ENVIRONMENT: Presidents of Colombia and Brazil meet in Amazon jungle

Te presidents of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, and Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, arrived Saturday in Leticia, in the heart of the Colombian Amazon, to talk about the preservation of the forest and the challenges of decarbonization.

In a bilatehral meeting prior to the “Road to the Amazon Summit” meeting, which both leaders close today, Petro insisted to his counterpart on the decarbonization revolution and the need to change the energy matrix as one of the pillars to preserve the Amazon.

In addition, the Colombian president assured that a “revitalized jungle” must be delivered, which entails thinking about how life in the jungle is financed without deteriorating it, according to the Colombian Presidency.

For his part, Lula agreed on the importance of these initiatives but emphasized the need to put the people who live in the Amazon at the center of them.

Both leaders will close today the three-day meeting that indigenous and environmental organizations and ministers from the eight countries of the Amazon arc have held since Thursday in Leticia and which serves to prepare the Amazon Summit that will take place in Belém do Pará (Brazil) on August 8-9.

This is the first time that the environment ministers of the eight Amazon countries (Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela) meet to agree on policies to preserve the largest lung in the world.

Among the issues, in addition to deforestation, it has also been raised how to fight transnational environmental crimes, the preservation of indigenous peoples, and the transfer of knowledge for the development of the Amazon.