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The rainforest, which is home for an estimated million Indigenous people and three million species of plants and animals, is burning at an alarming rate not seen in decades.
Bolivia's President Evo Morales is traveling to Colombia Friday in order to participate to an emergency summit with presidents of the region about the preservation of the Amazon.
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The presidents invited to the southern city of Leticia include Ecuador's Lenin Moreno, Colombia's Ivan Duque, and Peru's Martin Vizcarra. Surinam's Vice President Michael Ashwin Adhin will also be present at the high-level meeting.
Venezuela and Guyana, however, will not participate despite being part of the Amazon basin.
The summit will end with a non-binding declaration, named "Pact of Leticia," outlining resolutions that can help to protect the rainforest and its biodiversity, and avoid future fires and deforestation, according to official sources.
Brasil's Jair Bolsonaro will also participate via videoconference, after he announced that he could not travel to Colombia because of medical reasons.
The South American country has had more than 100,000 fire outbreaks between January and August of 2019, representing around 1.8 million hectares that have burned. This represents an 84 percent increase in comparison with the same period in 2018. The vast majority of the fires have affected the critical rainforest.
Around 2,000 new fires have been recorded in the Amazon despite the Brazilian government's 60-day burning ban issued on Aug. 29, acording to the Brazilian National Space Research Institute (INPE).
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