The ACTO Secretary Calls for Urgent Actions to Save the Amazon

At the Belem Summit on Tuesday, the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO) Secretary Maria Moreira called for urgent actions to stop deforestation in the Amazon basin and improve the quality of life of those who inhabit the region.

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"It is imperative to understand the Amazon as a complex biome that faces a series of problems that threaten its integrity," she said during the summit called by Brazilian President Lula da Silva.

“We march towards the city of Belem in the state of Para. There begins the Amazon Summit that will bring together representatives of the ACTO countries: Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Guyana, Ecuador, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela," said the Brazilian Articulation of Indigenous Peoples (APIB).

The Belem Summit seeks that ACTO countries to reach a unified position on the preservation of the Amazon to present it at the United Nations Climate Summit (COP28) to be held in the United Arab Emirates in November.

Moreira recalled that the social challenge is also present in the Amazon because this biome of global importance is home to almost 50 million people. In the Amazon basin there are also 400 out of the 800 Indigenous peoples that still exist throughout the Americas.

The ACTO secretary highlighted that these Indigenous peoples suffer from lack of access to drinking water, health, waste management, and the Internet. All these deficiencies show the high levels of inequality that the Amazon region faces.

To tackle this problem, Moreira called for the South American countries to also promote policies that contribute to generating their own economic systems in the Amazon region through the promotion of family farming and bioeconomic microenterprises.

With seven million square kilometers, the Amazon is the area with the greatest biodiversity on the planet and the main water reserve in the world.

Between 2021 and 2022, however, its deforestation rate reached 21 percent, which represented almost 20,000 square kilometers of lost vegetation and was the highest figure since 2004, according to the Andean Amazon Monitoring Project (MAAP).