Local governance, climate change, and natural resource management in the Amazon

Abstract

Strengthening community-based natural resource management initiatives is critical in dealing with the effects of climate change and pressures from predatory exploitation on ecosystems and fostering the adaptive capacities of communities. Adaptive capacity directly depends on the adopted governance system. The Amazon is home to a great diversity of ecosystems and traditional peoples (for example, indigenous peoples, extractivists, quilombolas), and plays a fundamental role in regulating the global climate. One of the current major challenges is to control and mitigate the impacts of climate change and the predatory exploitation of natural resources on both natural and human systems. These impacts compromise families' income and quality of life, the guarantee of their basic rights and the effectiveness of public policies for the region. To consider traditional, indigenous and quilombola peoples in jointly creating solutions to these problems is crucial to achieve effective results. We argue that strengthening and valuing local governance should be the starting point and guideline for natural resource management projects to ensure that challenges are overcome and enable the development of an effective socio-biodiversity economy.