Indigenous Peoples remain largely underrepresented in global decision-making spaces — revealing a contradiction between their leading role in protecting nature and their absence from the forums where environmental and economic policies are defined. This exclusion is no coincidence: it reflects historical, linguistic, financial, and political barriers that limit the access of those who live in and protect the territories to the tables where the future of biodiversity and the economy is decided.

Today, only a small share of the credit offered by financial institutions reaches those who protect the forest. If governments and multilateral organizations work together to change this, sustainable businesses can thrive — and so can the Amazon. 

Many community-based enterprises in emerging sustainable socio-bioeconomy value chains lack the means and infrastructure to adopt digital monitoring and communication tools to track forest conservation and improve their production processes. With support from Cisco Foundation, in 2021, NESsT launched a search for early-stage technology enterprises that provide sustainable livelihoods to underserved communities and regenerate the environment. Read more about the initiative learnings here.

Our work on the ground in Brazil’s Amazon region has consistently shown that increasing women's participation is critical for the socio-bioeconomy to become a robust and sustainable national development strategy. 

In this blog, we speak with bioeconomy entrepreneurs to better understand the challenges they face when applying for funding from multiple sources. Read it now to learn how complex application criteria and reporting demands impact their businesses and explore actionable recommendations for how the funding community can help ensure more equitable, inclusive access to financing. 

NESsT’s recent study and extensive research identifies that the term ‘bioeconomy’ is often broadly interpreted by bioeconomy funders and global policymakers, sometimes straying far from a vision of environmental stewardship. We interviewed Indigenous leaders and entrepreneurs as part of ongoing efforts to deepen our understanding of their perspectives, vision and expectations of the bioeconomy as not just as an economic model, but as a way of life rooted deeply in ancestral tradition.  

This blog delves into the methodology behind NESsT’s publication to improve the targeting, accessibility, efficacy, and efficiency of investments in the Amazon bioeconomy; it homes in on NESsT’s firm intention to bring local voices to global discussions around Amazon bioeconomy funding and explores how NESsT anchored the publication in authentic narratives and diverse Amazonian contexts while tailoring the message for the international financing community.