Called by leftist Brazilian President Lula, whose country is home to 60% of the Amazon rainforest, member countries of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (OTCA) are meeting Tuesday and Wednesday in Belém to set goals and protect the largest forest in the world.

The stakes are monumental: nicknamed the “lung of the world”, the Amazon rainforest has already lost, according to the journal Nature, in 2021, at least 17% of its 7 million km², at an accelerated pace under the presidency of extreme right of Jair Bolsonaro. Its carbon dioxide emissions have thus increased by 117% in 2020 compared to the 2010-2018 average, and part of its basin now emits more CO2 than it absorbs.

One of the main challenges of the summit will therefore be to find an action plan to eradicate illegal deforestation, linked, among other things, to gold panning, timber trafficking or the transformation of land into pasture, and to point out a position for the COP28, organized at the end of November in the United Arab Emirates.

“The Amazon forest is under pressure, from deforestation and global warming, reports geographer François-Michel Le Tourneau, director of research at the CNRS. It is important to protect what is left of it at all costs, to prevent the carbon retained by the trees from being released into the atmosphere and playing the role of greenhouse gases, and thus reaching a point of seesaw, where it will no longer be possible to reverse. »

Home to 10% of the world’s biodiversity, acting as a carbon sink and a water pump bringing rain to agricultural lands in southern Latin America, the preservation of the Amazon is strategic for the planet. Lula has successfully made this one of his goals in office, with deforestation falling by 30% in Brazil in the first half of 2023.

“This meeting is a turning point,” he said minutes before the summit opened. In the history of the defense of the Amazon, of the forest, of the ecological transition, there will be a before and an after. »

But while this awareness is a good signal, the decisions of this summit are still likely to turn out to be essentially symbolic.

“The countries that hold the Amazon rainforest should announce that their joint objective is to maintain this ecosystem so that it remains as functional as possible by slowing down deforestation,” said François-Michel Le Tourneau. It’s a good thing, but we are at the very beginning of the process. The objective set and the timetable for implementation will necessarily be very vague, because the countries present do not agree on the means to be implemented. »

While an ambitious goal of “zero deforestation” has been set by Lula for 2030, it is not certain that the eight countries – Brazil, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela – will achieve to agree on a concrete roadmap.

They should also opt for a non-binding declaration, rather than a charter or an agreement. At the heart of the dissensions, the exploitation of oil, which Guyana will, for example, find it difficult to give up, or infrastructure projects, Brazil planning to build a railway line crossing the Amazon to sell its soybeans.

“Lula’s return allowed a reduction in deforestation, because it gave the administrations the means to play their role and enforce the law, which Bolsonaro had deprived them of, recalls the researcher. But his government remains ambiguous on the issue. If he insists on the importance of fighting against deforestation in the Amazon, he is much less careful in other regions, such as the Cerrado, the agricultural region in the center west of Brazil. Record deforestation has been recorded there this year, and Lula authorizes as many pesticides on the market as Bolsonaro… He is not an ecologist, his heart is social. But he understood the importance of ecology, and how the Amazon was a sensitive chord, which allows him to play on the international scene. »

But if the meeting is undeniably a “nice diplomatic card” in the hand of Lula, who can position himself as a leader and establish Brazil’s return to the international scene, its solemnity nevertheless already represents a first step. The Democratic Republic of Congo, Congo-Brazzaville and Indonesia, three other tropical forest countries, will thus participate in the meeting on Wednesday, giving it a global reach. France, represented by its ambassador in Brasília, will also be present, 90% of Guyanese territory being covered by forest.

In parallel with the political summit, exchanges were also organized last weekend between NGOs, civil society and representatives of the indigenous populations of Amazonia. “They have a better knowledge of the context, of what works or not, underlines François-Michel Le Tourneau. We can hope for an institutionalization of these meetings, which could allow cooperation which will then be generalized by the heads of state or governmental cooperation on a larger scale, if they prove to be functional. »