Saving the Amazon: Lula to host South American summit, fulfill promise
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After escalating destruction in the Amazon under Jair Bolsonaro, Lula wants to fulfill his promise that "Brazil is back" in the battle against climate change.
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Brazil’s President Lula da Silva speaks in Brussels, on July 17, 2023. (AP)
Next week, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will hold a regional meeting with global implications as leaders of the nations that share the Amazon look for a plan to rescue the largest rainforest in the world.
The eight-nation Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday in Belem will be like a rehearsal for the COP30 UN climate talks, which the city will also host in 2025.
After a period of escalating destruction in the Amazon under his far-right predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, Lula wants to fulfill his promise that "Brazil is back" in the battle against climate change during the 28-year-old organization's first meeting since 2009.
The Amazon is a crucial barrier against global warming because of its hundreds of billions of carbon-absorbing trees. However, experts warn that deforestation is bringing the world's forests perilously close to a "tipping point", beyond which trees will begin to die and release their carbon stores back into the atmosphere, leaving disastrous effects on the climate.
According to the most recent data from experts at Brazil's national space agency, INPE, carbon emissions from the Amazon grew by 117% in 2020 compared to the yearly average from 2010 to 2018.
Lula, who returned to office in January, said he planned to work with the group's other members -- Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela -- with the aim of developing the Amazon basin "without destroying" it.
The region, which is home to 50 million people and hundreds of Indigenous tribes, who are viewed as essential to conserving the forest, will be the topic of discussions by leaders on measures to combat deforestation and organized crime as well as pursue sustainable development for the region.
The summit will culminate with a unified proclamation that is anticipated to be "ambitious" and lay out "an agenda to guide countries in the coming years," according to Gisela Padovan, an official from Brazil's Foreign Ministry.
Deforestation in decline under Lula
Brazil, which controls about 60% of the Amazon, has promised to end illicit deforestation by 2030 and is urging other nations to do the same.
Cattle ranching is the principal cause of deforestation, but it is also fueled by a murky combination of land grabs, corruption, and organized crime, whose tentacles also reach the illicit trade in drugs, weapons, gold, and lumber.
The destruction has already eliminated around one-fifth of the rainforest, but there are signs of improvement after a 75% jump in average yearly deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon under Bolsonaro (2019-2022) versus the previous decade.
Deforestation decreased 42.5 percent from January to July compared to the same time last year. More than 50 environmental organizations urged the governments in the area to adopt a strategy to prevent the Amazon from reaching a point of no return before the summit.
The Climate Observatory launched a petition urging other nations to support Brazil's goal of ending illegal deforestation by 2030, support Indigenous rights, and take "effective measures to fight environmental crimes."
On Thursday, Lula expressed his confidence that the region would "accept its responsibility" to combat the widespread criminality in the rainforest "for the first time, jointly and cohesively."
