Inertia before the pierced lung

Its 7.8 million square kilometers make the Amazon one of the largest areas on the planet.

If all of Europe (not including Russia) covers approximately 4.3 million square kilometres, the Amazon is almost twice as large with its meager 30 million inhabitants.

Few people are unaware that, due to its diversity and immensity, it plays a crucial role in the production of oxygen and the absorption of carbon dioxide.

It is known, however, that, before the eyes and patience of humanity, the Amazon has been depredated, for decades, in a process of destruction of the Amazon forest and annihilation of its native populations.

Several points are put on the table when you want to address this issue seriously.

The responsibilities are varied and the demands enormous;

not only for the "Amazonian" countries themselves, but for the entire world, with challenges that go beyond carbon credits that act as a palliative.

In the first place, the indisputable responsibility of the Amazon countries stands out.

Within the eight South American countries with Amazon space, at least 50% of the territory is located in Brazil (3.6 million km2).

It is followed by Peru (782,000 km2), Colombia (484,000 km2) and Bolivia (300,000 km2).

Later, with less extensive areas, Ecuador, Venezuela, Guyana and Suriname.

Thousands of speeches have been made, statements made and ideas circulated over this vast shared area.

There is even an Amazon cooperation treaty (1978), to which all Amazon countries are party.

And with the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (OTCA),

intergovernmental organization, which even has a permanent secretariat installed in Brasilia for 20 years.

With interesting ideas and approaches, however, the fate of ACTO has not been very different from that of many other intergovernmental entities created in the Latin American region in the last three decades: irrelevance or, at best, marginality.

The voracity of Bolsonaro, with whose presidency Amazon predation increased by 79%, reduced ACTO, in fact, to the condition of a silent ornament.

We have a major challenge in this: agreeing —seriously— policies on the most stinging issues that overwhelm the Amazon.

Today the enormous obstacle of dispersion and centrifugal dynamics prevails.

Thus, if while the president of an Amazon country —Colombia— launches interesting proposals for regional action, but simultaneously excludes another Amazon country —Peru— because he does not recognize the president of a country that is the second in the Amazon area, that initiative stillborn.

Within a complex and dispersed South American context, in order to agree on the crucial Amazon issue, it would seem that the region would rather encourage Brazil to exercise leadership on this issue in which exclusions must give way to agreement to define common strategies and, if possible, operational coordination in the field in matters, for example, of security, as well as addressing, regionally, the various background threats that have a long history.

An immense region with a sparse population and presence of the States, on which, by the way, formal cattle-raising companies devastate the Amazon forest or plant the predatory oil palm.

A matter that requires control, strict regulation and, if possible, national rules and policies that seek to at least stop this expansion, if not, reverse the damage done.

At the same time, however, clear policies that do make viable and facilitate sustainable private investment, which exists and is possible.

In Peru, for example, there are business groups that are fine-tuning an encouraging "strategic plan for sustainable and inclusive development" by 2050 with the explicit objective of zero deforestation, logging, or illegal mining.

Being the above true, in reality, the main and most unpunished threats acting in the region are on the other side: the criminal claws —many times bloody— of illegal gold exploitation, coca planting expelling the natives from their territories or the illegal logging of the Amazon forest.

This is the most intense and uncontrollable danger that today runs through the Amazonian areas of Colombia, Peru and important areas of Brazil with impunity.

And it is here where, unfortunately, the needs are far from the capacities of the Amazon States.

Urgent responses could be found on two fundamental levels.

First, launch coordination and interaction between Amazonian countries with more specific agendas and objectives in terms of exchanging information and experiences and designing common policies and practices.

That if they exist today, they are more on paper than in the real dynamics of the institutions.

Brazil's leadership would be, in this matter, the key that could promote a different dynamic.

Second, the responsibility of the entire world.

This is because it is known that the ongoing destruction of the Amazon has repercussions on all of humanity.

Steps have been taken with the European Union and this interaction should be strengthened, which in the past has promoted measures such as the European Fund for Sustainable Development (EFSD) or trade agreements with environmental clauses.

But it is insufficient.

For this reason, it could very well be a core issue to be dealt with, with a view to the future, at the next EU-CELAC Summit that will take place in Brussels in mid-July.

Beyond the EU, the revitalization of carbon credits, a market mechanism that seeks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, can contribute.

This can encourage the reduction of emissions and, in effect, generate economic resources to finance projects for mitigation and adaptation to climate change in reforestation, conservation or forest management.

But the truth of the facts is that in a good part of the Amazon there is no State or conditions to carry out ambitious projects or generate a decisive impact from carbon credits.

For example, the results of reforestation in projects such as those in Cerrado or the Atlantic Forest in Brazil, areas of previous brutal deforestation, are not very precise.

There are worrying studies that conclude, for example, that of the more than 4.5 million hectares of regenerated forests in the Atlantic Forest, only 3.1 million hectares persisted.

It is time to put the emphasis on an ambitious strategy of prevention, information and security on the ground for the local population, one of the greatest demands of the moment.

And, by the way, more and better controls so that, for example, wood from illegal logging or gold illegally extracted from around the world cannot circulate with impunity.

This goes beyond the EU and is a huge common challenge facing the Amazon countries and the world.

Subscribe to continue reading

Read without limits

Keep reading

I'm already a subscriber