Amazonian governance to enable transformations to sustainability - agents

Abstract

The Amazon basin is a 'global keystone' region: locally, continentally and globally it hosts a wide array of environmental services, socio-cultural diversity, and economic activities. Governing these multiple dimensions amid pressing social-environmental, and climate change is one of the most pressing challenges for sustainability. While government-driven solutions are commonly viewed as the route to sustainability, most sustainable forest management in the Amazon comes from individual and collective initiatives. The proposal will contribute approaches and analytical tools to catalyze recognition of and actual contributions of existing, but often scattered 'pieces of solutions' to protect and govern biodiversity and landscapes. Organized in three Working Packages (WP), the project includes stakeholder engagement, multi-temporal analysis of land change at multiple units of analysis, predictive modeling of local conservation action, prognostic modeling of potential landscape connectivity scenarios, and participatory scenario development representing the views of local stakeholders. The project will develop innovative crosscutting methodologies to assess, map, and quantify the role of non-state actors, individual and collective actions to conservation, and use these outcomes to engage with and inform local and regional decision-makers. The project responds to a decision of the Convention of Biological Diversity COP 13 requesting member countries to account for contributions of non-state actors in the conservation of biodiversity. Lessons from the Amazonian basin, therefore, will be relevant to many regions of the global south as they share similar local, national and global contexts.