- Some of the first environmental laws passed in Pan Amazon countries established national protected area systems and the entities that would manage them.
- Environmental Impact Assessments have played an increasingly important role in governments’ approving development projects, especially with regard to respecting Indigenous communities’ rights.
- In line with their Paris Agreement commitments, countries in the Amazon Basin still need to develop legislation that regulates carbon markets and offsets.
Historically, most countries regulated their biological resources via the agriculture ministry, using laws specific for managing forests, wildlife and fish. Many were inspired by commitments made via United Nations treaties, most notably the World Heritage Convention (WHC) and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), or by decisions to join UN-affiliated entities, such as the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
By ratifying these treaties or formally joining an entity, governments incorporated their provisions into national legal frameworks, a process that was reinforced by the ratification of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), a treaty signed by all nations at the Rio Summit in 1992. Over time, they complemented these legally binding treaties with legislation that addressed issues in greater detail and, for the first time, used the term ‘biodiversity’. Among the first laws promulgated in each nation was the creation of a national protected area system and an associated administrative entity.
Parallel to this process, governments created agencies dedicated to organizing and reviewing Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs), a 1970s-era innovation intended to avoid or mitigate harm associated with the extractive sector and infrastructure investments. Like the process leading to the conservation of nature, efforts to clean up industry were driven by international agreements; more importantly, however, they responded to a requirement set by financial institutions seeking to limit the risk associated with capital-intensive, long-term investments. Originally, EIAs were commissioned and evaluated within the ministries that promoted the projects, an obvious conflict of interest that was resolved by the creation of environment ministries that assumed responsibility for evaluating the more complicated EIAs and approving (and, rarely, rejecting) the associated investments, a task that is always complicated in governments that seek to accommodate multiple constituencies.
Environmental reviews became even more significant when civil society began to insist that EIAs address social impacts linked to conventional development, particularly those affecting rural populations and traditional communities. Amazonian countries have long recognized that their Indigenous populations have unique standing, and all but Suriname have passed laws that define their status and recognize their rights. It is unlikely, however, that the political elite fully understood the consequences of their decision to ratify an International Labor Organization agreement known as the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention (ILO-C169). This landmark treaty establishes that Indigenous communities must be consulted prior to the implementation of development projects that materially affect their communities and collective rights. This consultation process, now known as ‘Free, Prior and Informed Consent’ (FPIC), affords Indigenous communities a powerful legal tool to challenge projects that threaten their traditional livelihoods.
Environment ministries, most of which were created after the Rio Summit, have now been in place for three decades, and their policy portfolios have grown to include many of the economically transcendent issues related to climate change, including provisions and protocols linked to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Personnel from environment ministries accompany their delegations to the annual meetings, known as the Conference of the Parties (COP), and participate in or lead negotiations that establish emission-reduction goals.
For Pan Amazonian countries, these conversations always revolve around commitments to end deforestation and establish financial incentives, such as the REDD+ framework, that are essential for changing the economic calculus that drives forest loss. Although the precise nature of the regulatory regime(s) remains to be determined, the ratification of the Paris Agreement provides a powerful incentive for Amazonian nations to embrace carbon markets as a financial tool to finance REDD+ initiatives. Over the next decade, very significant legislation will be promulgated in all of these countries to regulate the emerging market(s) for carbon offsets, including both domestic and international markets, as well as voluntary and compliance markets.
Banner image: Tiger-footed monkey frog (Phyllomedusa hypochondrialis). Image by Rhett A. Butler.
“A Perfect Storm in the Amazon” is a book by Timothy Killeen and contains the author’s viewpoints and analysis. The second edition was published by The White Horse in 2021, under the terms of a Creative Commons license (CC BY 4.0).
To read earlier chapters of the book, find Chapter One here, Chapter Two here, Chapter Three here, Chapter Four here, Chapter Five here y Chapter Six here.
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