1 of 2 | The leaders of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela signed a joint declaration Tuesday to end deforestation along the Amazon River. Photo by Antonio Lacerda/EPA-EFE
Aug. 9 (UPI) -- Eight South American countries signed a joint declaration Tuesday to end deforestation along the Amazon River but rejected a collective effort in favor of a deal to allow each nation to pursue its own conservation goals.
The two-day environmental summit in Belém, Brazil, was aimed at improving protections for the Amazon amid the worsening climate crisis, with the leaders of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela coming together for the first time in more than a decade.
The deal includes new commitments by each nation to improve cooperation in areas like water management, healthcare, and urban development, while also vowing to form a negotiating bloc at various global climate summits each year.
The Belém meeting was summoned as part of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty of 1978, with current members agreeing to a pact of common interest: to find solutions to "prevent the Amazon from reaching a point of no return," Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said in his opening speech.
The pact calls for each nation to enact environmental laws that seek to promote cultural diversity, gender and racial equality, and to strengthen and promote dialogue between governments and indigenous populations in the Amazon region.
Lula put pressure on the body to adopt the same strict climate policies that his country put in place earlier this year to end deforestation of the Amazon completely by 2030.
"The challenges of our era, and the opportunities arising from them, demand we act in unison," Lula said while warning of the "severe worsening of the climate crisis."
"It has never been so urgent," he added.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro, meanwhile, called for a pledge to ban new oil exploration in the region just as Brazil was weighing a new drilling project at the mouth of the Amazon, which is the largest rainforest in the world.
About 60% of the vast waterway is situated in Brazil, providing watershed and vital resources across an intercontinental ecosystem that has become central in the global fight against climate change.
The summit comes the same week that the European Union published a study declaring July 2023 the hottest month ever in history, punctuated by numerous new temperature records across the globe.
World temperatures in July also rose above the 1.5-degree threshold put in place by the 2015 Paris Agreement, which set tangible goals for hundreds of nations to lower global warming levels over the next decade.
Deforestation continues to be a major environmental concern along the Amazon as lumbering on a massive scale clears the way for agriculture, urban development, mining, and other human pursuits -- disrupting natural habitats, plants, species, food chains as well as other devastating impacts on the environment.
Billions of trees in the Amazon absorb massive amounts of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere through the process of photosynthesis, which serves to keep global temperatures in check.
Deforestation in Brazil has fallen off significantly during Lula's term after four years of urban expansion under former President Jair Bolsonaro. Still, the industry continues to claim thousands of square miles of land each year.
The summit was widely seen as a preview to the 2025 U.N. Climate Change Conference, which will also be held in Belém.
