Amazon Watershed Roundtable

European-Amazonia Relations - Towards Integration of Policies

In November 1993 the EWGA, together with EDRC and the Netherlands Committe for IUCN organised the Amazon Watershed Roundtable 1 in the European Parliament in Brussels. The aim of the roundtable was to draft an action plan which would be communicated to the European Union in order to identify how the relations between the EU and the Amazon can become ecologically sustainable, with concrete proposals on how the EU and its member states can contribute to sustainable development in the region.

The roundtable laid down "principles for cooperation" between Europe and the Amazon region. especially in the fields of protecting the ecology, the indigenous communities and human rights.

Follow up working groups have been created on specific proposals from the Roundtable concerning:

• Structural Adjustment
• International Trade
• Sustainable Ways of Life / Defenitions of Sustainability
• Transnational Corporations and Codes of Conduct
• Biodiversity and Biotechnology
• and Conservation of Amazonia Natural Resources

Also, at this roundtable the global importance of the Guiana Shield region was highlighted. One of the key results of the Roundtable was to explore the feasibility of the integrated management of the regional ecology. This decision was later termed the Guiana Shield Initiative.

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