Speech by the President of the Republic, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, at the closing ceremony of the Amazon Technical-Scientific Meeting at Leticia, Colombia

When I received President Petro's invitation to participate in this meeting, I thought the idea of starting the preparatory work for the Belém Meeting in Letícia was great.

This is the first time in history that Brazil and Colombia have, at the same time, progressive governments that share the commitment to place the Amazon at the center of their policies.

We have a lot in common. We are two great multicultural democracies, marked by the valuable contribution of indigenous peoples and people of African descent.

It is natural for two countries that share a border of more than one thousand six hundred kilometers and that have the two largest populations in South America to come close together.

I'm coming from the triple border in the Plata Basin, where I participated in the Mercosur Summit, to another triple border, now in the Amazon Basin, to launch preparations for a new Summit.

These are two major axes of South American integration. And they are strongly intertwined.

What happens in one corner of South America has repercussions in another. That is why our cooperation is so important.

Deforestation in the Amazon affects rainfall in the Southern Cone, threatening the supply of water for human consumption and economic activities.

The present technical-scientific meeting has discussed fundamental topics, such as protection of indigenous peoples, promotion of science, technology and innovation, bioeconomy and the fight against transnational crimes.

To speak of the Amazon is to speak about superlatives. It is the largest rainforest in the world, home to 10% of all plant and animal species on the planet.

It has 50 million inhabitants, with 400 indigenous peoples who speak 300 different languages.

It has the largest freshwater reserve on the planet, including an actual subterranean ocean.

It occupies 40% of the territory of South America and, if it were a country, it would be the seventh largest in the world, behind Australia and before India.

In its six million and three hundred thousand square kilometers, one could fit all 27 countries of the European Union plus the United Kingdom, Norway, Turkey, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand.

The Amazonian countries have two challenges to face together.

One of them is institutional, and concerns the strengthening of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization.

The other is political, and refers to the construction of a new vision of sustainable development for the region.

Last week, we celebrated the 45th anniversary of the signing of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty.

The Treaty was a pioneering initiative, but it was conceived in a way that no longer makes sense. Its focus was to shield us from pressure from actors outside the region.

Driven by the debate on the environment and sustainable development in the 1990s, what was just a Treaty evolved and the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (OTCA, in Portuguese) was created in 1998.

This is how the only socio-environmental organization in the world emerged. And it is also the only one based in Brazil.

Today, OTCA is a tool that, instead of isolating us, has the capacity to place us at the center of the most important challenge of our time: climate change.

It brings together eight countries – Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela – and covers a wide range of subjects, including indigenous peoples, health, tourism, infrastructure and transportation, and their correlation with the environment.

Over all these years, OTCA has not been given the attention it deserves. The Belém Summit will be a moment to adjust course.

Involving local authorities and society will be an essential component of this new OTCA. It is necessary to value the role of mayors, governors and parliamentarians. Public policy cannot be made without the participation of those on the ground.

In this context, we want to formalize the Forum of Amazonian Cities and the Amazonian Parliament.

With the Amazonian Dialogues in the days leading up to the Belém Summit, we will bring together civil society and academia in sessions that will result in recommendations for concrete actions.

To translate this political impulse into practical terms, we intend to institutionalize the Amazon Regional Observatory, which will organize and monitor data from all countries to guide public policies and make them more effective.

The Observatory's Situation Room produces, in real time, bulletins and alerts about droughts, floods, rains, fires and water contamination, which help to save lives.

We want to establish a committee of Amazon experts, inspired by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to generate knowledge and produce science-based recommendations.

The emergence of contact networks between universities and research institutions will contribute to stimulate the production of local knowledge, boost economies and create opportunities for our youth, who are in need of study and work alternatives.

We can do a lot if we provide OTCA with clear guidelines and adequate resources.

Through a coalition of development banks and the mobilization of public and private resources, we will promote sustainable local productive activities, such as family farming, artisanal fishing, agro-forestry projects and entrepreneurship networks, especially for women.

Taking care of the Amazon is, at the same time, a privilege and a responsibility.

A few days ago, I participated in a festival that gathered thousands of people at the foot of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

Many of those there, especially young people, are concerned about the future of the Amazon. This concern is legitimate, as the biome is of interest to all humanity.

However, it is up to us to decide how to ensure a dignified life to our people and how to preserve our forest and our biodiversity.

The Belém Summit will be a platform for the eight Amazonian countries to assume the leading role in the search for shared solutions.

