First, the good news: last week, the countries with territories that touch the majesty of the Amazon rainforest agreed to take more urgent steps to fight deforestation, so that it doesn’t reach “a point of no return.”
The stakes of the matter are clearly spelled out in a 113-point document, dubbed the Belém Declaration for the Brazilian city in which it was signed by the countries that form the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO): Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela.
The group, meeting for the first time in 14 years at a gathering called the Amazon Summit, agreed to “advance a new common agenda” in the world’s largest rainforest, a vault of biodiversity.
“Cooperation, integrated vision and collective action are fundamental to address political, social, economic and environmental challenges in the Amazon region,” the document states, pointing to mounting biodiversity loss, water and soil pollution, wildfires and poverty as key issues.
ACTO has pledged to set up an Amazon Alliance to Fight Deforestation, which will include “conservation units” focused on “stopping the Amazon region from reaching the point of no return” while respecting the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities. The leaders also vowed to initiate dialogue on an integrated air traffic control system that could boost surveillance of illegal activity, including drug trafficking and unauthorized mining and logging, along with deepening scientific research in the region.
“It has never been so urgent to resume and to expand on this cooperation. The challenges of our era and the opportunities that are before us demand joint action,” Brazilian President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva said at the summit.
But for all its important pronouncements, the agreement falls short of getting the eight nations to agree to stop cutting the rainforest down. The most they could muster was expressing “the urgency of agreeing on common goals by 2030 to fight deforestation, halt the advance of illegal natural resources extraction activities, and promote the approaches to land-use planning and transition to sustainable models with the ideal of reaching zero deforestation in the Region.”
At a time when climate calamity is gripping the globe, environmental activists say the measures announced are far too little.
It has never been so urgent to resume and to expand on this cooperation.
- Brazilian President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva
“The planet is melting, we are breaking temperature records every day. It is not possible that, in a scenario like this, eight Amazonian countries cannot put in a statement, in bold letters, that deforestation needs to be zero and that exploring for oil in the middle of the forest is not a good idea,” said Marcio Astrini, executive secretary of the Climate Observatory, a Brazil-based environmental organization.
The outcome was widely considered a political defeat for Brazil’s president, who has been lobbying for months to convince his neighbours to commit to ending deforestation by 2030.
Indeed, Lula has been marshalling an about-face on Brazil’s environmental reputation, which took a beating under the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro relaxed deforestation and environmental policies, leading to a dramatic increase in logging and driving the rainforest, known as the “lungs of the earth,” to belch out more carbon dioxide than it absorbs. In the last month of Bolsonaro’s presidency alone, some 218 square kilometres of Brazilian rainforest were decimated, an increase of 150%. The Lula reversal is already in motion, with deforestation dropping by 34% in the first six months of his presidency.
According to Reuters, Bolivia, which is still seeing deforestation increase, refused to agree to the 2030 deadline, while CNN reported that Guyana and Suriname also balked at the commitment.
Bolivia and Venezuela are the only Amazon countries, among a global list of more than 100, that did not sign on to a 2021 agreement made at COP26 to halt deforestation by 2030, Reuters reported.
But the politics of the region were on display in other ways, as Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, gave an impassioned speech urging his neighbours to stop drilling for oil and gas in the Amazon, something he called “total nonsense” given the state of the world. He also proposed creating an Amazon NATO that would start to apply coordinated military muscle to protect the rainforest, along with a special court “to prosecute crimes against the Amazon, recognizing that it has rights.” None of the ideas were adopted.
The solution is to abandon coal, oil and gas.
- Colombian President Gustavo Petro
Colombia, for its part, has backed an Indigenous-led plan to protect 80% of the Amazon from logging by 2025. But Petro suggested that even zero deforestation won’t be enough to turn the clock back. “The solution is to abandon coal, oil and gas,” he said. His proposal for a moratorium on fossil fuel extraction in the Amazon was rebuffed by other nations, according to Climate Observatory, among them Brazil, which is the biggest oil producer in the region.
Petro had pointed words for his progressive allies and the seeming reluctance to take more forceful climate action.
“The right wing has an easy escape, which is to deny the science,” he said. “For progressives, it is very difficult, because it creates another form of denial, which is to postpone decisions.”
“Politics can’t escape from the economic interests that stem from the aptly named fossil capital,” he added. “That’s why the COPs fail, as the clock ticks closer to extinction.”
Lula had told the summit that Brazil is committed to the green energy transition and plans to be a leader in the production of solar, biomass, ethanol and green hydrogen. Oil production, which is slated to expand in Brazil, is a fraught political topic in the country, with a state-owned oil company vying for drilling rights at the mouth of the Amazon river.
In comments made following the meeting, Brazil’s minister of foreign affairs, Mauro Vieira, maintained that Colombia’s position on oil is not out of step with its neighbours. “I insist on this: we do not have a different position; it is convergent, and each country will have the pace that is within its reach,” he said.
The Amazon Summit culminated with the formation of a new tropical rainforest bloc that adds the voices of the two Congos, Indonesia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines to the Amazon nations, to advance their concerns at the UN’s next climate conference, in November. Among their asks: that the rich nations of the world follow through on their promise to allocated $600 -billion to climate finance by 2025.
Lula told industrialized nations that it’s time to make amends for the destruction caused by their rampant pollution. “It’s nature that needs money,” he said.
