On July 3, we mark the anniversary of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty (ACT), signed in 1978 by the eight Amazonian nations and institutionalized in 1995 as the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO/OTCA). Nearly five decades later, ACTO remains the only intergovernmental body built specifically to coordinate action across the whole Amazon Basin. Our work at Amazon Conservation, halting illegal mining, deforestation, fires, and Nature crime monitoring, keeps confirming the same lesson: the Amazon functions as an integrated ecosystem with little regard for borders, yet most of the tools we have to protect it are still designed and applied nationally.

This lesson is more pressing than ever as the Amazon is under pressure from several compounding threats. A very strong El Niño is forecast for late 2026, raising the risk of another record-breaking fire season, similar to the one of 2024. Illegal gold mining continues to expand under record-high gold prices, degrading forests and rivers. Criminal networks behind mining, logging, and wildlife trafficking shift their activities to whichever jurisdiction has weaker controls, so the region’s environmental security is only as strong as its weakest link. Yet,  the response has remained overwhelmingly national. ACTO is the only truly Amazon-wide platform positioned to propose a regionally coordinated response.

On this anniversary, we offer the following wishes for ACTO’s future, drawn directly from our recent research across the region:

1. Govern the Amazon as a single “precipitationshed,” not just a river basin. Our recent research, “Keeping the flying rivers flowing: How deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon threatens rainfall in Peru and Bolivia” focused on atmospheric moisture transport shows that forest loss in one country can suppress rainfall hundreds of kilometers away in another; Brazil’s forest cover, for instance, is a primary driver of the “flying rivers” that sustain the wet season in Peru and Bolivia. Effective governance needs to account for both the terrestrial and atmospheric river systems, with differentiated responsibilities for countries whose forests sustain moisture transport for their neighbors. A similar approach is already used to jointly manage transboundary river basins in other parts of the world.
2. Treat fire and drought as basin-wide, not national, emergencies. With a major El Niño approaching, ACTO’s fire management guidelines could translate into coordinated early-warning and pre-season preparedness across borders. This means protecting the forests that sustain the region’s moisture pathways, recognizing they are essential not only for reducing fire risk, but also for maintaining rainfall and water supplies far beyond the Amazon itself.
3. Push harmonization, not just cooperation, on illegal mining. Our governance scoreboard shows that every Amazonian country has adopted at least one strong policy that its neighbors lack. ACTO is well placed to strengthen national frameworks through stronger regional governance and coordination. New ministerial resolutions could help spread replicable regulations on issues such as heavy machinery tracking, gold traceability and mercury controls, to close the regulatory gaps that allow criminal networks to simply shift their operations to jurisdictions with weaker controls. 
4. Strengthen ACTO by recognizing and integrating independent monitoring. Civil society platforms, including our own MAAP (Monitoring of the Andes Amazon Program) and Amazon Mining Watch, alongside MapBiomas Amazonía and RAISG — already provide basin-wide monitoring capabilities that complement official national data. ACTO’s new public security commission (CESPIT) offers an opportunity to establish shared regional standards for incorporating these data into decision-making, moving from fragmented, country-by-country arrangements toward a more regional and coordinated framework.
5. Protect the people who protect the forest. Environmental defenders across the region face serious risk. As cooperation between civil society and enforcement bodies grows, real exposure concerns continue to rise. CESPIT is well positioned to lead the development of a common regional protocol for evidence-sharing and confidentiality with clear safeguards to protect those who provide information.

The Amazon’s challenges have outgrown any single government’s capacity to manage them alone. ACTO already provides the institutional foundation for regional cooperation. Strengthening it, broadening its vision, and bringing more voices to the table such as: independent science, civil society, and Indigenous peoples, along governments, is one of the clearest paths toward matching the scale of the response to the scale of the challenge.

 

Amazon Conservation is an international conservation nonprofit working for the past 25 years towards building a thriving Amazon. The organization’s holistic approach focuses on working with local partners and allies to protect wild places, empower people, and put science and technology to work for conservation. Visit amazonconservation.org for more information.