In Brazil, we learned the importance of articulating different sectors around a common objective. Thanks to the Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon, we reduced deforestation by 83% between 2004 and 2012. And we achieved this while increasing agricultural productivity in the region.

We relaunched the Plan in January of this year and we can already see the results. Deforestation alerts in the Amazon had a 33.6% reduction in this first semester.

My government will eliminate illegal deforestation by 2030. This is a commitment that the Amazonian countries can assume together at the Belém Summit.

There are many other areas in which we can cooperate.

It is essential to combat hunger in the Amazon region. In all of our countries, these territories have the highest rates of food insecurity.

In health, we can develop joint actions, such as measures to ensure access to vaccines, medicines and medical care.

We also need to protect intellectual property and prevent biopiracy in the Amazon, developing and bringing together our national systems for the use of genetic heritage and traditional knowledge.

If borders are not obstacles to criminality, our police and justice systems have to work on preventing, investigating and confronting those crimes.

With this in mind, we will soon establish the Amazon International Police Cooperation Center in Manaus.

The creation of an integrated Air Traffic Control System will also be important to disrupt the routes used by organized crime.

We all suffer with the presence of criminals involved in logging, mining, illegal hunting and fishing and the illegal occupation of public lands.

In the absence of the State, drug trafficking spreads and becomes a vector of environmental crimes. Indigenous peoples, such as the Yanomami, are victims of illegal exploitation of their lands.

Our young people, in the countryside, in the forest and in the cities, are easy prey for criminal factions, which grow in prisons and beyond them.

A special look also needs to be dedicated to Amazonian girls and women. Gender-based violence and sexual exploitation cannot be tolerated. And female leaders must be listened to.

Anyone who protects the Amazon deserves to be protected. If the forest is still standing today, it is largely thanks to indigenous peoples, traditional communities and defenders of the environmental cause.

Names like Chico Mendes, Sister Dorothy Stang, Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips are emblematic of this history of violence that afflicts the Brazilian Amazon.

These are just some of our challenges and areas where we can work together.

In addition, we must coordinate in multilateral forums.

We have to join forces in international discussions that concern us directly. Our voice must be strongly heard at conferences on climate, biodiversity and desertification and in debates on sustainable development.

We can already identify common positions for the climate COP28, this year, in dialogue with other countries that also have tropical forests, such as Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (Kinshasa).

With the Republic of Congo (Brazzaville), we can work to bring together the world's largest tropical basins.

The principle of common but differentiated responsibilities remains central.

We will have to demand, together, that rich countries fulfill their commitments, including the promise made in Copenhagen in 2009 of 100 billion dollars a year for climate action.

After all, they have historically emitted most greenhouse gases.

The ones who have the largest forest reserves and the greatest biodiversity deserve greater representation.

It is inexplicable that international financing mechanisms, such as the Global Environment Facility, which was born in the World Bank, reproduce the exclusionary logic of the Bretton Woods institutions.

Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador are required to share a seat on the Fund's board, while developed countries such as the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Sweden each occupy their own seat.

In other forums, our vision also needs to be taken into account. It is up to us to work, at FAO, for the definition of an international concept of bioeconomy that allows us to certify the products of our socio-biodiversity and generate employment and income for our population.

The climate COP30 in 2025, also in Belém, will be a valuable opportunity for the world to get to know the real Amazon. Many people do not imagine, for example, that most of the Amazonian population is urban.

Of the 26 million people who live in the Brazilian Amazon, 12 million live in cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants.

These people need adequate infrastructure, education and sustainable life alternatives, which can come from sources such as tourism or investments in science, technology and innovation.

The rainforest cannot be seen only as an ecological sanctuary. The world needs to be concerned about the right to live well for the inhabitants of the Amazon. After all, sustainable development has three inseparable dimensions: economic, social and environmental.

A fair ecological transition requires adequate resources and technology transference. It cannot be based on the predatory exploitation of natural resources, such as critical minerals, nor can it justify new protectionism. In short, it cannot serve as a facade for neocolonialism.

Decarbonization should not deepen inequalities between countries, re-editing the dependency relationship between center and periphery.

My dream is that the Amazon becomes an example of sustainable development, showing the world how it is possible to reconcile economic prosperity with environmental protection and social well-being.

I want an inclusive Amazon, with full respect for the aspirations of women, young people, indigenous peoples and traditional communities and the entire population of the countryside, the forest and the waters.

This is what we are going to start building together at the Summit of the Amazon Countries. I thank Colombia once again for supporting us on this path and I look forward to seeing you all in Belém.

Thank you very much.