Leaders from the eight Amazon rainforest countries gathered in the Brazilian city of Belem on August 8 for the first time in 14 years. They plan to reach a broad agreement on issues from fighting deforestation to financing sustainable development.
It is the first meeting of the eight-member Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organisation (ACTO) since 2009. The meeting is expected to serve as something of a rehearsal for the COP30 UN climate talks, which the city will also host in 2025
Amazon rainforest - the lungs of the planet
- Amazon rainforest is the world’s largest tropical rainforest occupying the drainage basin of the Amazon River and its tributaries in northern South America and covers an area of 6,000,000 square km.
- Comprising about 40 per cent of Brazil’s total area, it is bounded by the Guiana Highlands to the north, the Andes Mountains to the west, the Brazilian central plateau to the south, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east.
- It’s a vast region that spans across Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana.
- The Amazon forest is said to produce about 20 per cent of earth’s oxygen and is also often referred to as “the planet’s lungs.”
- It is the world’s richest and most-varied biological reservoir, containing several million species of insects, plants, birds, and other forms of life, many still unrecorded by science.
Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organisation
- The Amazon Cooperation Treaty (ACT) was signed in July 1978 by Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela.
- It is a legal instrument that recognises the transboundary nature of the Amazon.
- In 1995, the eight nations decided to create the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organisation (ACTO) to strengthen and implement the objectives of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty.
- In the framework of these efforts and challenges, the amendment to ACT was approved in 1998 and the Permanent Secretariat of ACTO was established in Brasilia (Brazil) on December 13, 2002 and installed permanently in March 2003.
- ACTO works through the coordination and articulation of the Permanent Secretariat.
- ACTO is an inter-governmental organisation formed by the eight Amazonian countries, becoming the only socio-environmental block in Latin America.
- ACTO, with a broad vision of the South-South cooperation process, works in different dimensions within the framework of the implementation of the ACT.
- It promotes the implementation of the objectives and actions defined in the Amazonian Strategic Cooperation Agenda (ASCA).
