Governing the diverse forest: Polycentric climate governance in the Amazon

Abstract

The Amazon is rapidly approaching its tipping point, which could turn a once enchanted tropical rainforest into a dry, carbon-emitting savannah. This will have catastrophic impacts well beyond the South-American continent and its inhabitants. The region is facing a nowadays familiar challenge of combating climate change and promoting social justice. International climate governance is proving ineffective, as it fails to incorporate the long term wellbeing of local communities. Demands for justice have led to calls for more polycentric climate governance. This approach aims to provide a culture-specific and place-based approach to dealing with the possible consequences of climate change for social justice and sustainable livelihoods. This article examines the scope for introducing Intercultural Polycentric Climate Governance (IPCG) to the Amazon. We select two examples of subnational climate governance and indigenous peoples’ participation in the Amazon as our case studies: the State of Acre in Brazil and the regional department of Ucayali in Peru. Both are seen as pioneers of intercultural climate governance in their national contexts, and both have established indigenous working groups geared to promote the provision of intercultural fairness within their regional governance mechanisms. We conducted a qualitative content analysis, both of our interviews and relevant policy documents. Our study highlights three challenges for successful IPCG: 1) overcoming intercultural injustices; 2) increasing meaningful participation; and 3) filling governance gaps. Our findings reveal that there is still some way to go to meet these outcomes. Bridging polycentricity and interculturality, diverse systems of knowledge and their adherents need to be better appreciated and incorporated as part of the process of reassessing the purpose of IPCG. Only then, will we see the handling of the future of the enchanting Amazon in a holistic way: so much more than mere carbon storage.