Bogota Colombia
The presidents of Colombia and Venezuela, Gustavo Petro and Nicolás Maduro, called on Tuesday at the COP27 weather summit to shape an alliance for the Amazon, the largest rainforest on the planet.
“We are determined to revitalize the Amazon rainforest to give humanity a vital victory in the fight against climate change,” Petro said at the U. N. weather summit, which is being held at Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh hotel.
“If in South America we have a responsibility, it is to prevent the destruction of the Amazon and establish a coordinated recovery procedure,” Maduro said at the summit while talking with Petro.
Petro asked for the involvement of the United States, “the country that pollutes the most” in the Americas, while the south of the continent is “the sponge that absorbs the most CO2. “
He said his country would allocate $200 million a year for the next two decades to save the Amazon and for the solidarity of multilateral organizations and the world’s leading countries.
“One of the issues that can be agreed between us, Africa and part of Asia is (a mechanism to cancel the) (national) debt (as a way) to (finance) climate action,” where the IMF “has a role to play” with the evolved countries of the world, he said.
The two South American leaders celebrated the return to strength of Brazil’s leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva after defeating far-right incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro, a climate change denier who was criticized for allowing the biggest deforestation of the rainforest in years.
“Brazil’s access to this agreement is basic and strategic. We have enough strength to offer the world something positive, a failure,” Petro said.
Maduro and Petro were the Latin American leaders present at this edition of COP27.