Introduction

The Amazon is a great window for knowledge. We know very little about its fauna, flora, and its people compared to its grandeur and diversity. There is more than one Amazonia within the same Amazonia. And this is all in jeopardy. The largest tropical forest in the world suffers from the effects of deforestation, invasion of public areas, and increasing criminal activities in territories belonging to indigenous peoples, “quilombolas” (Afro-Brazilian maroon villages), and riverside dwellers, in addition to climate change, accelerated by the global increase in greenhouse gas emissions. Human actions can forever transform the forest and its biodiversity.

Therefore, it is crucial to emphasize biodiversity as the great protector of the excellent performance of Amazonian ecosystems. Fauna and flora, terrestrial and aquatic, depend on processes such as photosynthesis, nutrient cycling, and organic matter decomposition. The Amazon is extremely important in regulating the cycles that affect how the Earth operates. There is even diversity in the water in this large territory. Its springs and its tributaries are in three distinct areas: the Andes mountain range, to the west, and the Guiana plateau, to the north, and the Central Plateau, and to the south.

When the headwaters of rivers are in the Andes, a geologically recent formation, the water is filled with sediments, such as those in the Solimões River. It is called whitewater due to its muddy color. These sediments carry nutrients that fertilize other parts of the forest after each flood when water floods several areas. There is practically no sediment in the water when the springs are on the plateaus, which are older geological formations. In these cases, the rivers are known as blackwater, such as the Rio Negro, or clearwater, such as the Xingu.

Landscapes and species have been the result of continuous interaction with human communities inhabiting the forest for the past 11,000 years. However, this rich ecosystem is under intense pressure from activities including the expansion of infrastructure works, advances in the urban fabric, agriculture, illegal logging, and mining activities, in addition to climate change.

We do not even minimally understand the complex interaction between Amazonian ecosystems and our advances on vegetation at a predatory pace. We have overturned and burned our future as an environmental power. Yet, if we harness the power of Amazonian biodiversity, we could lead the green economy or the bioeconomy based on sustainability.

The Amazon is based on the context of tropical forests

Tropical forests are important ecosystems, which contain about half of all terrestrial biodiversity. The main tropical and subtropical forests in the world include Central America, Amazonian, the Atlantic Forest, the vegetation of West Africa, Madagascar, the western Ghats in India, Southeast Asia, and Oceania. Among these, the least impacted by human action are still the Amazonian forest, the forests in parts of West Africa (such as parts of Gabon and Congo), and New Guinea, in Oceania.

Together, these forests are home to around 43% of the world’s trees: approximately 1.4 trillion trees, out of an estimated 3 trillion globally. There are around 390 billion trees in the Amazon alone, which is about 13% of the trees on the planet today. They are the “green infrastructure,” which shelter animal species, smaller plants, and micro-organisms, thus guaranteeing good quality and quantity of water and providing climate stability.

Diversity of the Amazonian ecosystems, species, and genes

The tall, dense, rainy, continually green, and upland forest generally associated with the Amazon is just one among the multiple plant formations home to the biome. This is the so-called solid-ground forest. In addition to it, the region also has floodable forests, such as floodplains and “igapós” (flooded forests), open savanna vegetation, such as meadows, and “campinaranas” (false grasslands), and also features rural and rupicolous foliage in high altitude environments.

These plant formations spread across eight countries (Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, Brazil) and an overseas territory (French Guiana). Brazil is home to around 60% of the Amazonian territory, where all these ecosystems are present. These countries and ecosystems harbor an immense diversity of species.

How many biological species are there in the Amazon?

There is a lot of variation in estimates of the number of plant species in the Amazonian biome. On the one hand, scientists point out that there are more than 40 thousand species of vascular plants – which have sap-conducting vessels -, 30 thousand of which are endemic, which means they do not occur anywhere else in the world. This statistic would represent approximately 10% of all known plants on the planet.

The data, published in an article in “Science” Magazine in 2013, also suggest that the Amazon is home to around 16 thousand species of trees, which would represent approximately 30% of the global diversity of all known trees. Another more recent survey, from 2017, published in the journal of the American Academy of Sciences, reports on more modest numbers. There would be about 14,000 species of plants with seeds (which would add up to from 4 to 5% of the world total), including about 6,700 species of trees.

Just the Brazilian Amazon is home to 10 to 13 thousand species of plants, 427 species of mammals, 1,300 birds, and 805 reptiles and amphibians. There are over 80 monkey species, and 69 of them are endemic. There are 158 species of bats. More than twice as many species alone along the “Rio Negro” (Black River) than those found throughout Europe. In the “terra-firme” (solid ground) of the central Amazon, ants and termites account for about 1/3 of the animal biomass.

