The Amazon is plural in every sense, from its vegetation, river basins and political boundaries to the richness of its people, including Indigenous and riverside-dwelling communities. This singular tropical forest also faces a multitude of threats, from deforestation and habitat fragmentation to the erosion of Indigenous knowledge and climate change.

What happens in the Amazon and to the Amazon has both local and global impacts. This iconic ecosystem requires a diversity of efforts to enhance collaboration and common understanding – something the Belém Declaration, signed in August, has the potential to address, by building transboundary cooperation.

While the start has been slow, our research shows how to strengthen the agreement to make progress on protecting the Amazon. When the 28th Conference of Parties on climate change starts this week in Dubai, the Amazon should be at the top of the agenda, and any actions taken over the next two years could culminate at the UNFCCC’s COP30, scheduled to be held in Belém in 2025 – an opportune moment to consolidate coordinated regional actions and the recommendations we make below.

Local destruction with local and global ripple effects

The drivers of degradation in the Amazon are many: logging, mining, land price speculation, agricultural expansion, insecure land tenure, proliferation of hydroelectric dams, water quality degradation and deteriorating impacts on wetland ecosystems, the development of roads and settlements, governance gaps, and corruption.

Generally, those activities benefit only a limited group of regional and global actors, while imposing widespread burdens – both now and in the future. If current environmental degradation continues – especially from fires – the Amazon may reach a tipping point, where it turns into an arid landscape, with implications for climate around the world.

In this context, collaborative efforts are imperative between the countries whose borders run through the Amazon. Water management is a case in point, given the integrated nature of the Amazon Basin and the rivers that flow through it. Illegal mining and the entanglement of logging and (over)fishing activities with drug trafficking and criminal networks also require clear joint action from Amazonian countries.

The eight countries that signed the Amazon Cooperation Treaty (ACT) nearly half a century ago – Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Surinam and Venezuela – signed the Belém Declaration on 8 August this year. The declaration is a milestone, containing 113 cross-cutting objectives and principles. One of its primary objectives is to promote sustainable development and actively contribute to the by formulating priority actions and short-, medium- and long-term strategies for the Amazon region.

Much work lies ahead to strengthen the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO) in its areas of cooperation, which include shared data systems, environmental conservation, sustainable resource use, coordinated health systems, and joint research and development, among others. Earlier this year, researchers at SEI Latin America started a collaboration with ACTO’s Permanent Secretariat, to establish a baseline of the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), specifically Clean Water and Sanitation (SDG 6) and Climate Action (SDG 13), and to formulate recommendations to accelerate SDG implementation in the Amazon region.

Joint research from SEI and ACTO to date suggests how to make the Belém Declaration work, offering recommendations aimed at strengthening ACTO’s role in transboundary cooperation in the Amazon region. Our recommendations cover three main topics:

• enhanced regional collaboration (such as consolidating the Regional Amazon Observatory, ARO-ACTO);
• building transboundary governance capacities (such as developing joint responses to climate events and controlling illegal activities); and
• global positioning and climate governance (such as active participation in international dialogues, including UNFCCC’s COP30 in 2025).

Enhancing ACTO

While all-inclusive in scope, ACTO’s transboundary governance faces significant implementation challenges.

Its geographical scope has primarily focused on surface waters within the Amazon Basin, missing underground aquifers, including the vast Amazon Aquifer and those extending beyond the current ACTO area. Including groundwater could reshape our understanding of the Treaty’s spatial distribution and the dynamics of the Amazon region.

The Amazonian Regional Observatory (ARO-ACTO) is the main open data platform for sharing information across national institutions, governmental authorities, and stakeholders. While ARO-ACTO aims to become a reference for researchers and innovators, it often lacks common datasets across countries, hampering cross-country comparisons.

Effective transboundary cooperation takes time: despite being signed almost 50 years ago, ACT’s territory is yet to be clearly defined at the operational level of the organization itself. In addition to problems related to contested national borders – for instance, those of Guyana-Venezuela, Guyana-Suriname, and French Guyana-Suriname – there are no official sets of geographic coordinates declared anywhere in the legal documents that support the ACT and ACTO. This leads to study areas that vary between projects and implementation teams and possible friction between consultants and countries due to territorial conflicts and lack of clarity of the official delimitations in the ACTO area.

Moreover, while ACTO has a Permanent Secretariat in Brasília and focal points in each country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the dialogue primarily revolves around national-level actors, often sidelining local actors and limiting impact at the local level. The organization’s highly bureaucratic structure and communication issues also hinder ACTO’s capacity for articulated action.

Despite these challenges, ACTO possesses untapped potential. If it assumes a catalyser role for international cooperation in the Amazon, ACTO would be in a unique position to streamline resources and coordinate actions towards shared objectives. In a landscape where numerous national and international organizations operate independently, ACTO’s role would become pivotal in uniting efforts for more effective and collaborative initiatives in the region.

