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The Amazon Biosphere Reserves Project: Improving the resilience and halting biodiversity loss of the greater Amazon Basin has been implemented since 2020 through a partnership between UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere Program and the LVMH (Louis Vuitton-Moët-Hennessy) group.
The Amazonia Project connects research to action through the co-production of knowledge and a solution-oriented approach to developing an integrated landscape management model. The project employs participatory methods to integrate scientific analyses and local knowledge, jointly identifying the challenges faced by local communities and stakeholders, and proposing solutions to address the pressures and needs for the long-term sustainability of biosphere reserves and their surroundings in the Amazon River basin.
The project builds on the idea that a variety of initiatives and responses to urgent challenges exist at different levels across the region. However, these initiatives face obstacles, including fragmented planning, limited local consultation, and siloed sectoral approaches, which hinder their progress, replication, and expansion.
I have contributed to the scientific team supporting UNESCO by developing and strengthening key components that support the project's growth.
This includes building a geodatabase for data integration and analysis, combining participatory diagnosis maps and surveys with land-use change analysis, and facilitating local and regional workshops and training sessions—both online and in-person—for park rangers, Indigenous community leaders, local managers, and government officials. These efforts led to the development of online tools, technical reports, and manuals. These resources have been essential in the joint development of integrated management plans for these areas by UNESCO and biosphere reserve management committees.
The Amazon Biosphere Reserves Project provided the first systematic spatial-temporal analysis of land-use and cover dynamics in the eight biosphere reserves of the Amazon River basin. The results include 24 years of forest cover loss (Global Forest Watch), 24 years of fires and burned area (FIRMS/NASA), and 34 years of land use and cover changes and transitions (MapBiomas).
To provide users and local managers with a tool for data visualization, I have developed an experimental interactive app (Google Earth Engine App) that incorporates various geospatial data layers related to the project, enabling users to visualize critical data at the biosphere reserve scale.
One of the project's main pillars was identifying local demands and priorities, and mapping and supporting key place-based sustainable initiatives to help address external pressures that threaten the integrity of biosphere reserves. These initiatives include strengthening participatory and inclusive governance, improving infrastructure for planning and monitoring, restoring degraded ecosystems, conserving biodiversity, promoting sustainable agroforestry systems, and adding value to local sociobiodiversity product chains.
Since 2020, more than 80 initiatives have been supported, many of which have built on existing opportunities within biosphere reserves. These initiatives have been selected collaboratively by MAB focal points, biosphere reserve managers, local actors, and project coordinators, focusing on those that can empower communities, harness innovation and local technology, and are scalable and replicable. All aim to encourage social participation, including women, youth, and Indigenous groups, by integrating scientific, local, and Indigenous knowledge to set priorities and develop practices tailored to the social, economic, and environmental contexts of the Amazon region.
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