The wonderful world of microorganisms

Since the diversity of invertebrates, microorganisms, and other groups is much less known. There are records of 1,050 fungus species in the Brazilian Amazon, among the approximately 5,700 known in Brazil. However, these statistics represent only a tiny fraction of the existing fungal diversity in the country. The primary global estimate is there are 1.5 million species of fungi in the world, and most of them are still unknown to science – in Brazil, this pattern of ignorance also persists.

Generating wealth

Functional diversity is an essential aspect of biodiversity. It is directly linked to ecological resilience, which is the ability of an ecosystem to absorb impacts without losing the ability to provide ecosystem benefits and services. Therefore, this incredible biodiversity displays properties and uses challenges to observe, but that has been known for millennia by ancestral peoples. There are cures for diseases, materials for diverse uses, and the availability of rich and varied foodstuffs etc. Some of these are currently being used and represent a significant portion of the Amazon economy, especially for local populations.

The various Brazilian “Amazons”

The Brazilian Amazon is divided into seven main land holding categories: private properties, Environmental Preservation Areas (APA), settlements, small properties, Indigenous Lands, Conservation Units, and non-designated public forests, and also some lands with undefined landholding data.

Protected areas and indigenous lands are recognized as mainly responsible for the containment and reduction of confirmed deforestation in the last two decades. There is already evidence that disturbances such as fire and selective logging in protected areas can exert an impact equivalent to deforestation on plant and animal species.

On the other hand, small private properties represent around 75% of the total deforestation in the Amazon biome, according to data from the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM). Timber extraction, low-productivity livestock, and agriculture are the main drivers to change land use, considering that two-thirds of what has been deforested is abandoned. Urbanization has been treated as a side effect of agriculture and livestock and other change vectors in land use, such as constructing hydroelectric plants, opening roads, and mining.

Finally, non-designated public forests are those for which the State has not yet defined a specific use. There is a great deal of concern for these lands as the dispute goes on over the use of their lands. The definition needs to be implemented as soon as possible to avoid predatory exploitation by different types of activities. Furthermore, it is also essential to establish conservation mechanisms for these regions that correspond approximately to the size of Germany.

In the middle of the Amazon, there is a tower

The Amazonian Tall Tower Observatory (ATTO) is one of the projects seeking to understand the future of the Amazon regarding the climate, a long-term project managed jointly by scientists from Germany and Brazil. The ATTO tower is 325 meters high, equivalent to an 80-story building. It is located about 150 km away from Manaus, the capital of Amazonia.

The objective of this project is to continuously record meteorological, chemical, and physical data, such as the concentration of greenhouse gases on the planet and biological data. Studying these data will provide new perspectives on how Amazon interacts with the atmosphere and climate, enabling more accurate climate predictions. Some studies have already started to be published and show the complexity of the interactions between the ecosystem, climate, and the biological functioning of the forest.

Climate scenario for the future of the Amazon

IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released its most recent report in 2021, pointing out there is indisputable evidence the increases in greenhouse gas concentrations recorded since 1750 were caused by human activities. And that increased the temperature of the Earth’s surface by 1.1 º C from 1850 to 2019. According to the document prepared by scientists from several countries, including Brazil, climate forecasts for the Amazon are also problematic. According to the document, if greenhouse gas emissions continue at the current rate this century, the Amazon may exceed temperatures exceeding 35°C during most of the year.

But what does it mean?

In the case of the forest, there are already signs that when the forest exceeds 32.2°C, it releases carbon into the atmosphere, aggravating the greenhouse effect and the atmosphere becoming thinner. One of the factors that can make this happen is the change in how photosynthesis takes place. Analyses have shown that the incidence of fires also increases due to increased temperatures and decreased rainfall. So, our climate in the future will possibly cause increased emissions from deforestation.

Possible future increases in deforestation

The Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) forecast shows progressive deforestation in the Amazon until 2030, comparing two different scenarios: controlled by governance and public policies aimed at forest conservation and based on current deforestation rates.

In the governance scenario, the deforestation reference rates are based on the projection from 2020 onwards. They include the rates from 2011 to 2015, a period when deforestation was curbed. In the so-called “business as usual” scenario, public policies remain currently; the forecast applies the deforestation rates from 2017 to 2020 as a reference. There is 80% more deforested area than the governance scenario in this scenario.

A more detailed comparison can be seen in one of the highest concentrated deforestation areas: Altamira, in Pará. The main factors driving deforestation in this region are roads and proximity to cities.

