Christian Poirier, program director at Amazon Watch: “The Amazon Summit’s final declaration, while showing positive intentions toward Pan-Amazonian cooperation and efforts to strengthen this collaboration, falls significantly short. The statement maintains unacceptable ambiguity about the continuity of extractivist policies, lacks a concrete plan to protect a keystone region for climatic stability and fails to advance critical protections for the rain forest and human rights. The declaration lacks common targets to eliminate deforestation and fails to establish moratoriums on the expansion of oil and mining exploration in the region, which are critical measures to respond to today’s climate emergency. The declaration repeatedly references the urgent threat of the Amazon rain forest crossing a ‘point of no return’ due to deforestation and burning. However, it fails to establish common goals for Amazonian countries to reach zero deforestation by 2030, a critical benchmark. The inability of ACTO states to set…”