Itamaraty sees positive end result at summit, say sources

Itamaraty sources told CNN that the final result of the declaration of the Amazonian countries was what was possible to be achieved given the internal context that each country has in environmental and energy issues.

In the evaluation of senior sources of Brazilian diplomacy, avoiding dealing with oil exploration in the Amazon was something necessary for countries that still depend on this energy matrix, or that still have high potential to explore it.

The same understanding applies to the goal of zero deforestation by 2030.

For Brazil, defending this goal was more comfortable than for its peers, since the target of zeroing out deforestation is included in its plan to combat deforestation in the Amazon launched in June.

It is, therefore, an existing official objective, which the Brazilian government just wanted to transplant to other countries.

The general reading among Brazilian diplomats is that each country has its own rhythm and local reality and that this ended up prevailing over any more daring concessions and negotiations.

Official authorities, on the other hand, celebrate the fact that the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization was revived with the event and addressed several other themes and concepts that had not been discussed between the countries.

The diplomats heard by CNN mention, for example, the fact that the countries have included the need to establish an agenda that involves everything from education in the Amazon to sanitation in their cities, as well as the obligation that civil society and in particular the indigenous peoples are included in debates about the future of the biome.

The definitive entry, in the final document, of the concept of no return was also considered a victory.

This point is the moment when, due to deforestation, degradation and climate change, the Amazon may not recover, initiating a process in which it ceases to be a rainforest and becomes another ecosystem.

To demonstrate that the summit will go beyond “eventism” — the logic of making large environmental seventies without practical consequences — the countries agreed to increase resources for the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO) and expand its headquarters, which is in Brasília.

Furthermore, the Brazilian chancellor, Mauro Vieira, intends to gather the ministers of Foreign Affairs until October to try to advance in a joint position for the World Climate Conference, the COP, which will take place in Dubai at the end of the year.

The challenge from now on will be precisely to present bolder goals and guide with more emphasis the great environmental debates in the world, such as oil exploration, according to reports collected by CNN, under penalty of not even the activists who followed the event with good eyes being discouraged .

The press conference that the Minister of Mines and Energy, Alexandre Silveira, gave this afternoon in the middle of the Summit meetings demonstrated that the environmentalists’ patience with the Lula government’s ambiguity regarding oil in the Amazon is running out.

Silveira, the biggest public defender of the idea on the Esplanada, was pressured to the point that his advisor closed the interview under protest from all and protection of security guards.