Between August 18 and 22, Bogotá will host the 5th Amazon Summit of Presidents, bringing together the eight countries that make up the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO). The meeting aims to align regional strategies for forest protection, cross-border cooperation, and tackling the global climate crisis.

At the Amazon Dialogues, a space for civil society discussions that precedes the Summit, social organizations and peoples of the region gathered in the Colombian capital warn that without the creation of effective participation mechanisms, the decisions taken risk becoming disconnected from the realities of the territories.

In a joint statement, Indigenous peoples, peasants, Afro-descendants, riverine communities, fishers, women’s organizations, and rural and urban movements recalled that the commitments made in the Belém Declaration, produced at the last Amazon Summit, have still not been implemented. The proposal submitted to the current Summit of Presidents calls for the inclusion of a clear provision in the final document:

“To establish a mechanism to strengthen dialogue with civil society committed to the protection of the Amazon and the rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities (...), and to support the host country of the Amazon Summit of Presidents in the organization of the Amazon Dialogues together with ACTO’s Permanent Secretariat.”

The statement denounces the lack of concrete targets to halt deforestation and fires, combat cross-border crime, address land conflicts, protect threatened leaders, and stop the expansion of fossil fuel and mining projects encroaching on the forest. It also criticizes the consolidation of the region as a new frontier of fossil and mineral extractivism, pointing out that the forest’s future is already at a critical moment: “We are already living the Point of No Return.”

While acknowledging the creation of the Indigenous Peoples’ Participation Mechanism, the signatories insist that other sectors remain invisible:

“In the Amazon there also coexist peasant communities, Afro-descendants, riverine populations, urban residents, fishers, agroecological producers, women’s organizations, and a diversity of sectors that care for the Amazon, whose voices must be heard in a formal and permanent way,” the text states.

The organizations also denounce that governments have failed to address key issues raised since the Technical-Scientific Meeting of Leticia (2023) and the Amazon Dialogues of Belém, such as the need to overcome racism, ensure climate, food, and gender justice, implement popular agrarian reform, and recognize the Amazon as a subject of rights.

“If this Summit is not capable of doing so, it risks failing in its commitment to save the Amazon and in its mission to lead the fight against the global climate crisis,” they warn.

The Pororoka Collective, which is accompanying the parallel activities in Bogotá, emphasizes that democratizing ACTO’s governance is an essential step for the region to have its own voice and legitimacy in the face of external pressures.

The full Letter of the peoples and civil society organizations of the Amazon, released during the Amazon Dialogues, can be accessed below:

Comunicado a la Prensa OTCA-2.pdf

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