President da Silva of Brazil’s summit to rein in deforestation of the Amazon, instead of bringing solidarity to the cause, has ended up exposing disputes among South American leaders over limiting deforestation and oil and gas exploration.

The summit began on Tuesday at Belem in northern Brazil. Mr. da Silva is attempting to fulfill a campaign promise to achieve “zero deforestation” in the Amazon, the world’s largest tropical rainforest, which covers parts of eight South American countries. Yet, on the first day, he bumped heads with his Colombian counterpart, and proceeded to lose the trust of several environmental groups.

President Petro of Colombia sought to add a staple of the global environmental movement agenda, demanding an end to gas and oil exploration in the Amazon, to the agenda. Yet, in an interview with Time last year, Mr. da Silva made clear that “as long as you don’t have alternative energy, you will continue to use the energy that you have.” 

Such disagreements among the Latin American leaders undermined their declared promotion of a united front to combat what they see as an existential threat of a global disaster. It opened them to criticism from environmental activists. 

The leaders at the Amazon summit failed to agree on protecting the rainforest, a nonprofit organization, Avaaz, said in a statement sent to the Sun after the event’s first day. No agreement was reached on setting up goals to protect the Amazon from deforestation, “which has pushed the biome to a dangerous tipping point,” the statement says. 

On Tuesday, the leaders issued a 113-point document committing them to ending illegal activities in the Amazon and to supporting the rights of indigenous populations and local communities, which have been fighting for the preservation of their natural and cultural heritages for decades.

What the document failed to address are concrete plans for its zero-deforestation objectives. “It casts serious doubt over the region’s leaders’ willingness to protect this major carbon sink and home to 10 percent of the world’s biodiversity,” a campaign director at Avaaz, Diego Casaes, says.

The declaration was “disappointing to say the least,” the executive secretary of an environmental coalition, Climate Observatory of Brazil, Marcio Astrini, tells the Sun. While the world faces nagging heatwaves, “it is not acceptable” that the leaders were unable to compromise on ending deforestation, he adds.

Officials from the eight Amazon countries flew to Brazil for the summit, including President Arce of Bolivia, President Boluarte of Peru, and Mr. Petro. Venezuela’s president, Nicolas Maduro, pulled out at the last minute, citing an ear infection. It is the first summit of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization in 14 years. Other members of the Treaty are Suriname, Guyana, and Ecuador. 

In his speech on opening day, Mr. da Silva vouched to repair the country’s reputation after the “disastrous” years of his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro. Under his term, between 2019 and 2022, environmentalists say deforestation increased by about 60 percent. 

Climate action has “never been so urgent,” Mr. da Silva said. “The challenges of our era and the opportunities arising from them demand we act in unison.”

In July, there was a 66 percent drop in the rate of deforestation compared to the same time last year, according to the National Institute for Space Research of Brazil.  

Mr. Petro’s proposal to halt fossil fuels contracts in the Amazon was left out of the Belem Declaration. “Even if we get deforestation under control, the Amazon faces dire threats if global heating continues to climb,” Mr. Petro wrote last month in a Miami Herald piece, adding that a policy to “phase out” fossil fuels must be set to “avoid the point of no return.”

In his speech at the summit on Tuesday, Mr. Petro proposed a regional military alliance, under a plan he titled “Amazonian NATO,” and an Amazonian court to protect the forest and punish illegal activities. “You defend life with reason, but also with weapons,” Mr. Petro said. 

Mr. da Silva’s state-run oil company, Petrobras, however, is seeking permission to explore oil at the mouth of the Amazon River. In an interview last week with the Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo, Mr. da Silva said his government has not ruled out exploring for oil in the region. 

Mr. da Silva will emerge politically stronger from the summit even though it failed to achieve its major goals, Mr. Astrini says, adding, “even if these commitments are now very weak, Lula will say that his effort is toward increasing collective ambition.”