The presidents of Colombia and Venezuela on Tuesday launched a call at the COP27 climate summit for a wide-ranging alliance to protect the Amazon, the planet’s biggest tropical forest.
“We are determined to revitalize the Amazon rainforest ... to offer humanity a significant victory in the battle against climate change,” Colombian President Gustavo Petro said at the UN summit in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
“If we, in the South Americas, carry a responsibility, it is to stop the destruction of the Amazon and put in place a coordinated process of recovery,” Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said alongside Petro and Surinamese President Chan Santokhi.
Key to any such revival plan would be Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who is to become president on Jan. 1 and is expected to attend COP27 next week.
The participation of Brazil in such a planned alliance would be “absolutely strategic,” Petro said.
Lula faces an immense challenge in putting a brake on Amazon deforestation.
Petro, architect of the proposed new alliance, has called for the US to collaborate, saying that it is “the country that pollutes the most” in the region, while South America is “the sponge that absorbs the most carbon dioxide on the continent.”
He advocated “the opening of a fund” fed by “the contribution of private companies and world nations.”
Petro had announced the previous day that his country intends to set aside US$200 million per year over the next two decades to protect the Amazon.
He urged solidarity from international organizations, at a time when the COP has put the issue of compensation for climate change effects on its agenda.
“One of the subjects which could bring consensus between us, Africa and part of Asia is [a mechanism for] forgiveness of [national] debt as a means of financing action” against climate change, Petro said.
The IMF would have “a role to play” in working with developing countries on this issue, he added.
However, there was a challenge to ensure the ideas are implemented.
“The political message [is] very important,” but the question “is to know how these intentions will materialize,” said Harol Rincon Ipuchima, a representative of indigenous people in Colombia.
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