Assembling Tuesday and Wednesday in the Brazilian city of Belem are members of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization, a 45-year-old alliance that has met only three times before. Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has said that he hopes the summit will spur it to start taking far-reaching and effective action.
Few border areas are policed seriously and there has been scant international cooperation as rivals compete for drug-trafficking routes. Drug seizures have increased in Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia and Peru over the past decade, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reported in June. The event will also address how countries will prevent the Amazon from reaching a tipping point, in which the former forest releases carbon dioxide out of control. According to some scientists, this will happen when 20 per cent to 25 per cent of the forest is destroyed. The resulting decline in rainfall would transform more than half of the Amazon to tropical savannah, with immense biodiversity loss.
In 2018, Latin American nations signed the Escazu Agreement, which established the public's right to environmental information and participation in decision-making, and protected environmentalists. However, several countries, including Brazil, have not yet ratified it. The following year, they signed the Leticia Pact to better coordinate environmental protection.
Outside the official summit, some 20,000 Indigenous people and others from different Amazon countries have held 400 parallel events. In hours-long sessions, they presented demands to ministers mostly from Brazil, but also Colombia, Peru and other countries. On Tuesday, they also delivered a summary of these discussions to assembled presidents and officials, including a proposal that governments commit to preserving at least 80 per cent of the Amazon.