The two days of meetings between the leaders and senior representatives of the eight member countries of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO) together with four invited States from Africa and Asia, which host large reserves of tropical forests in their territories, culminated. The result of the second and last day of the conference was the signing of a joint communiqué where the nations appealed to the developed world to fulfill its part in financing for climate action.
“United for our forests” This is the name of the short 10-point document that resulted from closed-door conversations between the heads of state and government officials of the nations that host the Amazon biome in their territories (Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru , Suriname and Venezuela) and the diplomatic delegations of the countries invited to the summit: Indonesia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The text recognizes the importance of initiatives on environmental protection configured by the invited governments, reiterating the Commitment to continue cooperation between developing countries to protect their natural reserves and extending the invitation to other nations in the same conditions to generate a global network for the protection of forests.
In addition, the joint communiqué presented at the closing of the Amazon Summit insists on the need to combine economic growth with environmental protectionas well as being incisive in asking the countries with the highest income in the world that “meet their climate finance obligations” with developing countries.
“We call on developed countries to meet their obligations in terms of climate finance and contribute to the mobilization of 200,000 million dollars a year by 2030 (…) in order to support the implementation of action plans and strategies regarding biological diversity”, can be read in point 4 of the communiqué.
On the other hand, the host president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, ended his participation in the summit with a speech in which he highlighted the efforts of the attending leaders to reach certain beneficial agreements for the forest, but also announced that the group of Amazon countries will take their demands to the next United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP) to be held in Dubai.
“We will go to COP28 to say that if they want to preserve the forests, it is necessary to put money, not only for the treetops, but also to take care of the people who are in their shadow, who want to work and study,” said Lula, who He also criticized the “green neocolonialism” imposed on relations between developed and developing countries.
The commitments and criticisms included in the new text presented this Wednesday are in line with those presented at the end of the first day of the summit, when the governments of Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Guyana and Suriname agreed the joint signing of the Belém Declarationa 113-point document named after the Brazilian city that hosts the event.
Two writings that, although they establish certain frameworks of action to cooperate in the protection of the native peoples of the Amazon region, as well as in the management of water and security in the area, concise and real mechanisms are not established to address two of the issues most anticipated by environmental groups that were not satisfied with the results of the summit: deforestation and hydrocarbon extraction in the Amazon.
Zero Deforestation: one of the pending tasks of the Amazon
In a meeting that the host president described as “historic” in his prelude, the leaders did not announce concrete measures to combat deforestation in the largest tropical forest on the planet, a problem that, for non-governmental organizations such as the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), should have been at the forefront of the talks in Belém.
“WWF regrets that the eight Amazon countries, as a single front, have not reached a common point to end deforestation in the region,” the environmental group said in a statement posted on its social networks.
In addition, other organizations such as the Climate Observatory – a global network of environmental movements – lamented that the results of the summit “do not offer practical solutions” to end deforestation.
In response to criticism for the lack of commitment to establish concrete measures to stop deforestation in the jungle, the Brazilian Minister of the Environment, Marina Silva, pointed out that negotiations in this regard are complicated, since “no one can impose their will” on the climate objectives that each nation has in its part of the Amazonalthough he did highlight that a consensus was reached on not reaching the “point of no return” in deforestation.
“If we exceed 25% deforestation, the jungle will enter a process of transformation into savannah,” Silva said in an interview for local media.
Brazil and Colombia are the only countries that have made a commitment to eradicate deforestation in the Amazon rainforest by 2030, however, the other nations that share the jurisdiction of the so-called ‘lungs of the world’ are still dubious about it.
Divisions by the use of fossil fuels
Another issue that has caused visible fractures in the common front of the ACTO members is the position that different leaders have regarding the extraction of hydrocarbons in the jungle soil.
On the one hand, the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, highlighted the discrepancies in the discourse of some progressive governments in the region that call for protecting the Amazon, but continue to promote projects for the exploitation of fossil fuels in the zone.
“Is it possible to maintain a political line of that level? Bet on death and destroy life? Or should we propose something different, which is what I call a decarbonized society?” questioned the Colombian president, who came to describe the leaders who impose these projects as “progressive denialists”.
Despite the fact that Petro did not point to any specific president with his words, in Brazil the Colombian’s criticism of the Lula da Silva Administration was received, especially for his caution in addressing the issue of hydrocarbons in his public speeches during the summit. and the closeness of his Government with the extractivist projects in the region.
For this reason, Jean Paul Prates, president of Petrobras – the Brazilian state oil company – responded to the comments of the Colombian head of state stating that the proposals to suspend the use of fossil fuels promoted by Petro “did not have a consensus even within Colombia”, for which seems derisory to extend such a discourse to the international scene.
“There is no progressive denialism in seeking a just energy transition with more than statements and interviews. The replacement of oil resources with renewable sources has not been achieved anywhere nor will it be achieved only by the speech of well-intentioned people,” he said Prates in a statement through their social networks.
3/3 There is no “progressive denialism” that seeks to carry out a Just Energy Transition with more than statements and interviews.
The substitution of two oil and gas resources by renewable sources in some place has happened, and it will not happen, just by the voice of people… pic.twitter.com/NOYuSxNo0e
— Jean-Paul Prates (@jeanpaulprates) August 9, 2023
The complexity of the energy transition and the conflict of interest that seems to cause the halt to deforestation in the Amazon have meant that the Amazon Summit could not meet the expectations of being a “before and after” in the fight against the climate crisis , as the Brazilian president himself had presumed before starting the event.
With EFE, AP and local media
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