Support grows for sustainable development, a 'bioeconomy,' in the Amazon

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The Brazilian Amazon has long been home to small and mid-sized sustainable businesses that use forest nuts, fruits and other products, and it's an incubator for new ones

BELEM, Brazil — If all goes according to plan, in a few weeks people will be sipping a shake that Marcelo Salazar has been developing for three years, made from the Amazon jungle’s cornucopia.

His company Mazo Mana Forest Food has partnered with communities that live from the forest and gather the Brazil nuts, cocoa beans, acai, mushrooms, fruits and other ingredients that go into the drinks. They have received some backing from a business incubator based in Manaus that focuses on sustainable forest businesses, to counter an economy based on logging and ranching.

“To turn the game around, I think it takes a new generation of ventures that combine different business models," Salazar said.

Some hope sustainable ventures like this will be part of a new “bioeconomy,” a buzzword at the Amazon Summit in Belem in early August, where policymakers voiced eagerness to protect the rainforest and provide a livelihood for tens of millions of rainforest residents.

But beyond general support for the notion, there was little consensus about what exactly a bioeconomy should look like. Salazar attended and spoke on a panel organized by Brazil’s environment ministry titled “The challenge of building an Amazon bioeconomy.”

The idea is not new. It is the latest term for sustainable livelihood, or sustainable development or the green economy. Small to mid-size examples of it exist across the Amazon.

Besides the Brazil nuts and acai harvesters, people are making chocolate from native cocoa. A sustainable fishery for one of the world’s largest freshwater fish has given