The Amazon is the world’s largest and most diverse tropical forest and the ancestral home of over 1 million indigenous peoples. The region is crucial to the global water cycle and the Earth’s carbon balance, and therefore vital to the world’s sustainability goals and climate targets. Preserving the Amazon while also considering social issues, such as indigenous rights, law enforcement and corporate responsibility, was the central, urgent theme at a conference at Princeton University.

The conference “Amazonian Leapfrogging: Long-term Vision for Safeguarding the Amazon for Brazil and the Planet” offered an opportunity to discuss an alternative vision for the Brazilian Amazon, which is currently threatened by illegal deforestation, fires and socioeconomic inequality.

The conference provided a platform for Princeton scholars and Brazilian scientists, environmental and indigenous leaders, policy experts, artists, business innovators, and social entrepreneurs to discuss cross-cutting solutions. Participants considered what they — both as representatives of their sectors and collaboratively — can do to better manage resources, support vital policies, and act strategically to address the socio-environmental challenges of today and of the future.