Speech by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva during the Amazon Summit with guest countries in Belem, Brazil
It is my great pleasure to welcome you to Belem.
It was in this same city that, on October 23, 1980, the first meeting of foreign ministers of the newly created Amazon Cooperation Treaty was held.
We now return to Belem to think and act together again.
A new Amazonian dream is born from this Summit for the region and the world.
For a long time, other people’s dreams were imposed on us.
For nearly 500 years, the Amazon was seen as a barrier between our societies.
Prejudice and predatory extractivism fueled violence against indigenous peoples and encouraged the plundering of natural resources.
From rubber to minerals, successive economic cycles have generated prosperity for a few and poverty for many.
Along with disorderly occupation, tractors, and chainsaws, came environmental destruction.
Our societies have not been able to find a balance between growth and sustainability, nor have they respected the knowledge and rights of peoples who live in rural areas, in and around forests, and alongside water.
In Brazil, following re-democratization, we sought to correct our course, valuing the biome and its inhabitants.
The 1988 Constitution introduced – in Article 225 – the right to an ecologically balanced environment. It also established the duty to defend and preserve it for present and future generations. The Amazon Rainforest was defined as a national heritage.
In the following years, despite countless difficulties, advances were made in the monitoring of the rainforest, in the demarcation of Indigenous Lands, and land title regularization.
We created a specific ministry for the environment.
We launched satellites that expanded our collection of environmental data.
We improved enforcement and created new environmental laws.
During my administrations, I have intensified these efforts.
Between 2004 and 2012, we reduced deforestation in the Amazon by 83%, preventing 4 billion tons of CO2 from being emitted into the atmosphere.
This was the most significant contribution made by a country to reduce greenhouse gasses from deforestation to date.
Moreover, at the same time, we were able to increase agricultural productivity in the region – proving growth without cutting down the forest is possible.
We didn't solve all the problems, but we started to move ahead on a fairer and more sustainable path.
However, the political crisis that befell Brazil brought a denialist government to power, with disastrous consequences.
My predecessor opened the doors to environmental offenses and organized crime. Deforestation rates are on the rise again.
His policies only benefited a profit-seeking minority.
At the UN, Brazil resurrected ideas belonging to primitive nationalism and blamed “indigenous peoples and caboclos” for the fires caused by human action.
We have become an outcast among nations and have drifted away from our own region.
Those who always acted in favor of environmental preservation and human rights were persecuted and attacked. We violently lost several leaders who fought against destruction and neglect.
Those who suffered the most were indigenous and other traditional peoples.
The invasion of Yanomami lands by miners revealed the reigning contempt for human life and the environment.
The creation of the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples, led by an indigenous minister – the first in the history of Brazil –symbolizes our commitment to repairing the invisibility to which native peoples in our country had been subjected.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Fortunately, through the sovereign decision of the Brazilian people and their commitment to democracy, we could turn this sad page in our history.
We want to resume cooperation between our countries and overcome distrust.
We want to rebuild and expand our channels of dialogue.
This requires changing the understanding of the Amazon and its reality.
The South American Amazon is the largest tropical rainforest in the world, an incomparable biodiversity reserve, and the most extensive hydrographic basin on the planet.
Its area corresponds to one and a half times that of the European Union. It contains 10% of all known plants and animals. On average, a new species is discovered in this forest every day.
Together, its soil and vegetation store 200 billion tons of carbon; this makes it essential to a stable climate across the entire planet.
But the Amazon isn’t just made up of flora and fauna.
There are 50 million people spread across its vast territory and across metropolises such as Belem, Manaus, and Santa Cruz de la Sierra.
And medium-sized cities such as Florencia, Ciudad Bolívar, and Iquitos.
And thousands of towns and villages.
There are 400 indigenous peoples who speak more than 300 languages.
To understand this place, we need to listen to those who already know it well.
The Amazon dream has to be rooted in science and the knowledge produced here – and all the stakeholders must be brought together in the quest for solutions.
To solve the region’s problems, we must recognize that it is also a place of historical, socio-economic deficiencies.
It is impossible to conceive the preservation of the Amazon without solving its multiple structural problems.
