Amazonia: an “alliance” against deforestation but no concrete objective

2023-08-09 08:34:45

As for concrete objectives, we will have to go back… But the South American countries of Amazonia nevertheless decided, this Tuesday, August 9, to form an “alliance” against deforestation, during a summit in Belém, presented as a “turning point” by Brazilian President Lula.

The creation of an entity called “Amazonian Alliance to Combat Deforestation” is stipulated in a joint declaration signed by Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela.

The alliance “aims to promote regional cooperation in the fight against deforestation, to prevent the Amazon from reaching the point of no return”. If this point of no return were reached, the Amazon would emit more carbon than it absorbed, which would aggravate global warming.

Deforestation in the Amazon

© / afp.com/Julia Han JANICKI, Jean-Michel CORNU

“A List of Promises”

But contrary to the expectations of environmental organizations, this joint declaration issued at the end of the first of the two days of the summit does not present any common objective to completely eradicate deforestation, as Brazil has promised to do by here. 2030.

This river document in 113 points lays out in detail the milestones of cooperation between the eight member countries of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (OTCA), to promote sustainable development in this vast region which is home to approximately 10% of the global biodiversity.

“It’s a first step, but there is no concrete decision, it’s just a list of promises,” reacted Marcio Astrini, head of the Climate Observatory, a Brazilian collective of NGOs. “While temperature records are broken every day, it is not possible that the leaders of the Amazonian countries are not able to put black on white in a declaration that deforestation must be reduced to zero”, he said. – he lambasted.

“The New Amazon Dream”

The summit opened on the day when the European Copernicus service confirmed that July was the hottest month ever recorded on earth. “It has never been more urgent to resume and expand our cooperation,” Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said in his opening speech, referring to a “new Amazonian dream.”

Earlier in the day, he had promised that the summit would be “a turning point” in the fight against global warming. His Colombian counterpart Gustavo Petro for his part called for the speeches to be translated into concrete actions as soon as possible. “If we are on the brink of extinction, if it is during this decade that we have to make decisions, what are we doing, apart from speeches?”, he launched.

Lula and Gustavo Petro are accompanied to Belem by their counterparts from Bolivia, Colombia and Peru. Ecuador, Guyana and Suriname are represented by ministers, and Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, suffering from an ear infection, was replaced at short notice by his vice-president Delcy Rodriguez.

The UN Climate Conference in Belém

The summit in Belém serves as a dress rehearsal for this port city of 1.3 million inhabitants in northern Brazil, which will host the UN climate conference COP30 in 2025.

Other non-member countries of the ACTO have been invited to the summit, in particular France, which has an Amazonian territory with Guyana and will be represented on Wednesday by its ambassador in Brasilia, Brigitte Collet.

“There is an urgent need to put an end to deforestation,” French President Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday on X (formerly Twitter), calling “to protect vital carbon and biodiversity reserves, in the interest of forest countries, of their populations and of the whole world”.

The forest is absolutely critical in the fight against global warming and the loss of biodiversity.

But in 2022 alone, four million hectares have disappeared from primary tropical forests.

There is an urgent need to stop deforestation.…

—Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) August 8, 2023

Returning to power in January, Lula pledged to end deforestation by 2030, which had risen sharply under his far-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro.

Deforested land is often turned into pasture for livestock, but destruction is also caused by gold miners and timber traffickers.

Differences over oil

But Colombian President Gustavo Petro said “zero deforestation” would be “insufficient”. “Science has shown us that even if we cover the whole world with trees, it will not be enough to absorb CO2 emissions. […]. We must abandon fossil fuels”, he insisted. According to him, this responsibility lies above all with the “countries of the north”, while “we (the Amazonian countries) must protect the sponge”, as he describes the tropical forest.

But this energy transition is a more sensitive subject for major hydrocarbon producers in the Amazon region, such as Venezuela or Brazil.

On Wednesday, the summit will continue with the participation of non-OTCA member countries invited to Belem, such as France, but also Germany and Norway, main donors of the Amazon Fund. Indonesia, the Republic of Congo and Congo-Brazzaville, which are home to vast rainforests in other continents, have also been invited.