Brazil | October 14, 2026
By Pedro Capra, Swissnex in Brazil
At the end of August, I took part in a discussion on the Amazonian bioeconomy, my first conference on this topic outside Brazil.
The second edition of the Pan-Amazonian Bioeconomy Action Forum brought together more than 160 people from eight countries, one year after the first gathering held in Leticia, Colombia. The forest is one interconnected system, but the regulatory frameworks, support policies, and benefit-sharing mechanisms are many.
Indeed, the Pan-Amazonia spans eight countries. According to the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO), Brazil contains the largest share of the Amazon forest, accounting for 63% of its total area, followed by Peru (13%) and Colombia (7.6%). But the importance of the region goes beyond national borders: all Amazonian countries play a role in maintaining the ecological systems that connect the forest across territories.
For those who are not familiar with the concept, Pan-Amazonia recognizes the region as a geographical space shaped by national, cultural, and political borders, while also acknowledging the interdependence of its different actors and components. It invites us to understand the region’s needs collectively and, in doing so, strengthen cooperation around its governance.
That is the goal. Yet, governance in the Amazon remains fragmented across countries, which can limit commercial and scientific exchanges. This makes cross-border initiatives particularly important: they can create practical connections between actors and help turn regional cooperation into action.
The opportunity of Pan-Amazonian cooperation
Throughout the forum, the Pan-Amazon was often approached through the lens of trade, with customs barriers, misaligned legislation, and blocked value chains emerging as recurring concerns. But these challenges go beyond trade. Representatives of Amazonian Indigenous communities, including OPIAC, COICA, CONAQ, CNS, and AIDESEP, stressed that without guaranteed territorial rights, no value chain can be sustainable. Decisions about what is researched, funded, and brought to market must also involve those who live in these territories.
Research and innovation face similar barriers. Funding remains largely structured country by country, with misaligned calendars and evaluation systems that do not communicate with one another. The Network’s funding study points to this fragmented ecosystem, while the thematic session on Pan-Amazonian challenges, coordinated by Taciana de Carvalho Coutinho and focused on transboundary governance, highlighted another consequence: knowledge can struggle to circulate across borders, sometimes even more than products.
Yet the region also has complementary strengths that could support greater cooperation. Colombia brings strong capacities in bioprospecting, biotechnology, and biodiversity-based products; Peru has expertise in applied research and the transformation of Amazonian resources, notably through IIAP and the CITE centers; and Brazil has one of the region’s most structured research and innovation ecosystems, combining scientific capacity, funding, infrastructure, and potential for scaling.
This is why I spent much of the forum in the Research and Knowledge Task Force, co-coordinated by João Arthur Reis from the Amazônia +10 Initiative. Building a Pan-Amazonian research network means finding ways to connect these complementary capacities across existing borders. Projects such as PaCTAS*, in the Alto Solimões, show that this is already possible, bringing together actors across the triple border between Brazil, Colombia, and Peru.
From Local Connections to Pan-Amazonian Cooperation
I came to Iquitos to learn and meet people doing work similar to mine through nexBio Amazonia at Swissnex. The program, powered by Swissnex in Brazil, the Swiss Leading House for Latin America (University of St. Gallen), and the National Council of State Funding Agencies (CONFAP), was built from the outset on the conviction that international cooperation should grow from the inside out and from the bottom up, with socio-bioeconomy actors as protagonists.
This approach also echoes Swissnex in Brazil’s recent report, Switzerland and Amazonia: Stories of Collaboration. Unlike the first report, launched at COP30 last year, this edition features eight Swiss-Amazonian cases spanning research, innovation, finance, and bioeconomy.
At Swissnex, we know that creating these bridges requires listening, identifying opportunities, learning through trial and error, and, above all, finding the right people to collaborate with. That is why the field visit was so important. Meeting regional actors such as IIAP, CITE Productivo, and CITE Forestal Maynas, working in areas including aquaculture, the circular economy, and the transformation of Amazonian products, broadened my perspective and the possibilities for what we can continue to co-create through our work at Swissnex.
I would like to thank the Pan-Amazonian Bioeconomy Network for organizing this gathering, especially its Secretariat, with Joana Oliveira de Oliveira from WRI Brasil and Rachel Biderman from Conservation International. May new collaborations emerge from this ongoing work to foster connections and create the conditions for them to flourish.
Iquitos added another layer to what we already know: if we want to contribute to a thriving bioeconomy, our work cannot stop at borders.
*PaCTAS is a transboundary scientific cooperation initiative in the Alto Solimões, at the border between Brazil, Colombia, and Peru, aimed at connecting researchers, institutions, and territories around shared Amazonian challenges.