Eight South American nations agreed Tuesday to launch a coalition to combat deforestation in the Amazon region, and pledged at a summit in Brazil to prevent the world’s largest rainforest from reaching a “point of no return”.
A closely watched Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO) summit has embraced what host nation Brazil called an “ambitious new common agenda” to save the rainforest, a crucial buffer against climate change that experts warn is being pushed to the brink of collapse.
The group’s members — Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela — signed a joint declaration in Belém, at the mouth of the Amazon River, laying out a roadmap of nearly 10,000 words to promote sustainable development, end deforestation and fight the organized crime that fuels it.
But the summit fell short of the most daring demands from environmentalists and indigenous groups, including that all member states embrace Brazil’s pledge to end illegal deforestation by 2030 and Colombia’s to stop drilling for new oil.
“It’s a first step, but there is no concrete decision, just a list of promises,” said Marcio Astrini, head of the Brazil-based Climate Observatory Coalition.
“The planet is melting, and temperatures are being smashed every day,” he added. “It is not possible for eight Amazon leaders to fail to place a declaration in bold letters that deforestation must be zero.”
In his opening address to the two-day summit, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva stressed that the “severe worsening of the climate crisis” required action to be taken “in unison”.
“It has never been so important,” he said in remarks just hours after the European Union’s climate observatory confirmed that July was the hottest month on record.
Meanwhile, Colombian President Gustavo Petro has called for a massive program of debt cancellation for developing countries in return for action to protect the climate, linking the idea to the “Marshall Plan” after World War II. “If we are about to die out and this is the decade when the big decisions have to be made… what do we do, besides making speeches?” he said.
In an effort to pressure the assembled heads of state, hundreds of environmentalists, activists and indigenous demonstrators marched to the conference venue in Belém, urging bold action.
This is the first summit in 14 years of the eight-nation group, which was established by the South American nations that share the Amazon Basin in 1995.
The vast Amazon region is home to an estimated 10 percent of the Earth’s biodiversity, 50 million people and hundreds of billions of trees, and is a vital carbon sink that reduces global warming.
But scientists warn that the destruction of the rainforest is pushing it dangerously close to a tipping point, after which trees die and release carbon rather than absorb it, with dire consequences for the climate.
AFP