Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva met with his Colombian counterpart Gustavo Petro to build momentum for an upcoming regional summit on the Amazon rainforest and enhance efforts for its protection. The encounter took place on Saturday in Colombia’s Leticia, a town in the Amazon’s triple border region between Colombia, Brazil and Peru, where organised crime has recently increased its hold.
The meeting aimed to lay groundwork for the Amazon Summit the Brazilian government is organising in Belem next month. That summit will be attended by leaders of the countries party to the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organisation, made up of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela. Lula is pushing for a joint declaration from the summit, which would be presented at the United Nation’s climate conference, known as COP28, in Dubai in November.
“We will have to demand together that rich countries fulfil their commitments,” Lula said in Leticia, sitting next to Petro. The final document will comprise measures for the sustainable development of the Amazon, protecting the biome, and promoting social inclusion, science, technology and innovation while valuing Indigenous peoples and their knowledge, Brazil’s presidential palace said in a statement.
“Joint action of the countries that share the Amazon biome is fundamental for facing the multiple challenges in the region,” the statement said. One challenge faced is the tightened grip of organised crime, particularly in tri-border regions like where Leticia is located. British journalist Dom Phillips and Indigenous activist Bruno Pereira were killed in the neighbouring Javari valley region last year.
These areas have become “violent hotspots”, according to a report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime released in June. It noted criminal groups are simultaneously engaged in cocaine production trafficking, as well as natural resource exploitation. Indigenous groups are “disproportionately affected” by the criminal nexus in the Amazon, the report added, pointing to forced displacements, mercury poisoning and other health-related impacts as well as increased exposure to violence.
In 2019, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, Peru, Guyana and Suriname signed the Leticia Pact to strengthen coordinated actions for the preservation of the natural resources of the Amazon.
