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The expansion of globalized industrial societies is causing global warming, ecosystem degradation, and species and language extinctions worldwide. Mainstream conservation efforts still focus on nature protection strategies to revert this crisis, often overlooking the essential roles of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IP&LC) in protecting biodiversity and ecosystems globally. Here we assess the scientific literature to identify relationships between biodiversity (including ecosystem diversity) and cultural diversity, and investigate how these connections may affect conservation outcomes in tropical lowland South America. Our assessment reveals a network of interactions and feedbacks between biodiversity and diverse IP&LC, suggesting interconnectedness and interdependencies from which multiple benefits to nature and societies emerge. We illustrate our findings with five case studies of successful conservation models, described as consolidated or promising 'social-ecological hope spots', that show how engagement with IP&LC of various cultures may be the best hope for biodiversity and ecosystem conservation, particularly when aligned with science and technology. In light of these five inspiring cases, we argue that conservation science and policies need to recognize that protecting and promoting both biological and cultural diversities can provide additional co-benefits and solutions to maintain ecosystems resilient in the face of global changes., (© 2024. Springer Nature Limited.)

For centuries Amazonia has held the Western scientific and popular imagination as a primordial forest, only minimally impacted by small, simple and dispersed groups that inhabit the region. Studies in historical ecology refute this view. Rather than pristine tropical forest, some areas are better viewed as constructed or 'domesticated' landscapes, dramatically altered by indigenous groups in the past. This paper reviews recent archaeological research in several areas along the Amazon River with evidence of large pre-European (ca 400-500 calendar years before the present) occupations and large-scale transformations of forest and wetland environments. Research from the southern margins of closed tropical forest, in the headwaters of the Xingu River, are highlighted as an example of constructed nature in the Amazon. In all cases, human influences dramatically altered the distribution, frequency and configurations of biological communities and ecological settings. Findings of historical change and cultural variability, including diverse small to medium-sized complex societies, have clear implications for questions of conservation and sustainability and, specifically, what constitutes 'hotspots' of bio-historical diversity in the Amazon region.

The archaeology of pre-Columbian poLities in the Amazon River basin forces a reconsideration of early urbanism and long-term change in tropical forest landscapes. We describe settlement and land-use patterns of complex societies on the eve of European contact (after 1492) in the Upper Xingu region of the Brazilian Amazon. These societies were organized in articulated clusters, representing small independent polities, within a regional peer polity. These patterns constitute a "galactic" form of prehistoric urbanism, sharing features with small-scale urban polities in other areas. Understanding long-term change in coupled human-environment systems relating to these societies has implications for conservation and sustainable development, notably to control ecological degradation and maintain regional biodiversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A letter to the editor is presented in response to the article "Brazilian Politics Threaten Environmental Policies" in the August 19, 2016 issue, regarding the risks posed by environmental policy reforms to the conservation of Amazonian biodiversity.