Brazilian President, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is hosting a regional summit this week with at least eight South American countries as part of efforts to seek a roadmap to save the world’s biggest rainfores, Amazon.
The meeting of the eight-nation Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organisation on Tuesday and Wednesday in Belem, capital of the Amazon state of Para, is expected to serve as something of a dress rehearsal for the COP30 UN climate talks, which the city will also host in 2025.
It is the 28-year-old organisation’s first summit since 2009, as Lula seeks to deliver on his pledge that “Brazil is back” in the fight against climate change after a period of surging destruction in the Amazon under his far-right predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro.
The Amazon is a key buffer against global warming, with its hundreds of billions of carbon-absorbing trees.
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However, scientists warn that deforestation is pushing it dangerously close to a “tipping point,” beyond which trees would die off and release their carbon stores back into the atmosphere, with catastrophic consequences for the climate.
Already, carbon emissions from the Amazon increased by 117% in 2020 compared to the annual average for 2010 to 2018, according to the latest figures from researchers at Brazil’s national space agency, INPE.
Veteran leftist Lula, who returned to office in January, said that he planned to work together with the group’s other members – Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela – to develop the Amazon basin “without destroying” it.
Among other things, leaders are due to discuss strategies to fight deforestation and organised crime and seek sustainable development for the region, home to 50 million people – including hundreds of Indigenous groups seen as crucial to protecting the forest.
According to Brazilian foreign ministry official Gisela Padovan, the summit is expected to conclude with a joint declaration, expected to be “ambitious” and set out “an agenda to guide countries in the coming years.
Story was adapted from euronews.
