By Ilan Goldfajn, President of the Inter-American Development Bank

IT is hard to overestimate the importance of the Amazon. If it were a country, the Amazon region would be the sixth largest in the world.

With nearly a third of the earth’s tropical rainforests, it stores up to 200 billion tons of carbon, mitigating climate change. Seventy per cent of South America’s GDP also depends on rain cycles regulated by the Amazon basin. So, protecting it is important to everyone’s future, especially those living in it.

Guyana’s Amazon region is a hub of ecological wealth, with a high level of biodiversity, pristine forest and freshwater resources that add value to Guyana’s economy. This helps create jobs and economic livelihoods for thousands of local communities and indigenous people.

But the rainforest as a whole is reaching an ecological tipping point and could lose its ability to sustain itself. If it does, we’ll lose a critical climate regulator essential to fighting global warming.

So, we must be more agile and ambitious about protecting the region and its 60 million residents. That requires leadership, resources and coordination among everyone—people, national, state and municipal governments, the private sector, research institutions and international organisations.

Only by working together can we quickly deliver the scale and impact needed to avert this tipping point.
We have an opportunity to become more ambitious and work closer with the region’s countries, taking advantage of renewed political will to set goals and a course of action, which is key to ensuring that we succeed.
We must also increase our capacity to organise and implement projects and initiatives. A new Amazonia Forever programme, organised by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and Amazonian country Finance and Planning Ministers (IDB Governors), aims to do this.

Acting as an umbrella programme that coordinates various initiatives in the region, including from the IDB, governments, stakeholders and other international organisations, Amazon Forever can be a key tool to support any goals for Amazon countries that emerge from the upcoming Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization Summit in Belem.

The Amazon region requires a holistic and coherent approach to inclusive and sustainable development based on: i) combatting deforestation and enhancing environmental policies while offering sustainable economic alternatives, especially in the bioeconomy; ii) empowering and supporting people and communities in the Amazon; iii) improving the quality of Amazonian cities and; iv) promoting adequate infrastructure for the region, including digital connectivity.

The Amazonia Forever Program aims to protect biodiversity and accelerate sustainable development through a holistic approach that simultaneously scales up financing, boosts exchange of knowledge, and facilitates regional coordination to aid decision-making among the eight Amazonian countries. Three dimensions are key to success and renewed ambition in the region.
First, expanding the availability of resources to the region is critical. We must unlock public and private-sector credit, but also create innovative instruments to raise the necessary resources, such as sustainability-linked green bonds akin to those that the IDB recently helped Uruguay develop. We could even consider issuing Amazon bonds, and debt-for-nature conversions, such as the one the IDB recently used to help Ecuador save more than $1 billion while conserving the Galapagos.

Second, we need to strengthen the planning and execution of projects so that the funds raised actually generate impact. To do that, we are creating a Platform of Regional Partners of the Amazon to develop investment plans and increase the availability of good projects in sustainable infrastructure, including in the areas of education, health and agroforestry.
Finally, we must share knowledge and evidence-based innovations to drive research and help decision makers create better synergies and opportunities across the region.
To that end, we must expand coordination and collaboration cohesively through a new Amazonian Country Network of Finance and Planning Ministers and a technical group to oversee progress and ensure that we deliver the results that the region needs.

This network, together with our partnership and support for the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO), will help facilitate coordination between countries.

The challenge of developing the Amazon sustainably is greater than the capacity of any single country or institution to do it alone. So, we must collaborate and involve the private sector and civil society.

By protecting one of our greatest natural resources, we can create a better future for local communities and Amazonian countries, while benefitting the entire planet. We need a sustainable, perennial Amazon. If we don’t preserve the Amazon forever, it is hard to think of a future that we can look forward to forever.

We must use this opportunity to show that the region is taking an unprecedented approach to coordinating and implementing the changes needed to develop and preserve the Amazon. Now is the time to move from words to action.