The first week of Conference of the Parties (COP27) on climate change closed with little progress globally, but with an unprecedented protagonism of the South American countries, which announced the launch of an “Amazonian alliance” to protect the largest lung on the planet, in line with a claim for financial resources brought to Egypt by movements and indigenous peoples of the region.
At the same time, the Latin American countries gathered in the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) unified their positions in a joint declaration in which they reaffirmed the importance of coordinating their positions in multilateral forums to articulate climate negotiations.
The document also calls for strengthening the role of the Latin American and Caribbean Group (Grulac)as reported, from the Egyptian city of Sharm el Sheikh, the journalist Fermín Koop in an article for the specialized news portal Dialogo Chino.
The note also insists that developed countries must provide resources to developing countries to finance their damages and losses, while urging the development of financing instruments such as sovereign bonds, guarantee funds and debt swaps. for climate action.
But before the presentation of that document, the presidents of Colombia and Venezuela, Gustavo Petro and Nicolás Maduro, among the few in the region who participated in the COP27 leaders’ summit, called for the establishment of a “great Amazonian alliance.”
The Colombian president called for the opening of a fund that should have the contribution of the countries directly involved in the initiativebut that will also need the contribution of companies and other States.
A day before, he had already anticipated that Colombia would contribute 200 million dollars a year for 20 years to that fund.
To do so, they must reactivate the Amazon Cooperation Treaty (TCA), a 1973 agreement that recognizes the cross-border nature of the Amazon rainforest and promotes harmonious development in that region.
During the announcement, the South American leaders took the opportunity to celebrate the return to power of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Brazil, considered a key player in protecting that territory that lost 1,000 square kilometers of jungle in the last year alone, the worst figure since 2015. When did that record begin?
The data was disclosed with two months to go before Jair Bolsonaroa climate change denier, ends his term.
According to WWF-Brazil (Wildlife Brazil) the increase in deforestation along with the number of fires “soared” after the defeat of Bolsonaro, showing “an unbridled race for devastation”.
During his tenure, the average annual deforestation for the expansion of the area for agriculture and cattle raising increased by 75% in relation to the previous decade.
Lula, who will arrive in Sharm el Sheikh on Monday at the invitation of the Egyptian presidency of COP27, promised during the campaign to reactivate policies to protect the forest and combat deforestation.
With a complementary mission, organizations and indigenous peoples of the Amazon arrived at the Conference of the Parties with a claim that is also key: a mechanism so that the financial resources that were promised at the COP26 in Glasgow (2021) finally arrive.
Last year, the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Norway and private companies pledged 1.7 billion dollars over four years for indigenous peoples, however, the manner in which they would be made effective was not specified.
In this edition, the Coordinator of the Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (Coica), together with Opiac (Colombia); the Regional Organization of Indigenous Peoples of the Amazonas state (Orpia, Venezuela) and the Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Jungle (Aidesep) brought a proposal to Egypt to regulate access to these funds through the creation of intercultural agencies that administer and execute that budget.
The Amazon region, which occupies seven million square kilometers in the territories of Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador, Guayana, Suriname and French Guianarepresents 40% of the world’s tropical forest.
It accumulates 25% of terrestrial biodiversity and until recently it was a carbon sink, that is, it stored more carbon dioxide than it emitted.
However, rapacious deforestation for mining, ranching and agriculture, among other things, and fires have caused the Amazon to begin emitting more than it can absorb, according to a 2021 study in the journal Nature, released by France Press.
Delivering his speech at the leaders’ summit, UN Secretary-General António Guterres urged countries to put an end to “greenwashing” through false promises of net-zero emissions of polluting gases.
Hours before, a report had been published by a group of experts formed in 2021 by Guterres himself who assured that “Too many of these net-zero promises are little more than empty slogans and hype.”
The report included a list of recommendations to make the claims credible: for example, a country cannot promise net-zero emissions while continuing to pursue fossil fuel projects or deforestation.
With this report, the UN intends to put an end to false pronouncements on climate matters in the countdown to reach the essential goal of keeping the planet’s temperature between 2º and 1.5º degrees by the end of the century with respect to the pre-industrial era .
