosystem, stop the action and the destructive use of the land and avoid reaching the point of no return, as a response to the climate crisis.
“Reason today tells us -through science- that the entire world economic system must be transformed; that’s the challenge. There is the revolution (…) We believed that progress was the destruction of the tree, we believed that this was underdevelopment, today the approach is to save those forests to save life”, added.
“There is another type of development that is to protect life. Transforming that economic system based on life is the revolution of today’s times. The revolution of life must start from the Amazon ”, concluded Petro, who highlighted the 76% reduction in deforestation in the Colombian Amazon during his government.
It should be remembered that in different international scenarios, President Petro has been expressing his concern about the accelerated process of deterioration of the Amazon Forest, due to man’s action and also due to global warming itself.
The Colombian Head of State proposes establishing a multilateral fund, “that will be capable of financing social forces, peasants, farmers, in general, humble people, who are today the agent of destruction of the jungle, for 20 years. Transforming them into a positive force means paying them monthly environmental services for caring for and letting the Amazon jungle grow.”
President Petro was accompanied by Foreign Minister Álvaro Leyva; the director of Dapre, Carlos Ramón González; the Minister of the Environment, Susana Mohammad; the Minister of Agriculture, Jennifer Mojica, and the Colombian Ambassador to Brazil, Guillermo Rivera.
Meanwhile, President Lula da Silva was accompanied by the country’s First Lady, Rosângela Lula da Silva; Foreign Minister Mauro Viera; the Minister of the Environment, Marina Silva; the Minister of Indigenous Peoples, Sônia Guajajara; the Minister Chief of the Secretariat for Communications, Paulo Pimienta, and Celso Amorim, Special Advisor to the Presidency of the Republic.