The Amazon is rich in water resources, but drinking water is lacking in many places.
Despite its great biodiversity, millions of people in the region still go hungry.
Criminal networks are now organized transnationally, increasing insecurity across the region.
We are committed to changing this situation. We can already see the results. Deforestation alerts in the Amazon have dropped 42.5% in the first seven months of this year. We are committed to zero deforestation by 2030.
We will establish in Manaus an International Police Cooperation Center to face the crimes that affect the region. A new Security Plan for the Amazon will create 34 new river and land bases, where federal and state forces will be constant.
The support of the Armed Forces, especially along the border, will also be essential in these efforts. It will also allow for the future creation of an integrated air traffic control system in the Amazon region.
My government is committed to designing a fair transition. We will plan growth by betting on green industrialization, infrastructure, socio-bioeconomy, and renewable energy.
Brazil will play a central role in the global energy transition, leading the production of clean sources such as solar energy, biomass, ethanol, and green hydrogen.
Through our National Productive Forests Program, we will encourage the restoration of degraded areas and food production based on family farming and traditional communities.
We have sent the Escazú Agreement – a Latin American and Caribbean instrument that will help guarantee the rights of environmental defenders and access to information – to Congress.
We want the benefits of these efforts to be shared with our neighbors.
The Amazon Cooperation Treaty we signed in 1978 is the main platform we will use to face these challenges together – seeking harmonious development among our eight countries and respecting the sovereignty of each nation.
Based on this agreement, we founded the first socio-environmental bloc in the world, the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO).
Our mission now is to provide it with its resources and a broader action program.
Creating a body of Heads of State will be essential to keep the issue of the Amazon at the highest political level.
The revitalization of the Amazon Parliament will allow expanded dialogue in tune with society.
We will pay special attention to women, who are at the forefront of defending communities and the environment; to young people, who bring new ideas and perspectives; and to indigenous peoples, who teach us how to preserve the forest.
This institutional strengthening will be grounded in science. The Amazon Regional Observatory, which gathers data on topics such as water resources, health, biodiversity, and climate change, will provide input for our public policies and cooperation initiatives.
We are creating the Intergovernmental Technical-Scientific Panel, which will bring together scientists and specialists from the Amazon to support our decisions in collaboration with other international scientific panels.
This Summit’s Presidential Declaration shows that what we started in Leticia and are now consolidating in Belem is not just a political message: it is a detailed and comprehensive plan of action for sustainable development in the Amazon.
The Amazon is not and cannot be treated as a significant deposit of riches. It is an incubator of knowledge and technologies that we have barely begun to scale.
There may be solutions here to many of humanity’s problems – from curing diseases to more sustainable trade.
The forest is not a void to be occupied nor a treasure to be looted. It is an incubator of possibilities that need to be cultivated.
Without it, the South America we know would not exist. It depends on the rainfall regime that sustains life and maintains most of our economic activities.
The forest unites us. It’s time to look into the heart of the continent and to once and for all consolidate our Amazon identity.
In addition to dealing with the challenges in our region, this will allow us to face an increasingly uncertain global order.
In an international system that we did not build, we have historically been left with the subordinate place of raw materials suppliers. A fair ecological transition will allow us to change this picture.
The Amazon is our passport to a new relationship with the world – a more symmetrical relationship in which our resources will not be exploited for the benefit of a few but valued and placed at the service of all.
May the Amazon Dialogues be a milestone in the resumption of interaction between societies and governments in our region.
It is necessary to value the roles of mayors, governors, and lawmakers. There is no effective public policy without the participation of those who know the territory.
I hope that each person, each city, each river, and each tree in our vast rainforest finds its place in this vision of a new Amazon that is born from this Summit.
Let us leave our descendants a legacy of well-being, prosperity, and social justice.
The Amazon will be whatever we want it to be.
An Amazon with greener cities, purer air, rivers without mercury, and a standing rainforest.
An Amazon with food on the table, decent work, and public services available to all.
An Amazon with healthier children, welcomed migrants, respected indigenous people, and more hopeful young people.
An Amazon that awakens and becomes aware of itself.
This is our Amazonian dream.
Thank you very much.