REGRETTING the deaths of thousands of indigenous people and their leaders in the Amazon during the pandemic, and those defenders consistently killed for protecting their territories and their livelihoods;

RECOGNISING the on-going legacy of dispossession of indigenous peoples and local communities through the imposition of some protected areas without their free, prior and informed consent;

AWARE that there have been claims by indigenous leaders that the dismantling of environmental policies and/or violations of indigenous rights amount to either crimes against humanity or ecocide;

RECALLING Resolution 5.097 Implementing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Jeju, 2012), which calls for ensuring that the principles of UNDRIP are observed in the work of the Union;

CONSIDERING that fires in the Amazon in 2019 and 2020 alone burned at least 3 million hectares of forest, causing serious damage to the integrity of the ecosystems;

DEEPLY CONCERNED about the increase in deforestation since, during the 2020 pandemic, at least 2.3 million hectares of primary forest were lost in nine countries in the Amazon Basin, which means a 17% increase in deforestation compared to 2019;

RECOGNISING that the latest scientific consensus established the point of no return for the Amazon within a range of between 20–25% of deforestation and degradation combined;

OBSERVING that the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (IPCC 2018, IPBES 2019, IPBES-IPCC 2021 and IPCC 2021) emphasise the fact that the climate crisis and biodiversity loss are accelerating rapidly and are closely interlinked;

CONSIDERING that the IUCN Programme 2021–2024 recognises that the trends in biodiversity loss are still reversible through urgent transformative change;

RECOGNISING that maintaining the ecosystem integrity of the Amazon biome is vital in order to prevent catastrophic biodiversity loss and climate change;

REITERATING that over half of the Amazon Basin is subject to some kind of pressure – fixed or continuous – on land-use change, direct or indirect, including, inter alia, as a result of top-down industrial development, road and energy infrastructure, the expansion of extractive industries and the agro-industrial frontier, as well as illicit and criminal activities;

RECOGNISING that the Amazon is home to at least 178 indigenous groups living in isolation, whose territories of life include some of highest biodiversity areas on the planet, some of which are categorised as protected areas or legally recognised indigenous territories; that some states in the Amazon have already established national policies that confirm their duties to protect their isolation, respect their integrity and well-being; and that these groups are highly vulnerable and increasingly threatened by many pressures. It is urgent that the measures, policies and actions throughout the Amazon Basin are introduced to effectively protect their rights in full;

CONSIDERING that the data published in the peer-reviewed study “A Global Safety Net” indicate the need for a regional target of 85% for the protection of the Amazon biome by 2030;

HIGHLIGHTING the fact that in 2007 WWF projected for 2030 that “Current trends in agriculture and livestock expansion, fire, drought and logging could clear or severely damage 55% of the Amazon rainforest by 2030”, making the 2030 horizon too late for the Amazon; and

RECOGNISING that the UN-backed Science Panel for the Amazon (SPA), which included 200 scientists, has found that 18% of the Amazon Basin’s forests has been deforested, with an additional 17% undergoing degradation; that the SPA warns that in crossing the 20–25% threshold of deforestation and degradation the system will reach an irreversible tipping point that can translate into the dieback of the entire ecosystem; and that this would result in massive carbon dioxide emissions with rapid and catastrophic consequences for global climate stability;