With the participation of CEBDS, a face-to-face plenary session in Manaus captures the vision of Amazonians on the future of sustainable development
To learn about the reality of the Amazon universe – where many distances are measured in days rather than hours – there is nothing better than diving into the territory and listening to those who live there, especially if they are from the most diverse sectors of society. The proposal, put into practice in person in May, for the first time since the emergence of the pandemic, is just one of the steps towards a bold objective that has been in progress since the beginning of the year.
With the participation of CEBDS (Brazilian Business Council for Sustainable Development), facilitator of the Working Group on Private Sector Engagement, the Rede Uma Concertação pela Amazônia opened its doors to local stakeholders from a wide range of areas. They spoke with businesspeople from the region, society and representatives of traditional communities during the meeting in Manaus, the capital of Amazonas. The plan is to transform what was presented into concrete actions that can be implemented by public administrators.
“In any action we take for the region, we have to involve local representatives, including businesspeople, actively,” says Karina Simão, consultant at CEBDS’ Amazon Agenda and coordinator of the Business Movement for the Amazon. A year ago, the Council took on the role of one of the coordinators of the Concertação, a network created in 2020 in a plural and nonpartisan manner. The initiative is made up of more than 400 leaders from the public and private sectors, academia, civil society, indigenous people, artists and journalists.
In total, there are eight major themes within the Concertation framework, including the Working Group on Private Sector Engagement, coordinated by CEBDS. All of them promote events and an extensive agenda open to interested parties.
“Our participation follows on from what we did last year, when we articulated the private sector position presented at the UN Climate Conference, COP26, in Glasgow. It was a process that also fed into the Open Letter to Presidential Candidates, which we presented in April”, says Karina.
In parallel, within the Concertation, CEBDS representatives are also participating in the construction of a sustainable development plan that can be implemented by governors and the next elected president in the first 100 days of their future governments.
To arrive at the final document – and these will be entirely practical actions, such as a legal proposal for a fiscal and tax reorganization with the aim of valuing the conservation economy – a series of plenary sessions are being held.
After the first two – “Amazon and the 2022 Elections” and “Education and Public Security” –, the third plenary session took place in May, in Manaus, on Health and Economy. The very rich debates showed, for example, how telemedicine is of fundamental importance for the region. Or how it is necessary to better equip health centers outside the capitals, so that a decentralization of public services can occur.
This reality in the Amazon will be incorporated into the proposals and demonstrates the profound impact generated by the pandemic. These are some examples of how the “S” in the ESG concept needs to be highlighted.
“This geography does not allow us to concentrate healthcare in the Amazon capitals. We need to decentralize complex care so that people from the forest do not die waiting for a plane that will never arrive and, at the same time, do not overload hospitals in the cities,” explained Vanda Ortega, a nursing technician and indigenous woman originally from the Witoto people, in the municipality of Amaturá, in Alto Solimões (AM), during the plenary session. The magazine Page 22 covered the event.
Other important figures in the region, such as businessman Denis Minev, CEO of retailer Bemol, also presented their views. For him, what is missing “is a great ambition that brings prosperity to the Amazon to solve many of the region’s socioeconomic and environmental problems.”
There will be 14 thematic rounds in total. The plan is to draw from each of them three proposals for each of the themes, generating a total of 42. All the ideas will be worked on together with a law firm so that everything is ready by November 1st. This way, the transitional governments will be able to work with the document in hand when they are already elected and even before they actually take office.
