Time Perspective Shaping Sustainability: Lessons from Indigenous Amazon Communities

Abstract

This paper discusses the time perspective of native communities from Amazon Rainforest, showing how time orientation shapes their lives by connecting the forest, communities, and sustainability. Using an immersion research strategy in the heart of the Amazon Forest, we conducted in-depth interviews to understand how different indigenous, riverside, or quilombola communities relate to time. The results contribute to theory and practice by formulating how native communities live in so-called forest time, an epiphenomenal, cyclical, and subjective time orientation. They live each day intensely, share and trade through affection. The certainty that the forest will provide their needs for future days generates a sustainable logic of life in the communities, slowing current days' pace through a long-present perspective. This orientation is culturally shared by traditional communities and helps them maintain the forest and their communities sustainably. The practical contributions highlight the importance of considering the time of the forest as an organizational resource for sustainability.