Liberal Amazon

There is one ecosystem in the Amazon where the pressure of deforestation cannot prevail: mangroves, which play a strong role in the socio-economic sustainability of riverside communities, as well as in the extraction of subsistence resources from the consumption of fish and crabs. A study carried out by the Federal University of Pará (UFPA), the Federal Rural University of the Amazon (Ufra) and the Vale Institute of Technology (ITV) found that less than 1% of the region's mangroves have been impacted by human interventions such as urban expansion and road construction.

In addition to the forests and rivers that make up the region's most characteristic scenery, the Brazilian Amazon has vast options of landscapes and destinations that enchant, such as

dunes, mangroves and the coastal seashore. But it's not just the beauty that attracts tourists, but also the opportunity to experience the different lifestyles of the people.This is the proposal put forward by Community-Based Tourism (CBT), our subject today.

Used to protect crops from the destructive effects of insects, larvae, fungi and ticks, pesticides are synthetic chemical health-detrimental products, which silently become part of most Brazilians’ everyday life. In a country that shows its strong agricultural vocation through impressive numbers in the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) calculation, pesticides are increasingly more closely studied. And the magnifying glass is over the Amazon this time. The region which historically had not been focused on agricultural activities, has seen the numbers of pastures for livestock and areas for agricultural crops increase in recent decades at an unexpected high speed.

"Amazon Day" will be celebrated this Tuesday (September 5). The date reinforces the importance of defining paths for the future of the planet's most important biome. With a territorial extension almost eight times the size of France, the Brazilian Amazon occupies almost 60% of the national territory and is home to a multitude of people, plants and animals. The biome is increasingly in the spotlight of global discussions, but what do the different economic sectors think about the priorities for the region's development? You can understand more about it in this week's Liberal Amazon report.

Sharing knowledge is one of the keys for the Pan-Amazon region to combat climate change. That's why the eight countries that share the biome (Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela) have decided to formalize international cooperation to protect the region's fauna, flora, water resources and inhabitants. Led by Brazil, the nations that integrate the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO) will share technologies and knowledge. One of the novelties is the creation of the so-called Amazon IPCC, a panel that will gather scientific information from the region to generate reports that will help in political decision-making.

Put in the limelight on the socio-environmental agenda, the Amazon region should be one of the most debated topics at the 28th United Nations Conference on Climate Change, COP 28, to be held between November 30th and December 12th, this year in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The countries that share the Amazon biome (Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela) are expected to present a joint position to the other heads of state.

Due to the absence of a zero deforestation goal and the lack of in-depth discussions regarding oil exploration in the region, the results of the "Amazon Summit", which ended on the 9th, were evaluated as below expectations by experts on environmental issues and civil society. The "Belem Declaration", a document that resulted from the meeting of representatives of eight South American countries, has 113 paragraphs dealing with issues such as science, innovation, water management, climate change, forest protection, indigenous peoples and combating environmental crimes.

Representatives of the eight member countries of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization are meeting in Belém on the 8th and 9th for the Amazon Summit. The meeting is expected to result in the signing of the Belém Declaration, a 130-paragraph agreement between the countries that should start a joint journey towards the next United Nations Climate Conference, which will take place at the end of 2023 in Dubai. Among the main themes of the document are the fight against deforestation, illegal mining and organized crime, as well as sustainable income generation in the region.

You might not have heard about it yet, but the fruit – golosa – shows a trend of increasing popularity. It is one more option in the richly varied menu of Amazonian fruits that, little by little, is being discovered by the people of the region. The fruit is already highly sought-after in the southwest of Pará, especially in the municipality of São Félix do Xingu.

The concept of ecofeminism emerged amid the boiling environmental movement in the 1970s, with the term 'ecological feminism' appearing in the work 'Feminism or Death' by French philosopher and writer Françoise D'Eaubonne. Today, according to data from the United Nations (UN), 80% of people displaced by environmental disasters and climate change-related problems are women.