From ancestral management practices to a low-carbon economy: the Amazon at the heart of COP30
The Amazon show the world, at COP30, that development and preservation are the same path
By Rafaela Collins, from the NINJA Collaborative Coverage at COP30
If you think the Amazon rainforest is untouched, empty, and isolated, it’s time to change that perspective. The Amazon is alive, inhabited, cultivated, and profoundly managed for thousands of years. Not by tractors or drones, but by people. People who plant, harvest, and care for it. People who leave marks on the soil, on the trees, and on time. People who know where the cassava sprouts, where the Brazil nut tree flowers, and where the Curupira forbids passage.
In recent years, a wave of research has shattered the old idea of a virgin forest. Scientists from the Federal University of Western Pará (Ufopa), like Vinícius Honorato and Bruna Rocha, are excavating not only the earth but also our worldview. In partnership with traditional communities and with the aid of LiDAR—a technology that “scans” the forest with lasers—they have discovered geoglyphs, roads, mounds, and Indigenous artifacts over 7,000 years old. Where? In the backyard of a rubber tapper, Do Carmo, who was planting cassava where his ancestors had already planted history.
Learning from the forest and preserving it is part of the Northern region’s identity, and the world needs to listen. Archaeological research from the Federal University of Pará (UFPA) reveals that approximately 12 million people lived in the Amazon before colonization, in sophisticated urban systems integrated with rivers and ecosystems. COP30 is a historic opportunity to look at this past and, with it, build a more sustainable future connected to the cycles of nature.
It is no coincidence. The so-called Indigenous black earth (terra preta), a rich soil created from organic remains, ceramics, and charcoal, shows that Indigenous and traditional populations not only lived here but shaped this ground and continue to shape it. The traditional management of the forest, based on circular clearings, natural seed banks, and respect for the annual floods and droughts, is one of the greatest examples of sustainability ever seen. The standing forest does have an owner. And it is managed with pre-colonial ancestral wisdom.
Meanwhile, on pharmacy shelves, analgesics circulate based on willow, rue, and boldo. What few people know is that over 40% of modern medicines originate from the traditional knowledge of Indigenous peoples, a fact recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO). The pharmaceutical industry profits billions per year from this knowledge, which drives the global analgesic market, for example, moving over $25 billion annually, proving that remedies from the bush are, in fact, science.
And if all this still seems new to you, know that there is already a health center in Manaus where traditional Indigenous medicine is seriously practiced: the Bahserikowi. Created after an emblematic case where an Indigenous child’s leg was saved by the use of ancestral knowledge, the center has already treated almost 3,000 people. Medicine is not just a scalpel; it is also a leaf, a root, a prayer, and respect.
The Legal Amazon currently concentrates only 867.9 thousand Indigenous people, who represent 51.25% of Brazil’s Indigenous population, according to the 2022 census. They are not obstacles to preservation; they are allies. They are the watchful eyes of those who know how to read the sound of the rain and the color of the river. They are young people who today map archaeological sites on a cell phone app, recognizing in the present what their ancestors left as clues. They are the future that has already begun.
In 2024, deforestation decreased in all biomes, and the Amazon saw its lowest number since 2019. It is still not enough, but it shows it is possible, that it works. According to data from the MapBiomas report: “Pará is the state with the largest deforested area in the accumulated period from 2019 to 2024, with approximately 2 million hectares deforested (1,984,813.8 hectares).” The lesson the world still needs to learn is that the forest is preserved with people inside, not with fences around it, because everything that is destroyed removes healing, economy, subsistence, and more from humanity…
The Amazon is not a green void on the map. It is occupied, managed, and lived territory. And recognizing this is the first step towards a low-carbon economy that takes into account what (and who) has always been here.
If it were just for the forest, that would be enough, but the Amazon is much more: it is a pharmacy, a library, a kitchen, a museum, a cradle of cultures, and the engine of a country that urgently needs to stop viewing it as a backyard. And start seeing it as a living room.
Furthermore, if you still need more reasons to value the Amazon as an economic and environmental asset, consider these three, highlighted by the economist Ricardo Amorim:
Over the past decades, the Legal Amazon has doubled its share in Brazil’s GDP, increasing from 5.5% to over 10%. Sustainability in the region can generate profit and social development through instruments like carbon credits. Valuing local biodiversity and transforming native products into innovative solutions, as the pharmaceutical industry has done, is one of the great opportunities for the future.
Because the Amazon is not Brazil’s past; it is the future that has already begun. And this future, as shown by the millenary vestiges beneath our feet and the billions circulating based on its active principles, can and must be cultivated with intelligence, strategy, and urgency. From the black earth that nourished civilizations to the green economy that can transform the country, the Amazon is living proof that development and preservation are not opposites. They are the same path!
