26/11/2009
DECLARATION OF HEADS OF STATE ON THE AMAZON COOPERATION TREATY ORGANIZATION

The Heads of State of the Member Countries of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization, on occasion of the preparatory meeting for the United Nations Conference on Climate Change held in Manaus, Amazonas, on 26 November 2009:

Affirming their determination to drive and consolidate cooperation between the Member States of ACTO in areas of common interest, thus contributing to strengthen South American unity while ensuring full respect to national sovereignty;

Recognizing the prioritary need to foster the Amazon's sustainable development through integral, participatory, shared and equitable management as an autonomous and sovereign response to current environmental challenges, taking into account the effects of the international financial crisis;

Decide to:

1- Endow ACTO with a new and modern role as a cooperation, exchange, knowledge and joint visibility forum to face the new and complex international challenges that lie ahead.

2- Commission the Chancelleries to prepare a new short, middle and long term Strategic Agenda for ACTO that includes regional actions to support the national initiatives with a view to strengthening the cooperation process. This Agenda will be examined and approved in the Tenth Meeting of Ministers of External Relations of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty to be held in the second quarter of 2010 in Peru.

3- Guided by the principles of reducing regional asymmetries, adopting complementary and solidary economic alternatives for the sustainable and rational use of Amazonian biodiversity and other resources, and improving the quality of life of the local populations, instruct the inclusion in the new Amazonian Strategic Cooperation Agenda of provisions inter alia to:

• Build an integral regional Amazonian cooperation vision that incorporates economics, environment, health, indigenous and tribal peoples, education, science and technology, water resources, infrastructure, commercial navigation and facilitation thereof, tourism and communications, with a view to promoting the harmonious and sustainable development of their respective Amazonian spaces.

• Identify actions to reduce and monitor deforestation, favor sustainable forest resources management and implement urgent measures to ensure biodiversity conservation and preservation, focusing on economic, rational and sustainable use, and including the search for mechanisms that support and create funding strategies to conserve and protect the forests.

• Strengthen the institutional and political mechanisms of the indigenous and tribal peoples of ACTO to further a diagnosis of their situation by designing indicators, or others, with a view to identifying joint actions that enable them to develop in harmony with nature, while protecting and conserving their traditional extractive products.

• Protect, manage and preserve the region's water resources to ensure the health of the fluvial ecosystem.

• Develop actions to promote food security and the eradication of hunger  in the shortest delay possible.

• Coordinate environmental health surveillance, execute coordinated actions in frontier areas, and adopt coordinated prevention mechanisms.

• Foster ecotourism.

• Decisively drive a regional science and technology agenda for the Amazon that includes traditional knowledge.

• Instruct the ACTO Permanent Secretariat to accompany international negotiations on central issues for Amazonian cooperation such as climate change, biological diversity and forests. Any actions taken as a result thereof shall be previously approved by the member countries.

• Incorporate sectoral ministerial meetings as part of the process of implementing the Strategic Agenda.

4- Reaffirm the urgency and importance of the Organization's ongoing relaunching process by strengthening the Permanent Secretariat, and instruct their Ministers of External Relations to adopt measures that lead to concrete actions to ensure its institutional strengthening so as to enable compliance with the mandates conferred to it by its member countries, including a definitive solution for its permanent headquarters.

5- Instruct the Permanent Secretariat to conduct a study in coordination with the member countries to assess possible sources of funding from the countries themselves in order to overcome ACTO's dependence on foreign financing to develop its strategic projects.

6- Reaffirm the importance of establishing or reactivating the Permanent National Commissions as the spheres in charge of executing the decisions made during the Meetings of Ministers of External Relations, pursuant to Article 23 of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty.

7- Express their firm support to the new administration of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization Permanent Secretariat.

                                                                                             
Manaus, 26 November 2009