Online Report Launch: Sustainable Infrastructure in the Amazon

Please join the CSIS Project on Prosperity and Development for the launch of its new report, Sustainable Infrastructure in the Amazon: Connecting Environmental Preservation with Governance, Security, and Economic Development. 

Over the past year, CSIS has conducted a research project exploring how deforestation in the Amazon Basin is linked with weak governance, insecurity and conflict, and inadequate infrastructure planning in the region. Our findings reveal that these countries have structural challenges that enable the drivers of deforestation to thrive. As a result, deforestation in the Amazon cannot be solely circumscribed as an environmental phenomenon; it is the inevitable outcome of a confluence of security, economic, and governance issues. Introducing infrastructure development into this existing complex landscape can increase the risk to the ecosystem and the people who inhabit it. Through this project, CSIS aims to connect the non-environmental issues with the shrinking of the Amazon ecosystem and reach a wider audience by engaging actors beyond the environmental community. The findings of this report are based on desk reviews, field interviews in three countries—Brazil, Colombia, and Peru (which comprise more than 80 percent of the Amazon Basin and are its largest economies), and Washington-based consultations.

This event was made possible by generous support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.