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The name of the Amazon, the world’s largest forest, has echoed across thousands of kilometers in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, in recent days. The economic and financial representatives of the European Union and Latin American countries arrived on Friday in the Galician city to finalize the projects in which to invest the 45,000 million euros that the Twenty-Seven had promised to disburse on the other side of the Atlantic. The great lung of the planet was the great interest of the 60 countries and participating economic actors gathered, who launched new initiatives and showed interest in their preservation.
Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) President Ilan Goldfajn presented at a breakfast Amazonia Always, a program still in development that aims to bring together initiatives and strengthen collaboration between financial organizations to scale economic resources and the largest To achieve effect the territory. . Goldfajn did not provide any details on the megaproject’s economic figures or previous forecasts, but said it would seek clear guidance for COP30, the international climate meeting to be held in Belém do Pará, Brazil, in 2025.
“We call everyone and tell them: ‘We will work together,'” he said in a news conference after the first informal conversation of the meeting in Santiago. The IDB President mentioned some organizations that have already signed the project, such as the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO), the intergovernmental group composed of eight Amazon countries; the IDB city network; or the Green Coalition, which brings together 20 public banks in the region.
Beyond a lung
Because of its ability to absorb millions of tons of carbon dioxide, but also because of the amount of biodiversity, ecosystems and resources it contains, the Amazon retains great international importance. The planet’s great green lung makes up between 4% and 6% of the Earth’s total surface area; and, according to ACTO data, between 25% and 40% of the surface of the Americas.
At the beginning of the summer, the EU put a regulation into force to stop deforestation around the world. This document prohibits the import into the Community territory of products using wood from deforested areas. The regulations were met with suspicion on the other side of the Atlantic and viewed as protectionist and rather colonial measures. A statement from the Brazilian Foreign Ministry criticized the regulation for having a “punitive and discriminatory character” against small producers. The same document was signed by ten Latin American countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru and the Dominican Republic), Indonesia (with one of the largest tropical forests in the world) and Costa de Ivory, Ghana, Malaysia , Nigeria and Thailand.
The development bank’s climate manager for Latin America and the Caribbean (CAF), Alicia Montalvo, tells this newspaper that plans for caring for the Amazon sometimes assumed a diffuse focus that only took into account change. Climate, the inhabitants of the territory disregard. “We have to protect it because there are many people living there who have particularly harsh living conditions that we are not helping them solve. We don’t give them livelihoods and tell them that the livelihoods they have are destroying nature. […] I think the biggest challenge is to improve the quality of life and provide systems so that people can live in decent conditions. “Sometimes I ask myself: If these indigenous communities lived in a desert area, would we consider the same thing?” he explains. The Amazon basin is home to 48 million people, including 400 indigenous peoples who speak more than 300 different languages.
The Amazonia Siempre project reflects the interest in the forest area of the organizations gathered in Santiago. CAF was one of the signatory banks to the initiative, but has also developed some of its own projects. In 2020, together with OCTA, it signed the Resilient Economy – Amazonia 2030 action to promote the flow of information between institutions and intergovernmental organizations. Montalvo believes it is essential to strengthen regional cooperation for the viability of the projects. “The main problem, or one of them, is that the institutions work on a country-by-country basis and we have to work in an integrated way,” he concludes. The development bank has taken the first steps of a critical roadmap for the Amazon that seeks to map the opportunities and issues spanning the entire region. In this way, they mark five axes of action, which range from work with biodiversity to ecotourism to the social development of the local population – with education, health or land ownership projects.
The points of a “historic” meeting
Acting First Vice-President of Spain Nadia Calviño spoke after the meetings between the EU and Latin American countries that a common commitment from all countries was needed to protect the vast forest. “Caring for the Amazon is a global responsibility because it has fundamental implications for the fight against climate change, for the quality of water and air and for the prosperity of the entire planet,” explained the minister, who hosted the meeting These days, as Spain takes over the EU Council Presidency.
The countries gathered in Santiago came to the place to carry out the almost 130 projects agreed last July at the EU-Celac Summit, the same meeting at which this investment of 45,000 million euros in the territory of Latin America and the Caribbean was promised. And there were some concretions. The 60 countries and economic actors agreed that the disbursement must be made within the framework of a green, digital agenda focused on human development – the working axes that shaped their talks last week.
“We talked about real projects and unanimously showed our determination to create a governance framework that guarantees that these projects become reality,” explained Calviño. The meeting did not fully define for which works the investments will be allocated or what forms of financing they will use for them, since, as they reiterate, these will vary from case to case. What the meeting left is a horizon date: 2027. “We want these 45,000 million euros to be implemented by 2027,” defended the president of CAF, Sergio Díaz-Granados.
The event – described as “historic” even before it began – marked a new convergence of the positions of both parties. The €45 billion promised by the EU was part of the Global Gateaway, the European initiative to promote “fair, green and digital” transition in a changing geopolitical context (as a result of events such as the Ukraine war or the rise of power). of China worldwide). The investment also represented an important contact between the two regions, which together are home to more than 1 billion people (14% of the world’s population) and generate 21% of the GDP. Brazilian President Luis Inazio Lula da Silva described the first summit as a “tremendous success” immediately after the meeting concluded.