Bolivia Argues for South America’s Amazon Pact To Take Charge of Amazon Protection

Aug. 25, 2019 (EIRNS)—“Not only Brazil is in the crosshairs” of the “international community” over the Amazon fires, BBC’s Spanish-language service announced two days ago; Bolivia and Paraguay are also “contributing to the destruction of ecosystems” by insisting on economic development, BBC wrote. The British wire focussed its fury on Bolivian President Evo Morales, in particular, for his government’s policy of expanding land under cultivation into what were forest areas.

Building the campaign for international intervention in the name of defending the climate, British intelligence’s Amnesty International and other unnamed groups claiming to represent “Amazonian indigenous peoples” issued an open letter on Aug. 22 calling for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples to the United Nations to take action against Brazil’s Bolsonaro and Bolivia’s Morales governments for “genocide.” (The argument goes, that the forest fires are the result of allowing mining and agriculture in the Amazon, which threatens the “extinction” of indigenous people in the area, human beings whom these British bastards would condemn to remain dependent forever on their primitive hunting and gathering economy.)

Clearly recognizing where this campaign is heading, various South American Presidents have offered their solidarity and aid to both Brazilian President Bolsonaro and Bolivian President Morales—who are on opposing sides of the usually-unbridgeable “right/left” ideological divide in the region.

Morales announced on Aug. 23 that Bolivia is seeking an urgent meeting of the Foreign Ministers of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization, commonly dubbed the Amazon Pact. The pact was founded in 1978 by the eight countries in the Amazon area (Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela), to develop and protect the Amazon together, and has been largely dormant over recent years.

Some countries opposed the proposal on the grounds that they can’t work with Venezuela, Morales reported, but he calls on the member states “urgently and as an emergency” to debate not only how to confront the immediate situation, but “to prepare ourselves for the future, how we are going to take care of our Amazon,” he said. He warned against allowing “ideological differences” to stymie this needed coordination.