Stretching more than 2 million square miles across parts of nine South American countries, the Amazon region provides these nations and the world with an array of benefits. It is home to around 47 million people, including over 400 groups of Indigenous people. It offers a habitat for innumerable plant and animal species, many of which are found nowhere else on Earth. Its forests and soils have long served as a carbon sink, absorbing carbon that would otherwise contribute to climate change.  

But the Amazon is being damaged and its benefits undercut by deforestation, illegal mining, and other human activities. For example, a 2021 study found that a part of the Amazon is now releasing more carbon to the atmosphere than it captures and stores, a shift partially due to deforestation.  

Protecting and restoring the Amazon and its biodiversity is the goal of a new initiative of the Inter-American Network of Academies of Sciences — a network of science academies from 24 countries in South America, Central America, and North America. 

Through the initiative, the IANAS academies will provide evidence-based advice for policymakers at the local, regional, and global levels on subjects related to the Amazon and its connection to global environmental changes that impact energy, water and food security, health, and biodiversity. A key part of the effort will be strengthening the network of researchers from the region and other research programs focusing on the Amazon. 

The IANAS academies met to plan the initiative at an August meeting in Manaus, Brazil, that was organized by IANAS and the Brazilian Academy of Sciences. IANAS then announced the initiative in a letter given to Brazil’s minister of science, technology, and innovation in advance of the Amazon Summit, which brought together heads of state from the Amazonian countries in Belem, Brazil.  

The Amazon Initiative is the latest collective effort of IANAS, which was established in 2004 to help the academies coordinate efforts to strengthen science and technology as a tool for advancing research and development, prosperity, and equity in the Americas.  

The U.S. National Academy of Sciences has been a member of IANAS since its creation, and NAS member Karen Strier currently serves as a co-chair for the network.  

“IANAS has worked together on engagement of women in science, on water issues, on clean energy access, and on science education,” said U.S. NAS President Marcia McNutt, in remarks offered to participants at the Manaus meeting. “The priorities IANAS chooses in the future will be critical for the region and for all of our countries.” 

“The future of the Amazon is important to the whole world, because of its outsized impact on climate, environmental change, and global biodiversity,” she said.  

Read the IANAS press release announcing the new initiative.