Belém Declaration calls for int'l support for Amazon conservation
Aug. 9, 2023
South American presidents called on richer countries to support efforts to protect the Amazon, saying resources from the world’s biggest rainforest are consumed globally. Eight countries — Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela — subscribed to the agreed on an alliance for combatting forest destruction. (Reuters)
The Belém declaration calls for debt relief in exchange for climate action, commits to strengthen regional law enforcement cooperation to crack down on human rights violations, illegal mining and pollution, and urges industrialized countries to comply with obligations to provide financial support to developing countries. It also creates an Amazon-specific climate-focused scientific panel. (Guardian, New York Times)
The final text was weaker than hoped for, and countries failed to agree on a shared commitment to end deforestation by 2030. The failure of the eight Amazon countries to agree on a pact to protect their own forests points to the larger, global difficulties at forging an agreement to combat climate change, reports Reuters.
All the countries at the summit have ratified the Paris climate accord, which requires signatories to set targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But cross-border cooperation has historically been scant, undermined by low trust, ideological differences and the lack of government presence, reports the Associated Press.
A key topic dividing participating nations was oil. Colombian President Gustavo Petro called for an end to oil exploration in the Amazon — a stance that is not shared by Brazil’s government. Petro was also critical of taking money from developed nations to finance conservation, reports Nexo.
The Amazon summit was also expected to yield a separate agreement today among other nations with major rainforests — including the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Republic of Congo and Indonesia — to more closely coordinate protecting the ecosystems globally, reports the New York Times.
“The rainforest is neither a void that needs occupying nor a treasure trove to be looted. It is a flowerbed of possibilities that must be cultivated,” Brazilian President and host Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said at the summit’s opening yesterday.
“The Amazon can be whatever we want it to be: an Amazon with greener cities, with cleaner air, with mercury-free rivers and forests that are left standing; an Amazon with food on the table, dignified jobs and public services that are available to all; an Amazon with healthier children, well-received migrants [and] Indigenous people who are respected … This is our Amazon dream.”
Regional
El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele is one of the most popular leaders in the world. Politicians from around the region hope to capture some of that support with copy-cat iron fist policies (or at least discourse), though their ability to do so is doubtful, say experts. (Al Jazeera)
Bukele’s security model threatens democratic institutions in Latin America. Responding to the challenges posed by the region’s worrying levels of crime and insecurity requires “effective and rights-respecting measures,” writes Juan Pappier in El País.
“Bukele’s popularity shows that Latin American governments are falling short. They should redouble their efforts to provide rights-respecting strategies to tackle the root causes of much criminality, including high levels of poverty and social exclusion, and push for strategic criminal prosecutions focused on violent abuses, particularly those committed by senior gang members or chronic abusers, and severing their networks of finance, political support, and weapons supply,” argues Pappier. (El País)
El Salvador
El Salvador’s presidential commissioner for human rights and freedom of expression, Colombian attorney Andrés Guzmán denied the existence of cases of torture under the country’s ongoing state of exception. “We’re not torturing here and we’re not killing,” he told El Faro’s Carlos Martínez.
The commissioner, appointed in April, has not met with any human rights groups. And he said he has not “officially” read reports like Cristosal’s public documentation of “a systematic policy of generalized torture” in Salvadoran prisons. (El Faro)
Haiti
An U.S. citizen nurse and her daughter who were kidnapped in Haiti have been freed. Kidnappings are a scourge in the country, and the Miami Herald notes that many others remain captured: Among them is Pierre-Louis Opont, a television station owner and the former head of the Provisional Electoral Council, who was kidnapped in June, less than 10 days after his wife, radio journalist Marie Lucie Bonhomme, was abducted, reports the Miami Herald. (See yesterday’s briefs.)
Brazil
A 13-year-old teenager was killed on Sunday during police operation in Rio de Janeiro’s Cidade de Deus neighborhood. Residents say police shot the youth and altered the crime scene. (Globo)
Colombia
One of Colombia’s most feared paramilitary leaders, Dairo Antonio Úsuga, has been sentenced to 45 years in prison in the U.S. after saying he accepted responsibility for his deeds. Known as Otoniel, Úsuga led the Gulf clan, and was Colombia’s most-wanted kingpin before his arrest in 2021. (Guardian)
Chile
A newly declassified transcript of a conversation between Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger captures the moment the national security advisor told the President that the CIA-backed plot to block Socialist president-elect Salvador Allende from being inaugurated—an operation ordered by Nixon five weeks earlier—had not succeeded. It is included in Pinochet Desclasificado: Los Archivos Secretos de Estados Unidos Sobre Chile, a revised Chilean edition of National Security Archive Peter Kornbluh’s book.
The book also reveals new U.S. records on the role of Chilean media mogul Agustín Edwards in assisting the initial CIA coup plotting in the days following Salvador Allende’s dramatic election in September 1970. Internal White House scheduling records obtained by Kornbluh provide concrete proof of a secret, September 15, 1970, meeting between Edwards and President Nixon in the Oval Office — only six hours later, Nixon called Kissinger, Mitchell and CIA director Richard Helms into the Oval Office and ordered Helms to come up with a ”gameplan” within 48 hours to instigate a coup that would prevent Allende’s inauguration.(National Security Archive)
“Chile is one of the most infamous CIA covert operations, and one where you have an explicit link to the president of the United States ordering that you overthrow a democratically elected government. These documents remind us of the malevolence of US foreign policy in Chile,” Kornbluh told the Guardian.
Argentina
Argentina’s open primaries are Sunday. Though Libertarian Javier Milei is unlikely to win the country’s presidency, his campaign has shaken up the center-right landscape. The so-called “Milei effect” has strengthened the candidacy of right-wing politician Patricia Bullrich, and if her bid to represent Juntos por el Cambio fails, some of her voters could migrate to Milei in the October general election, explains Juan Elman for Open Democracy.
Milei is known for radical proposals, like creating a legal market for human organs or eliminating the Central Bank. But polls show “most of Milei's supporters, including young people, reject his bolder economic proposals. Their preference for him is more of an emotional attachment,” writes Elman.
Fútbol
Colombia’s “feisty” Superpoderosas are the last remaining Latin American team competing for the Women’s World Cup, reports the Associated Press.
“For its electric style and all that its players have overcome to reach the Women’s World Cup” support for Colombia is a “no-brainer” argues Franklin Foer in the Atlantic.
Barbie mania
A funeral home in El Salvador has taken Barbie mania to an extreme, offering pink coffins with Barbie linings, reports the Associated Press.