The Amazon is home to around half of the planet’s biodiversity and a major provider of ecosystem goods and services, making it critical for climate and ecosystem functioning at the local, regional and global levels. The Amazon basin is an area of immense socioenvironmental diversity of global importance, in a process of rapid change. At present, climate change and increasing human intervention are driving the Amazon to a tipping point, with high rates of deforestation, migration and pollution in the region, threatening its life supporting ecosystem services and putting pressure on local cultures.

Preceding the approval of Agenda 2030, in 2012, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon commissioned the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) to mobilize academia, research institutes, civil society, and the private sector in pursuit of practical solutions for sustainable development

In this context in 2015, UNDP, supported by its country offices, and in consultation with national authorities, conducted country-level studies on the situation of the Amazon region in the countries that share the Amazon: Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela, which resulted in eight country reports. This policy paper condenses those reports with the aim to be a reference and support document for policy makers, practitioners, and researchers aiming to build solutions to sustainable development challenges in the Amazon.