- For the first time, the G20 group of the world’s biggest economies has reached a multilateral agreement on principles to develop the bioeconomy, but conflicting concepts pose obstacles for traditional communities and can lead to investments in predatory practices.
- Across the Pan-Amazon region, communities who developed the bioeconomy concept centuries ago and practice it today still have a hard time accessing its benefits.
- Experts argue that the success of the bioeconomy will depend on national and local policy decisions.
Developed by Indigenous peoples centuries ago, it was only recently that the bioeconomy’s role in mitigating climate change and protecting biodiversity has gained momentum. Currently valued at $4 trillion globally, the bioeconomy is expected to reach $38.5 trillion by 2050.
In the Pan-Amazon, home to more than 400 Indigenous peoples and the world’s largest river basin — but also to poverty and hunger levels above national averages and escalating violence — the bioeconomy represents a promising solution. “It offers livable alternatives to increasingly prevalent illicit activities and reduces the pressure of threats from loggers, miners and farmers,” Joaquin Carrizosa, strategic adviser to the Secretariat of the Pan-Amazon Network for Bioeconomy, told Mongabay.
In September 2024, it secured a new, high-profile ally: the G20 group of the world’s biggest conventional economies. The G20 Initiative on Bioeconomy (GIB), which lists 10 voluntary high-level principles, is the first multilateral agreement to address the subject, according to the Brazilian government, which held the rotating G20 presidency at the time.
The GIB proposes international collaboration for sustainable development, and that the bioeconomy be inclusive and equitable. For experts like Luiz Brasi Filho, market coordinator at Rede Origens Brasil, a network that connects Amazon producers with companies and consumers, it was a symbolic achievement. “The common understanding reached by the GIB is a crucial step to level the field and direct national and international investments,” he told Mongabay. Yet, the document doesn’t present a clear definition of the term. Instead, it lays out three thematic axes — biotechnology, bioresources and bioecology — and encourages country-specific approaches.
But disputes over what the bioeconomy means can have concrete repercussions on the ground. Carrizosa divides them into two clashing concepts: “On the one hand, you have a bioeconomy that boils down to replicating predatory production models in industries like biofuels and biomass. On the other, one that respects the forest’s ecological limits and values traditional cultures and social justice.” The main problem, he said, is that both notions are combined within the GIB.
Studies show that given that the concept of the bioeconomy determines policies and investments, the lack of clarity around it can end up being harmful for Amazonian ecosystems and their people. Its growing potential and the term’s ambivalence allow large corporations and agribusiness that violate Indigenous rights to benefit from bioeconomy subsidies.
While experts and activists are far from reaching a unified concept, there is a general agreement on the need for clear principles that differentiate the bioeconomy from conventional economic practices, as something that prioritizes people and the environment. “Today’s economy is based on degradation that generates profit,” Jeferson Straatmann, senior analyst of socio-biodiversity economics at the Instituto Socioambiental (ISA), a Brazilian nonprofit that advocates for environmental and Indigenous rights, told Mongabay. “And an economy based on restoring ecosystems, an economy of and for the future, can’t be built within the structures of an economy of the past.”
The bioeconomy in today’s Pan-Amazon
“One of our biggest challenges is to make people understand that products from the Amazon cost more,” Esthela Noteno, one of the founders of the Andi Wayusa Association, told Mongabay. The Ecuadorian association, initiated with family capital, produces a soft drink from the leaves of the guayusa plant (Ilex guayusa).
Noteno, an Indigenous Kichwa, described the labor-intensive process of accessing resources, producing the drink, and, above all, transporting the finished products from the forest to the city, all of which contribute to the end cost. “But what the business world tells us is that coming from the Amazon doesn’t make our product special,” she said.
Her experience illustrates a reality shared by communities across the Pan-Amazon, where structural challenges still pose obstacles for the consolidation of the bioeconomy. With the lack of public policies, poor connectivity, faulty infrastructure and threats of violence, among others, it isn’t uncommon for production costs to be higher than the income generated. “For the very communities that originally provided the bioeconomy, it’s often hard to make it competitive,” Straatmann said.
At the same time, its potential and contributions to national economies remain underestimated. Brasi Filho joked that “the forest doesn’t issue invoices”: in a system where informality prevails, there are often no records of transitions, rendering measurements difficult. “Turns out there are regions producing much more than once thought,” Carrizosa said. He added the GIB could foster better record-keeping and, in turn, more investments.
According to a 2024 technical note from the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), countries across the region share a recognition of the need to sustainably manage and leverage native biodiversity, albeit at different stages of developing bioeconomy frameworks and policies. While Bolivia rejects the term as something associated with the harmful commodification of nature, Ecuador launched in 2020 its first nationwide bioeconomy pact, and countries like Brazil and Colombia are seen as having “comparatively robust and articulated bioeconomy policies and programs.”
Communities on the ground, however, don’t always see these policies materialize. “It’s really unlikely that we receive any support from governmental institutions,” María Clemencia Herrera Nemerayema, founder of the School of Political Education in the Colombian Amazon, told Mongabay. “While the bioeconomy is part of Indigenous life plans, it’s not really integrated into the plans of cities or states.”
