Regenerating people–nature relationships to counter biocultural erosion in the Amazon

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08 July 2026 Regenerating people–nature relationships to counter biocultural erosion in the Amazon Rebuilding the reciprocal care-oriented relationships between Amazonian Indigenous peoples and nature could address the predicted effects of climate change on biodiversity. By Victoria Reyes-García ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2914-8055 0 Victoria Reyes-García Victoria Reyes-García is at the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA), 08010 Barcelona, Spain, and the Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technology, and is in the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). View author publications PubMed Google Scholar

The Amazon basin remains one of the most biologically and culturally diverse regions on Earth, yet this unique heritage is being eroded at an alarming pace. Nearly 300 million hectares of the Amazon basin have already been degraded or fragmented1 and many Indigenous cultures and their languages are endangered2. How closely are the fates of Amazonian biological and cultural diversity intertwined? And what will it take to preserve them? Writing in Nature, Cámara-Leret et al.3 take an important step towards answering the first question.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-01874-1

References Science Panel for the Amazon. The Amazon Assessment Report 2025 (Science Panel for the Amazon, 2025). Bromham, L. et al. Nature Ecol. Evol. 6, 163–173 (2021). Cámara-Leret, R., Roehrdanz, P. R. & Bascompte, J. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10741-y (2026). Fernández-Llamazares, Á. et al. J. Ethnobiol. 41, 144–169 (2021). Krause, T. et al. People Nature 8, 1629–1640 (2026). Gosnell, H. et al. in IPBES Transformative Change Assessment (eds O’Brien, K., Garibaldi, L. & Agrawal, A.) Ch. 5 (Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, 2024). O’Brien, K. et al. IPBES Transformative Change Assessment: Summary for Policymakers (Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, 2024). Reyes-García, V. et al. Commun. Earth Environ. 7, 102 (2026). Mattalia, G. et al. Bioscience 76, 491–500 (2026). Download references

Competing Interests The author declares no competing interests.

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