Family photo with the various presidents and top officials participating in the Fourth Amazon Summit 2023 in Belém, Brazil. Photo: Últimas Noticias.
Venezuela has proposed actions that unite economic and sustainable development to restore the vital regeneration of the Amazon rainforest, to be accomplished with the support and union of all South American countries, according to vice president of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, speaking at the Fourth Amazon Summit 2023, taking place in the city of Belém, Brazil.
“We are called to coordination and union,” Rodríguez stated this Tuesday, August 8, during a presentation at the summit. “Surely, unity is the work that binds us for vital regeneration. We have the responsibility of life itself; that is why Venezuela’s message is of unity, unity, and more unity.”
In order to achieve this, she presented a precise plan of action—sent directly from President Nicolás Maduro—for the rescue and defense of the Amazon, consisting of nine proposals, listed below:
- Creation of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO) environmental task force as a body of articulation and of union. The foreign ministries, ministries of environment, and ministries of defense of the member nations would be represented in this task force, “to address this situation that none of us have the possibility of addressing alone.”
- Zero deforestation plan that allows for the mapping of critical areas, holding sustainable practices as sovereign, and ecological economic alternatives to current practices. “We must reach an agreement, to have a real area of forest cover,” said Rodríguez. “We must move towards the harmonious development of all those who inhabit this lung of the Earth.”
- Amazon regeneration plan, with the creation of an Amazon seed bank to preserve biodiversity. In addition, create an Amazonian corps to combat fires and implement protection zones.
- Banning the use of heavy metals in mining activities.
- Elimination of illegal mining and replace it with responsible mining practices.
- Creation of the Amazon Research Center that will allow the preservation of biodiversity in the region.
- Launching of an Amazon satellite to allow remote scanning of this region.
- Ecological and sovereign sustainable development plan, in harmony and balance with the rights of nature.
- Strengthen the institutional framework of ACTO.
Serious threats
Vice President Rodríguez emphasized during the international event that there are a number of serious threats facing the Amazon such as “the voracity of transnational pharmaceutical and food emporiums, the outsourcing of state roles, and the aspirations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which pursues the commercialization of the Amazon basin.”
She called for ACTO to be at the service of the political, economic, and territorial sovereignty of its member countries. “ACTO is an organization that must maintain political sovereignty and work to reject economic blockades,” she said.
In-depth debate
Vice President Delcy Rodríguez highlighted the fact that the president of Brazil, Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, called on the world to have “a profound debate, taking into consideration the international economic order and engaging in sustainable development models that guarantee a true balance between the Earth, the oceans, and the atmosphere.”
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Imperial onslaught
Rodríguez also took the opportunity to denounce the Western imperial onslaught against the nationalist and progressive governments of the region, especially concerning the countries of the Amazon basin, reiterating that Venezuela has “called for coordination and unity; the message from Venezuela is unity, unity, and more unity.”
Amazon: lung of the Earth
The vice president of Venezuela noted the importance of emphasizing the nature of the Amazon region as a plant lung that brings great benefits to humanity.
“The importance of the Amazon basin should be known by the people, because it has the greatest biological diversity in the world,” she added, “holding 20% of the water discharged in the Atlantic, 40% of the world’s rainforest, 16% of the world’s oxygen production, and 25% of all global biodiversity.”
For Rodríguez, the Amazon “is a great regulator for global emissions and a carbon sink. These numbers have put on our shoulders the responsibility for the existence of human life on the planet, for the whole of humanity.”
(Últimas Noticias) by Janna Corredor
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
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