As a result of the advocacy process with organizations from the business sector, IRI-Colombia and the Bogotá Chamber of Commerce held a webinar aimed at entrepreneurs and traders, in order to reflect on the importance of protecting the Amazonian tropical forests to ensure agricultural activities in the Bogotá Savannah and the well-being of the central area of the country.
The Caquetá and Putumayo rivers cross the country from west to east and travel thousands of kilometers until they flow into the Amazon River, in Brazil. Although they are considered two of the most important tributaries of the Amazon region, they are born in the Colombian Massif, located in the Andean region, where the central and western mountain ranges also originate.
Despite having marked geological, biological, and climatic differences, these two regions have a vital relationship. In order to make visible the importance of the interconnection of these two regions, on May 8 the Interreligious Initiative for Tropical Forests, in alliance with the Bogotá Chamber of Commerce, held the virtual seminar “The Savannah and the Amazon: a link of sustainability”.
Almost 50 agricultural and agro-industrial merchants from the Bogotá Savannah attended the meeting, as a result of the advocacy process that IRI-Colombia has been developing since last year, creating collaborative work spaces with the private sector.
The seminar sought to address the fundamental role of the Amazon in the environmental but also socioeconomic sustainability of the central region of the country. Likewise, to reflect on the importance of stopping deforestation in the Amazon, restoring its biological diversity and ensuring connectivity between both areas, as necessary conditions to ensure the sustainability of agricultural activities in the Bogotá Savannah.
“This is a great opportunity to create synergies between the Chamber’s sustainability policy and the mission objectives of IRI-Colombia, which find a meeting point on issues such as human rights, climate action and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),” said the coordinator of the Initiative, Blanca Lucía Echeverry, who moderated the seminar.
In turn, the coordinator of Productivity and Sustainability of the Bogotá Chamber of Commerce, Frederick Archila Carabali, said that “IRI-Colombia is our main ally in terms of environmental impact.”
The pedagogical day was attended by María Daniela Pulido Osorio, Liven Fernando Martínez and Santiago Roberto Duque, academic experts in biodiversity, climate change and Amazonian limnology, respectively.
For three hours, the scientists took a tour from the geological formation of the Colombian Amazon and its impact on the morphological, hydrological and biological characteristics of the region, to the impact of deforestation and climate change, and the hydrological dynamics that allow it to bring water to the center of the country and the south of the continent.
“The Amazon was formed thanks to the different movements of the earth’s crust from 225 million years ago – when there was only one continent, Pangea – until the appearance of the continents we know today,” explained María Daniela Pulido, environmental engineer, master’s degree in environmental engineering and management. In the conference “What is the Amazon”, the biodiversity expert referred to how the dynamics of the movement of tectonic plates over billions of years gave rise to the Andes Mountains and the Amazon, and affected the conformation and dynamics of its water system, its geographical and biological structure. and in the biogeoclimatic conditions of this biome.
“When the Andes Mountains appear, to the west of the continent, the water vapor that enters from the Atlantic Ocean hits its rock formations. This causes the winds to pass over the mountain range, but the precipitation remains in the Amazon plain. Thanks to this dynamic, its climatic condition of tropical humid forest occurs,” added the academic, a professor at the Navarra University Foundation.
Without vegetation there is no life
“Emissions of different types of gases, such as carbon dioxide, methane and other molecules that cause the greenhouse effect, are captured by plants and trees,” he said
Liven Fernando Martínez, who gave a lecture on the relationship between deforestation and climate change. The agronomist, Master in Environment, Ph.D. in Tourism, Economics and Management addressed the crucial role played by tropical forests in biodiversity conservation, water regulation and carbon fixation.
The scientist highlighted the importance of the Amazonian tropical forests in carrying out this process on a massive scale. It is estimated that they retain around 138 million tons of carbon in their biomass, captured through photosynthesis. “The existence of vegetation is essential in this process. Without it, there is no photosynthesis and, therefore, its production of basic structures such as amino acids and proteins, which can form other more complex ones such as tissues, organs, systems, individuals, etc.,” added the academic.
Likewise, the researcher of the Environmental Impact Assessment group of the Institute of Environmental Studies of the National University referred to the causes of deforestation, such as the expansion of roads, livestock, agribusiness, timber extraction, illicit crops, mining and potrerization. “We should also reflect on what our contribution to these activities is, as a result of our consumption dynamics,” he stressed.
The Amazon, a source of water for the continent
“Water is not an infinite resource. Although we have a blue planet, less than 1% of the liquid or solid mass – in the case of the ice and polar ice caps – is available for human consumption,” said the biologist and master’s degree in Biology, Santiago Duque, who gave the conference “The ‘flying rivers’ and the virtuous cycle of water: their relationship with the sustainability of the Savannah”.
In his presentation, the expert in Amazonian limnology addressed the characterization and distribution of the Amazon’s water resources; the dynamics of rainfall patterns and climate variability in the region; and the origin and functioning of the ‘flying rivers’.
According to the scientist, due to its position in the equatorial zone, Colombia is located in the intertropical convergence zone, where the trade winds of the northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere converge – those from the North are stronger at the end and beginning of the year, and those from the South in the middle of the year – which move the cloud strip. This movement determines the rainfall patterns and weather conditions of the entire Colombian territory. However, he clarifies, for it to rain there must be moisture in the atmosphere. This comes from the oceans and the evapotranspiration of plants, that is, from the expulsion of water vapor that occurs as a result of the photosynthesis process.
“Throughout the year, the great Amazon biome, of more than 7 million km2 in extension, releases huge amounts of moisture into the atmosphere, which feed the ‘flying rivers’,” said the academic from the National University (Leticia campus), referring to this hydrological phenomenon, thanks to which the Amazon rainforest provides water to a large part of South America.
The ‘flying rivers’ are the result of a complex process in which, due to pressure changes in the altitudes of the atmosphere, the Amazon acts as a ‘bomb’ that absorbs moisture from the Atlantic Ocean, then releases it again and, helped by the trade winds, transports it to the Andean mountain range and the south of the continent.
This airflow of water depends on a specific ‘machinery’: the Amazon forest. “It only works if the forest is standing, but not the reforested forest, but the pristine one, of large and old trees, which have the capacity to release more than 1,000 liters a day,” said Santiago Duque.
The rain that falls in the páramos, where the rivers that feed the Chingaza are born, represents more than 70% of the water consumed daily in Bogotá and comes from the systems of the Colombian eastern plain that generate moisture, that is, from the ‘flying rivers’. This was highlighted by the former director of the Amazon limnology research group and the research hotbed on fisheries management and environmental governance in Amazonian rivers and wetlands, who made an urgent call to stop deforestation, as a condition for the Amazon tropical forest to preserve its evapotranspiration capacity and the ‘flying rivers’ to continue supplying water to the country and the rest of the South American continent. “The loss of the Amazon forest is irreparable. Its natural regeneration lasts for several centuries. With what we do today we harm our children and grandchildren, that is why we must reach a zero deforestation policy,” he said.
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