She cited access to funding as one of the greatest obstacles to the development of local initiatives, a view supported by the IADB. According to the bank, between 2012 and 2022, the cost of commercial credit was higher for micro and small businesses than for larger enterprises in the Colombian Amazon. “Banks will often refuse to finance bioeconomy initiatives because they can take over a decade to become productive and [profitable], not to mention that they are often not competitive in market terms,” Straatmann said.
Meanwhile, most of the profits generated by the bioeconomy end up concentrated in the downstream segments of the production chain, in the hands of already privileged companies, factories and large landowners. The production chain of the Brazil nut (Bertholletia excelsa), for instance, sees the processing industry keep nearly 80% of the total revenue generated, while the local communities that harvest the nuts get little more than 10%, leaving experts and activists asking: Who really benefits from the bioeconomy?
For a genuinely Amazonian bioeconomy
“We had never used the word bioeconomy until very recently,” Telma Taurepang, general coordinator of the Union of Indigenous Women of the Brazilian Amazon (UMIAB), told Mongabay. “For us, this is ancestral knowledge, something we’ve been doing for generations.”
Brasi Filho said the same is true of most Indigenous communities across the Amazon, where the term is often not well understood. Still, a report from the World Resources Institute (WRI) titled “New Economy for the Brazilian Amazon” has found that replicating and expanding productive arrangements already existing in their territory is the best strategy for local communities to develop a bioeconomy with positive social, environmental and economic results. These arrangements, the report says, combine local solutions with the adaptation of efficient technological innovations, while maintaining ecosystem services for which there are no economically viable substitutes.
The Amazon Rainforest’s myriad ecosystems and cultures demand particular considerations for their sustainable development. Yet, for the Brazil-based Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM), if there’s to be a genuinely Amazonian bioeconomy, there are four pillars it must incorporate. First, it must commit to zero deforestation; second, to value and protect biodiversity; third, to preserve traditional production methods and local knowledge; and finally, a truly Amazonian bioeconomy must equitably share the benefits with the populations who make it possible.
To achieve this, experts argue that it’s necessary to add value to forest products and carve out market niches that recognize their unique costs. Some point to processing technology as a pathway, given that pre-processing can expand product variety and increase selling prices up to five times.
For Straatmann, however, that’s not the answer. He said he doesn’t believe industrializing and vertically integrating Indigenous production methods can make their products more competitive. “Conventional businesses are also investing in technology and they have much more capital to do so. Mechanizing a small factory in the middle of the forest is not enough to rival large-scale production,” he said.
It’s also essential to find ways to ensure a larger share of the revenue stays in the territory. For Noteno, capacity building and business-oriented technical assistance are key in this regard. Her experience suggests that, without it, neither capital nor equipment are enough to support the development of local initiatives. “Before anything else, you need to strengthen local organizations, empower them to manage and advance their businesses. You need to leave knowledge in the communities as well, not only money.”
Above all else, experts argue that a truly Amazonian bioeconomy must be defined by its processes, more than its products. “These communities have a fundamental role in protecting the forest, preserving biodiversity and fighting climate change,” Brasi Filho said. “The socioenvironmental services they provide for the whole of humanity must be acknowledged as an integral, payable part of this bioeconomy.”
For this service to continue, activists argue that the Indigenous right to their land is crucial. “Without demarcated territories, there can be no bioeconomy,” Taurepang said.
The future of the GIB
It took the G20 roughly nine months under its Brazilian presidency to negotiate the high principles for bioeconomy. But the discussion wasn’t a new one. For Carrizosa, it represents the recognition of a long-term, ongoing effort carried out by multiple organizations, notably from the Pan-Amazon region.
The G20’s current president, South Africa, has said it will keep the GIB going. In the country’s inaugural G20 engagement in December 2024, Ronald Lamola, the minister for international relations and cooperation, highlighted key objectives of “solidarity, equality and sustainability” for the upcoming negotiations. Since then, the presidency has expressed its intention to “prioritise bioeconomy policies and developments that encourage actions to address economic growth, environmental protection, and social equity.”
Carrizosa said he believes the GIB can steer financial and investment decisions, particularly as both public and private sectors get a better grasp over long-term climate risks. “It’s not just an altruistic matter: large companies and agribusiness are already facing the disastrous consequences of climate change,” he said. At the same time, however, the current geopolitical scenario of international wars, mistrust in multilateralism, and the U.S.’s abandonment, again, of the Paris Agreement are all daunting obstacles. “In the short term, this means a terribly dramatic setback. We have challenging years ahead.”
In light of the GIB’s nonbinding and voluntary nature, Brasi Filho, Carrizosa and Straatmann all agree that real impacts will depend on national and local policy, which can be positively influenced by the general guidelines offered by the document. “Only time will tell whether or not the GIB will turn out to be yet another empty agenda, but the road for a more sustainable future is already being paved,” Brasi Filho said.
Banner image: Brazil nuts sold by COOBÂ-Y, a member organization of Rede Origens Brasil, a network that connects Amazon producers with companies and consumers. Photo by Amanda Magnani.
Amazon communities reap the smallest share of bioeconomy profits
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