The Belém Declaration: striking a balance between optimism and controversy for Amazon governance

The Belém Declaration was a formal acknowledgement of the need for greater regional integration and sustainable development to avert the collapse of the Amazon Rainforest. As such, the declaration establishes the legal and political foundation for further cooperation between ACTO’s member countries.

While it focuses in particular on law enforcement efforts to address the rampant issues of illegal mining and logging, the document also creates a framework for what may become closer coordination on issues such as transboundary water governance of the Amazon Basin. Furthermore, the Belém Declaration addresses issues such as ensuring the participation of Indigenous communities in decision-making processes; strengthening science, education and innovation; mobilizing climate finance; developing sustainable infrastructure; and creating a multinational forum for Amazonian cities.

However, the Belém Declaration has been critiqued for its lack of clear, time-bound and more ambitious commitments. Amazonian countries missed the opportunity to unequivocally commit to en

ding deforestation or to phasing out fossil fuel extraction activities and the development of road infrastructure in the region. Oil, mining and hydropower projects still threaten the Amazon biome and its people and continue to be pursued by Amazonian countries.

Many have advocated for a new, sustainable economy of standing forests to be promoted instead, possibly along the lines of inclusive “bioeconomy” visions. But such commitments are yet to materialize.

Recommendations to strengthen ACTO’s role in transboundary cooperation for the Amazon

Here, we provide 10 recommendations to strengthen transboundary cooperation in the Amazon.

1. Ensure the inclusion of all Amazonian countries in the Treaty: French Guiana was excluded from the Treaty due to its status as an overseas French territory. Incorporating French Guiana could promote greater consistency in defining the Treaty’s boundaries and enhancing regional cooperation.
2. Define official datasets for political, administrative and ecosystem divisions within ACTO: legally demarcating the region is paramount, as it should be a top organizational and cooperative priority. A legally defined set of geographic coordinates and boundaries will make studies and projects congruent while allowing for data standardization. Settling territorial disputes among countries can improve the impact and continuity of research projects in the region.
3. Consolidate the Regional Amazon Observatory (ARO-ACTO): ensure the database is comprehensive and up to date, containing complete and consistent information on biodiversity, land use, climate, water sources, population, risks, and other relevant factors. Create guidelines for indicators to ensure data homogenization and integration, and ensure this database is easily accessible and publicly available.
4. Build the SDG Baseline: member countries should collaborate on a baseline assessment of progress towards achieving SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation) and SDG 13 (Climate Action), while in the Amazon region. This should serve as a basis for tracking and measuring future progress on these goals and other synergetic goals, such as SDGs 2, 14 and 15 (Zero Hunger, Life below Water, and Life on Land).
5. Share experiences on the bioeconomy for a sustainable development transition: an Intergovernmental Scientific Technical Panel for the Amazon, as proposed in the Belém Declaration, is a step forward in expanding and sharing knowledge on what have so far been niche innovations in bioeconomy or “socio-biodiverse” value chains. Policymakers and other stakeholders also should share their experiences – and eventually technologies – so that social and technical innovations can cross borders for mutual learning.
6. Strengthen transboundary governance capacities in the Amazon Basin: share strategies for early warning systems, rapid and joint response to extreme weather and climate events (such as El Niño and La Niña), and the effective control of illegal mining and infrastructure development, through coordinated planning, the establishment of shared hydroclimatic monitoring networks, and the creation of taskforces dedicated to curbing illegal mining and logging.
7. Improve communication and the Secretariat: given ACTO’s highly bureaucratic structure and operation, quicker and more efficient communication mechanisms among the member countries, ACTO itself, and project consultants would benefit all stakeholders.
8. Reinforce common agendas and objectives in the Amazon: ACTO could benefit from reinforcing joint planning for stablishing common views and objectives, incorporating technical and scientific development as core components for cooperation.
9. Foster “global South-South” cooperation and enhance technical and scientific capacities: project engagement and data contributions to the ARO-ACTO platform show varying levels of technical and scientific expertise. To promote inclusivity and capacity-building, targeted investments could allocate budget for research initiatives, prioritizing countries with limited technical capabilities, facilitating training programs and fostering dedicated to addressing Amazonian challenges. Collaborations with established regional organizations, such as the Organization of American States (OAS) and the Southern Common Market (Mercosur, in Spanish), could amplify the impact of these initiatives.
10. Position the Amazon region in global climate governance: strengthen and enhance the ACTO Secretariat, both technically and financially. A dedicated budget should ensure member countries’ active participation ahead (and beyond) global dialogues such as the UNFCCC and others. Establishment of a subsidiary body, similar to the UNFCCC’s Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA), would allow for in-depth discussions and strategic planning to globally position the Amazon region, and position ACTO for the coming COP30 in 2025.