Ross MacLeod

The Amazon rainforest in general and the Manu Biosphere Reserve UNESCO World Heritage site specifically, exemplify the major global challenge for sustainable development and conservation. How can we maintain fragile ecosystems that provide vital ecosystem services whilst delivering sustainable economic and social futures for some of the world’s most marginalised local peoples?

Pilot conservation research work by University of Glasgow and local Peruvian partners has identified rainforest regeneration as a key process that can recreate high value habitats and could be used to create a sustainable environmental/economic upward spiral in the Amazon. Here we request targeted funding to support the PhD candidates conducting a demonstration project that would use ground breaking conservation research into rainforest regeneration as a vehicle for delivering unique environmental education and training opportunities to generate income streams to support, promote and validate ongoing sustainable development in the Manu Biosphere Reserve.

The project will thus collect the evidence to demonstrate a model for creating a reversal of the current negative environmental/economic degradation cycle in the area. A key feature of this model is that it would be replicable at focal sites across the Amazon and in impoverished areas with fragile ecosystems more generally.

First published: 9 July 2014

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