Landmark pact to protect Amazon rainforest shows little progress

The Leticia Pact signed by 7 South American Amazonian nations was supposed to protect the world’s largest rainforest.

When the presidents of South America’s Amazonian nations met in Colombia’s jungle town of Leticia two years ago, to discuss how to better protect the world’s largest rainforest, they signed a landmark deal that raised hopes deforestation would decline. The Leticia Pact aimed to drive sustainable forest use and reforestation, restore degraded land, improve information sharing and the use of satellite data to monitor deforestation and wildfires, and empower women and Indigenous groups.