As they face pressure from local tribes of the Amazon and environmental groups over saving the damaged Amazon, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and fellow South American leaders whose countries share territory with the Amazon rainforest are meeting to discuss measures to combat deforestation and organized crime and the long-term development for the region. The meeting venue sits in Belem, Brazil at the mouth of the Amazon River. Presidents from all but Ecuador, Suriname, and Venezuela are attending.
The summit which is a 45-year-old alliance of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization, that has met only three times before, will hold both today and Wednesday.
The Amazon which is home to about 10 percent of Earth’s biodiversity, with 50 million people, and hundreds of billions of trees, microbes, and animal species, stretches across an area that is twice the size of India, while two-thirds of it lies in Brazil. The remaining third is shared between — Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname, Ecuador, and French Guiana.
According to scientists, deforestation is pushing the Amazon dangerously close to a “tipping point,” beyond which trees would die off and release carbon rather than absorb it, bearing grave consequences for the climate and biodiversity. The resulting decline in rainfall will also transform more than half of the Amazon into tropical savannah.
Environmental groups are pressuring all eight countries, to adopt Brazil’s pledge of eradicating illegal deforestation by 2030, however, host country officials indicated those negotiations may need more time.
