By Satyaki Chakraborty
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, better known as Lula took a major step in protecting the climate of Amazon rainforest by announcing the holding of a regional summit in August this year. President Lula in his election manifesto last year before the Presidential, elections mentioned of his resolve to fight for protecting the environment in Amazon forests in cooperation with the other neighbouring countries of the Latin American region.
Brazil’s President met with his Colombian counterpart Gustavo Petro on Saturday to build momentum for this critical regional summit about the Amazon rainforest next month.
The meeting took place in Colombia’s Leticia, in the Amazon’s triple border region between Colombia, Brazil and Peru, where organised crime has recently increased. The meeting aimed to lay groundwork for August’s Amazon Summit the Brazilian government is organising in Belem.
The summit will be attended by leaders of the countries party to the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organisation, made up of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela. The multinational corporations who have interests in the huge resources in Amazon forests are not happy with the Brazilian move but the Brazilian president has been able to garner the support of a large number of countries for evolving a composite strategy which will be beneficial to the economies of the region.
Lula is pushing for a joint declaration from the summit, which would be presented at the United Nations climate conference, known as Cop28, in Dubai in November. “We will have to demand together that rich countries fulfill their commitments,” Lula said in Leticia, sitting next to President Petro. Mr Petro also stressed the need for a common front to exert pressure on developed countries. “We believed that progress was the destruction of trees, but today that is nothing other than the destruction of life,” he said.
The Colombian leader said tackling the climate crisis will require spending trillions of dollars. This could be achieved by transforming the global debt system and “trading debt for climate action,” he said.
The final document will comprise measures for the sustainable development of the Amazon, protecting the biome, and promoting social inclusion, science, technology and innovation while valuing indigenous peoples and their knowledge, Brazil’s presidential palace said in a statement.
“Joint action of the countries that share the Amazon forests is fundamental for facing the multiple challenges in the region” the statement said. One challenge faced is the tightened grip of organised crime, particularly in tri-border regions like where Leticia is located. Columbia has the presence of powerful mafia gang which steal the resources of the Amazon forests.. The new Columbia government under president Petro is engaged in a fight with them. The task has become tough but the Marxist president is determined to deal with both drug cartels as also other mafia gangs.
Indigenous groups are “disproportionately affected” by organised crime in the Amazon, leading to forced displacements, mercury poisoning and other health-related impacts as well as increased exposure to violence.
In 2019, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, Peru, Guyana and Suriname signed the Leticia Pact to strengthen coordinated actions for the preservation of the natural resources of the Amazon. Since taking office on January 1 this year, president Lula has put environmental protection and respect fo indigenous rights as the core policy of his presidential programme
The move for the integration of the economies of South American nations got a big boost earlier after the conclave of twelve countries of the region at Brasilia on May 30. Brazil’s president inaugurated the conference which signalled the arrival of a new awareness among the Latin American nations about the need for joint strategy to foster economic and political cooperation.
The meet attended by 11 head of the governments and one very senior government leader from Peru in the absence of the President, was the culmination of the efforts of the Brazilian president to revive the non functioning UNASUR, the regional body which was officially founded by Lula during his earlier presidential tenure in 2008 during the pink period in the Latin American sub continent. The body was non functional since 2014 due to the change in the political composition of the governments favouring right in many member countries. Now with the pink and anti-right trend becoming prominent again, Lula took the initiative to revive the forum.
In his inaugural address, Brazilian president said “We let ideology divide us and interrupt our efforts to integrate. We abandoned our channels of dialogue and our mechanisms of cooperation, and we all lost because of it”. He promoted the proposal for creating a regional South American trade currency to challenge the domination of the United States dollar in the market.. The leaders discussed the possibility of cooperation in the areas of energy, finance, crime and climate change.
That way after taking over as the Brazilian president, Lula has been acting as the prime leader of the Latin American nations in expanding the regional cooperation among the states by taking full advantage of the synergies of the economies and deciding jointly to expand trade and services taking mutual interests. The August summit is the second major move by the Latin American nations to move jointly to protect their regional interests. (IPA Service)