2025 Amazon Assessment Report

Launched at COP30, the SPA’s 2025 Assessment Report warns that the Amazon’s ecological, economic, and socio-cultural connectivity — the interlinked natural systems, peoples, and knowledge that sustain the region — is under severe threat. In 2021, the SPA released its first landmark Amazon Assessment Report at COP26, hailed as an “encyclopedia” of the Amazon for its unprecedented scientific scope, inclusion of Indigenous scientists, and transparent process, including peer review and public consultation.

The Amazon is home to more than 47 million people, including 2.2 million Indigenous People, and harbors around 13% of the world’s known species. Its forests and rivers sustain rainfall, biodiversity, cultural exchange, and livelihoods far beyond the basin.

Land grabbing, illegal gold mining and logging, and drug trafficking are destroying ecosystems, displacing communities, and fueling violence. Environmental degradation is triggering health crises and increasing pandemic risks. Combined with climate change and destructive land use, these pressures are pushing the Amazon toward a tipping point that could irreversibly disrupt rainfall patterns, biodiversity, carbon storage, and human well-being.

The 2025 Report explores the many dimensions of Amazonian connectivity, emphasizing that maintaining ecological and sociocultural connections is critical not only for safeguarding the Amazon but also for addressing the global climate crisis. While there are diverse pathways to achieve this goal, many powerful initiatives are already underway across the region. The report features a series of Calls to Action that highlight solutions currently under discussion or in implementation to address the most urgent challenges and sustain or restore Amazonian connectivity across different scales and timeframes.

Key recommendations from the report’s chapters and Calls to Action include halting deforestation, degradation, and wildfires, the dismantling of illegal economies, the expansion and protection of Indigenous Territories and Protected Areas, and the integration of science, technology, and Indigenous and Local Knowledge to advance nature-based solutions. The report calls for maintaining and conserving Amazon’s ecological and socio-cultural connectivity by creating enabling conditions that strengthen socio-bioeconomies, catalyze the transition to multifunctional production systems, and mobilize large-scale finance for the conservation and restoration of healthy standing forests and flowing rivers. Coordinated regional collaboration across borders, strong enforcement, and Indigenous and local leadership are also essential to safeguard connectivity, mitigate climate change, and maintain the Amazon as a connected system that supports life locally, regionally, and globally.

While the Amazon faces urgent challenges and risks reaching a critical tipping point, the 2025 Assessment Report highlights that science-based, Indigenous, local, and nature-based solutions can guide the region toward a sustainable future.