The governments of Venezuela and Colombia established, within the 27th United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP27), held in Egypt, a roadmap to “revitalize” the Amazon, the Venezuelan Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported this Tuesday (8) in a statement.
The agreement was reached after a meeting between the leaders of the two countries, dictator Nicolás Maduro and President Gustavo Petro, in a High Level Dialogue on the Amazon.
Maduro said that the countries of South America have a “responsibility” to prevent the “destruction” of this tropical forest “and start a coordinated, efficient, conscious and active recovery process”.
Likewise, he stated that the first objective should be the “recovery” of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty, “by its historical ability to observe the Amazon and its number of proposals.”
In turn, Petro stated that it is time for the countries of the American continent to dialogue to establish a plan, because “revitalizing” the Amazon would take at least two decades.
“We are determined to revitalize the Amazon jungle and we have to open a fund with financial capacity. We, from the national budget, without being a rich country, are going to allocate US$ 200 million a year for 20 years to revitalize the forest and we hope that the world’s contributions can be expanded,” he said, according to the statement.
However, despite the speech of the two leaders, about half of the area of the Venezuelan Amazon that has been devastated since the end of the years 1990 has been deforested in the last five years.
An unsuccessful project by the Maduro regime launched in February 2016, the Arco Mineiro do Orinoco (AMO) ), to stimulate the extraction of gold, copper, diamonds and bauxite, among others, led to environmental destruction and violence in the Venezuelan forest, largely carried out by the guerrillas with whom Petro intends to sign peace treaties.