It is not enough to reduce deforestation

The deforestation is not the only factor in forest degradation. Climate change also has a substantial impact on the health of Amazonian ecosystems through increased temperatures, reduced rainfall, and extreme weather events such as heatwaves and severe droughts. In other words, if we stop deforestation and developed countries continue burning fossil fuels, the Amazon will not be able to maintain itself as a forest to the same extent as it has today. In addition to zeroing deforestation, we also have to reduce the burning of fossil fuels to zero globally so that the forest maintains a minimum of its current characteristics.

Economics of sociobiodiversity

Amazonian biodiversity, a consequence of the interaction between the ecosystems present there, and the region’s human populations, can foster a new economy. Food, seasonings, and spices make a good demonstration of the importance of this economy. The essence is using biodiversity components, such as Brazil nuts, rubber, babassu, cocoa, açaí, and many others, to generate new products, such as medicines and cosmetics, for example. It is possible to identify potential economic components based on how human communities use biodiversity that, with the help of emerging technologies, will be able to feed a new economy, keep the forest standing and, at the same time, respect their way of community life.

The challenge is to search for active ingredients resulting in medication, cosmetic products, or other purposes. If, on the one hand, the documentation of Brazilian biodiversity is rooted in the beginnings of the colonial regime in Brazil, on the other hand, the active exploration of the biodiverse components is still developing. It is due to a set of factors ranging from the lack of recognition of the value of indigenous peoples’ knowledge to the lack of systematic investment in research and development in this domain, as well as the legal and ethical challenges the issue raises. However, it is worth remembering the tremendous economic potential of using biodiversity components for pharmacological and cosmetic purposes is gigantic.

From plant to medicine tablets

Nature has been inspiring humanity to search for valuable compounds to produce new products for thousands of years. It must continue to happen, as natural evolution is an excellent mechanism for improving and testing new product solutions. Each destroyed landscape, each ecosystem or traditional community that disappears, bears with it an enormous “collection” of potential cures for diseases, new products, and other infinite possibilities we have not yet conceived of.

Both the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, founded in 1866, and the National Institute for Research in the Amazon (INPA), implemented in 1954, have a long history of research into the region’s biodiversity. Furthermore, in recent decades, federal universities in the Amazon states have expanded and started to play a relevant role in biodiversity and climate change research.

Pathways to a socio-biodiversity economy

There is enormous potential without exploiting timber. However, investments are needed to fully develop its potential. A study has been performed and found which Brazilian municipalities are simultaneously the most excellent native vegetation cover, the poorest, and the most exposed to climate change. 24.4% are in the Amazon out of a total of 398 cities. This pattern is called “green poverty” and raises the following question: how do we eliminate poverty in these municipalities while conserving the native coverage found there? We have to create a new economy for many based on social-biodiverse products to end this poverty by conserving the forests and fighting against climate change.

Traditional peoples as protagonists

A great deal of biodiversity is still unknown in the Amazon, and there are great possibilities for discovering new chemical compounds. We need to establish a systematic strategy to foster innovation based on the knowledge of indigenous peoples and local communities to build the socio-biodiversity economy, including these actors as part of the process, sharing benefits, and respecting previously informed consent processes. This way, the socio-biodiversity economy can gain some ranking and competitiveness and improve the quality of life of the local populations in the Amazon.

The core of sociobiodiversity economics is to understand its objective is not just profit but the preservation of the integrity of biodiversity and, in the case of the Amazon, the maintenance of the standing forest. It is essential to ensure the biodiversity protectors and the forest can live there with dignity for that to happen. By only converting them into suppliers of natural or genetic resources, rather than partners in this possible economy, that is to doom the socio-biodiversity economics to failure. It should include training and preparing people from the forest to work in high-tech labs and taking these facilities into the forest.

Amazon development: possible solutions

One possibility to foster this new forest economy is to combine different activities with public policies, creating a larger strategy to maintain the forest and its protectors. Some examples of solutions:

– Implement zero deforestation as the only way to preserve the ecosystem;
– Develop a sustainable forest economy, focused on products traditionally exploited by extractivism, associated with local product processing;
– Investments in sustainable logistics and tax solutions for improving these production chains;
– Massive investments in education at all levels in the region;
– Strengthen scientific and technological cooperation between research institutes, museums, and universities in the Amazon with Brazilian and international centers of excellence;
– Creation of payment mechanisms for environmental services, embedded or not in products and services, such as community-based tourism, that ensure the maintenance of the forest;
– Making part of the already transformed Amazon into rural or urban areas productive and efficient, restoring ecosystems where necessary, and diversifying agricultural production;
– Define the user standard for existing public lands in the biome, prioritizing conservation and sustainable use to prevent the expansion of deforested areas;
– Approve mega projects in infrastructure and logistics subject to public consultation.