GFMC AND OTCA / ATCO

The Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO) is an intergovernmental organization formed by the eight Amazonian countries: Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela, which signed the Amazon Cooperation Treaty (ACT), becoming the only socio-environmental block in Latin America. ACTO, with a broad vision of the South-South cooperation process, works in different dimensions within the framework of the implementation of the ACT: political-diplomatic, strategic, and technical, building synergies among governments, multilateral organizations, cooperation agencies, organized civil society, social movements, scientific community, productive sectors and society as a whole.

ACTO websites (Portuguese, Spanish and English):

• Organização do Tratado de Cooperação Amazônica (OTCA)
• Organización del Tratado de Cooperación Amazónica (OTCA)
• Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO)

One of the activities of ACTO is to foster cooperation in Integrated Fire Management (IFM) in the Amazon region.

The Amazon Summit 2023

During the opening of the Amazon Summit on 8 August 2023, the Secretary General of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO), Alexandra Moreira, said that the Belém Declaration is a bold commitment to the integral vision that has dealt with understanding the Amazon in its broadest dimension as a complex biome that requires management measures and that has faced a series of threats to its integrity. The President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, recalled that the first Summit was held in Belém in 1980, two years after the enactment of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty. “Based on this agreement, we founded the world’s first socio-environmental bloc, the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO). Institutional strengthening will be based on science. The Amazon Regional Observatory, which gathers data on topics such as water resources, health, biodiversity and climate change, will provide inputs for our public policies and cooperation initiatives,” he said.

The Belém Declaration of 9 August 2023, stressed the intent to deepen cooperation and joint actions within the framework of the Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation and Mutual Assistance for Integrated Wildland Fire Management between the State Parties, to address wildfires, through the development of policies, instruments, technical actions, and the use of innovation and technology, aimed at prevention, fire management, the promotion of alternatives to the use of fire in rural areas, firefighting and the strengthening of technical, scientific, institutional and community capacities (cf. para 52):

• OTCA/ACTO Belém Declaration of 9 August 2023 (PDF, in PT, ES and EN; para 52 marked)

The Amazon Summit of 2023 was preceded by a number of thematic activities, to which GFMC contributed. In late 2023, the ACTO Secretariat and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) are preparing a regional Integrated Fire Management project. GIZ held relevant consultations with ACTO secretariat and GFMC.

Preceding events

International TACO / OTCA Seminar
“Integrated Fire Management: Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation and Mutual Assistance for Integrated Fire Management among ACTO / OTCA Member Countries”