Our work in South America was initiated in Madre de Dios, a tropical biodiversity hotspot under threat. This area in the Peruvian Amazon shows how the entanglement of conservation and inequality pushes us to ask: How can we protect biodiversity and people’s livelihoods – simultaneously?

In a local co-design workshop, 40 participants from various backgrounds collaborated to identify practicable pathways to reconcile nature protection and local needs. A total of initially 182 ideas were reduced to 6 potential incubator projects. Two such are already being implemented: Biodiversity Monitoring and Resilient Buffer Zones.