2023-08-08 22:23:57
by Samuele Finetti
The Otca summit opened yesterday in Par, Brazil’s most devastated state. The Colombian Petro proposes a Marshall Plan for the forest
He wants to revive the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization, Luiz Incio Lula da Silva. Not that it would take long, given that its body of officials is only 17 strong.
In the hopes of the Brazilian president, the turning point in the history of the OTCA, which brings together the eight countries on whose territory the largest rainforest in the world extends, should be the two-day summit that opened yesterday in Belm, in the Brazilian state of Par, the hardest hit by deforestation.
the first since 2009, the third since the Organization was founded in 1995 on the basis of an agreement signed in the late 1970s. The summit at the time, convened in view of the fifteenth United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP), ended in stalemate.
Now another COP is being prepared, the 30th, which will be held in Belm in 2025. Lula himself put it on paper yesterday, in the opening session of this two-day event: The challenge that The climate crisis confronts us with common actions that combine environmental protection with job creation. Translated: a new Amazonian dream made of intact forests, a cleaner area, pristine rivers and indigenous people out of danger.
Already last year, during the electoral campaign, Lula had promised to meet after more than a decade with the leaders of the other seven countries. The appeal was taken up by those of Bolivia, Colombia, Guyana and Peru. Ecuador and Suriname sent a delegation, while Venezuelan President Maduro withdrew at the last minute.
So far, the maximum result achieved by this Amazonian bloc, which in Lula’s plans should evolve and present itself unitedly at appointments such as the COP, has been the individual ratification of the Paris agreements and the promise to reduce carbon emissions in the coming decades. The first step in this new era of the OTCA should be a joint final communiqué – someone has already renamed it the Belm Declaration – which, according to experts, will outline strategies to limit deforestation and finance sustainable development. The creation of a police force in Manaus, the capital of the forest, would also be envisaged, with the mission of stemming the environmental damage caused by unauthorized mining and other illegal practices.
But there are those who have gone further. Colombian President Gustavo Petro has launched the idea of a NATO of the Amazon, a treasure to be defended with a Marshall Plan and, if necessary, with weapons. While the Peruvian Dina Boluarte has launched an appeal for us to act immediately to save the green lung of the Earth which is also her heart.
Lula has already done a lot to safeguard this lung which extends over an area twice the size of India and is home to 50 million people in the shade of 400 billion trees. Under Bolsonaro, the Amazon forest lost 34,000 square kilometers of surface (an area the size of Lazio), a 75 percent increase over the previous decade. In the seven months of his third term, the current president has reduced the advance of deforestation by 42 percent, which he would like to stop by 2030; he prepares to establish fourteen new indigenous lands, having created six; and he pledged to reduce Brazil’s emissions by 37 percent by 2025 compared to 2005.
He has not said no, however, to oil-extraction projects along the mouth of the Amazon River, as Petro would like. The Colombian president is one of the firmest global advocates of environmental protection as well as a supporter of saying goodbye to hydrocarbons, despite the fact that the most profitable export of the country that elected him a year ago is precisely oil.
August 8, 2023 (change August 8, 2023 | 22:25)
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