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By María Josefina Arce

The Amazon is in danger. Without urgent action it could reach a point of no return, putting at risk the survival of the native peoples that inhabit it, 10% of the world's known biodiversity and aggravating the climate crisis, which affects everyone.
    
For this reason, Leticia, the capital of the Colombian state of Amazonas, was in recent days the scene of reflection, debates and suggestions for protecting the Amazon, whose destruction is advancing rapidly and could accelerate the climate change that threatens the world.
  
Environment ministers of the countries that share the largest tropical rainforest on the planet, representatives of indigenous peoples, companies, productive sectors, scientists and researchers met in the Colombian city to join forces in favor of caring for this natural heritage of the Earth.
   
The presidents of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and Colombia, Gustavo Petro, also traveled there to discuss the necessary and urgent regional coordination of nations with Amazonian territory.
    
The presence of the two presidents has been an impetus to advance in the coordination of joint actions, and a sign of their high commitment to stop the destruction of the Amazon.
   
In fact, their governments have worked to protect the rainforest, with encouraging results. Brazil achieved a 33% reduction in deforestation in the first six months of this year, while Colombia ended 2022 with a 25% reduction.
   
The participants in the meeting in Leticia pointed out that it is essential to halt deforestation, illegal mining and the indiscriminate use of fauna, flora and other resources in these territories.
   
They also stressed the need to generate opportunities for the communities through an economy that systematically restores the rainforest.
   
The meeting made it possible to place on the agenda for debate the concerns and alternatives for the care of the Amazon for the more than 400 indigenous peoples that inhabit it.
   
It also paved the way for the Amazon Summit, to be held on August 8 and 9 in the Brazilian city of Belém de Pará, which will seek to revive the principles of the 1978 Amazon Cooperation Treaty, from which the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization was created in 1995.
   
The meeting in Belém de Pará will be an opportunity for the international community to pay the attention that the Amazon requires and to join this effort of the countries that share it, and that ultimately is for the good of the planet on which we live.