Colombian President Gustavo Petro invited his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to reflect on the advisability of allowing oil and coal exploration in the Amazon. "The challenge of protecting life goes through very difficult discussions, for example, are we going to let hydrocarbons explore in the Amazon Rainforest?, to deliver them as exploration blocks?, is the wealth there or is the death of humanity there? That is a decision that we would have to make in common," Petro told Lula during the meeting between the two leaders on Saturday afternoon in Leticia, capital of the department of Amazonas.
The objective of the meeting, in which ministers of environment from the eight countries that make up the Amazon biome also participated, was to define the key points of the Amazon Summit, which will be held in early August in Belem de Pará, Brazil. "Today we are aware that the world's forests are fundamental climatic pillars. The Amazon Basin is the third. If this pillar is removed, like the pillars of Hercules, humanity collapses," President Petro added.
For the Amazon rainforest, for saving life on planet pic.twitter.com/CTKWXOx3Q9
— Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) July 8, 2023
Although during his speech the Colombian president acknowledged that each country is autonomous and sovereign to decide what to do with its natural resources, he was emphatic in pointing out that the climate crisis and the deterioration of the Amazon Basin were reaching a point of no return that forced them to change their paradigm. "Every country has lived off these resources. We have lived off oil and coal for the last 40 years. If we change, then what are we going to live on? We can live from the brain, from science, from another type of development, opening paths of unity, from tourism, from the bio-economy."
Lula da Silva, for his part, celebrated that for the first time in history the governments of Colombia and Brazil were progressive and coincided in their concern to protect the Amazon rainforest. "Brazil and Colombia have a lot in common. We are two great multicultural democracies, marked by the valuable contribution of indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples. And we also share a commitment to putting the Amazon at the center of our policies. That's what we started building today," Lula said.
Brasil e a Colômbia têm muito em comum. We are duas great multiculturais democracies, marked by the valuable contribution of indigenous and Afro-descendants. E compartilhamos também o compromisso de levar a Amazônia para o centro de nossas políticas. É isso que começamos a... pic.twitter.com/D6qXkGRAHJ
— Lula (@LulaOficial) July 8, 2023
The president of Brazil also said that the Amazon countries have two main challenges. The first is to strengthen the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO), which he says "has not received enough attention." The second is to build a joint vision of the Amazon among the eight South American countries that make up the Amazon biome. To achieve this, the Brazilian president proposed establishing a committee of experts for the Amazon similar to the IPCC, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: "In Brazil we will correct the course"
Petro concluded his speech with a call to transform the world economic system: "Reason today tells us, through science, that we must transform the entire world economic system; that is the challenge. There is the revolution. We believed that progress was the destruction of the tree, we believed that this was underdevelopment, today the approach is to save those forests to save life," said the president of Colombia. He added: "There is another type of development which is to protect life. Transforming that economic system into a function of life is the revolution of today's times. The revolution of life must start from the Amazon."
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