The presidents of Brazil and Colombia discussed regional co-ordination to fight deforestation and protect the world’s largest and most biodiverse rainforest at a meeting in Colombia’s Amazonian city of Leticia on Saturday.
“My government is committed to eliminating illegal deforestation by 2030,” said Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who called for better regional and global co-ordination.
“This is a commitment that the Amazon countries can assume together at the upcoming Belem summit,” he added.
The meeting between Lula and Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro followed talks in Leticia earlier this week between environmental ministers from Amazonian countries, including Colombia’s Susana Mohamed, Peru’s Albina Ruiz Rios, and Josue Lorca from Venezuela, among others.
“To sustain the Amazon, according to science, we need to keep 80% of its forests standing and not manage to go beyond 20% deforestation, and unfortunately we are already at 17%,” said Mohamed, who is the Colombian minister for the environment.
“Losing the Amazon, reaching the point of no return, has irreversible consequences for global climate change,” she warned at the meeting attended by representatives from Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela.
Both Petro and Lula, who each took office less than a year ago, have called on rich nations to cough up funds to help South American countries preserve the Amazon, considered key to fighting global climate change.
Meetings in Leticia come before a summit of Amazon nations hosted by Brazil in the city of Belem, at the mouth of the Amazon river, in August.
The coming summit is an attempt to move the Amazon Co-operation Treaty Organisation nations to act together to preserve the forest and promote sustainable development in a region threatened by illegal loggers and gold miners, animal smugglers and drug traffickers.
The organisation was started in 1978 by Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela.
French Guiana, an overseas territory of France, is invited to meetings.
Rainforests are often called the “lungs of the Earth”, soaking up planet-warming carbon dioxide (CO2) and expelling life-giving oxygen.
Their protection is crucial in the battle to combat climate change.
In a bit of rare good news, deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon fell by one-third in the first six months of Lula’s administration compared to the same period last year, the government said last week.
His leftist government also has pledged to seize half of all land deforested illegally in areas designated as having special environmental protection, set aside 3mn hectares (7.4mn acres) of protected land by 2027, and strengthen Brazil’s network for environmental monitoring.