The Amazon Basin Today
Home to more than 30 million people and 10% of the Earth’s species, the Amazon contains 20% of the world’s fresh water, and serves as an important anchor for South American climate and rainfall.
Photo: Nassif Jordy
But the Amazon could disappear in our lifetimes.
Deforestation and unsustainable development has led to ecosystem stress, increased fire occurrence and a rise in carbon emissions that threaten the lives of communities living in the Amazon first, and the global climate.
NESsT Amazonia
NESsT Amazonia addresses regenerative forest conservation by supporting climate-smart solutions that grow sustainable value chains while improving livelihoods in the Amazon basin. The program incubates and finances small businesses, cooperatives and associations that impact sustainable value chains through bioeconomy approaches including forest management practices, agroforestry, and land restoration.
The program puts a strong emphasis on both environmental conservation and livelihood improvements, with strong community engagement and income generation. The program applies a gender-lens approach to ensure gender equity in the harvesting, management and monitoring of forest resources, as well as in employment creation.
NESsT Amazonia operates in areas of high biodiversity of the rainforest, including protected areas, reserves, and regenerative conservation units, as well as their buffer and transition zones.
Meet Associação Comunitária Agrícola do Rio Urupadi (“ASCAMPA”). a NESsT Amazonia Brazil enterprise that produces the Guaraná seed.
Impact
+31,000
jobs financed
200+
Indigenous communities impacted
65
enterprises financed
750
enterprises mapped
20
value chains evaluated and monitoring
As of May 2025
Importance of Traditional Communities
Photo: Kemito Ene © Daniel Martínez, WWF Peru
Traditional communities - either Indigenous, riverine, or Afro-Brazilians - have been the traditional custodians of the Amazon rainforest. Today they share the forests with a growing number of settlers who seek to tap into the Amazon's considerable natural resources.
NESsT Amazonia supports indigenous enterprises emerging to connect remote areas of the Amazon to sustainable markets, including in eco-tourism, fisheries, superfoods including coffee and cacao, nuts, seeds, and plants for medicinal or cosmetic uses (such as andiroba, muru muru, as well as ucuuba).
While they may not yet meet the traditional standards of investment-readiness and commercial viability, these early-stage Indigenous eco-enterprises have the potential to improve living conditions and regenerative conservation in the Amazon basin at scale.
Strengthening the Ecosystem for Responsible Investment
NESsT Amazonia works in partnership with other organizations to strengthen the social entrepreneurship and impact investing ecosystem in the Amazon basin. We advocate to unlock investment-readiness services and patient capital to build a pipeline of enterprises that can access global markets and investments.
NESsT’s Work with the Amazon Bioeconomy
The Amazon bioeconomy has emerged as a thriving economic sector, drawing in many investors with climate commitments. Yet most definitions of the bioeconomy do not mention the role of Indigenous Peoples in safeguarding the environment and boosting local economies.
Between 2022 and 2023, NESsT conducted 40 face-to-face interviews with smallholder farmers, community members, and leadership teams from ten bioeconomy companies in the NESsT Amazonia portfolio, in order to better understand their financing needs and growth challenges.
Based on these local voices and immersive fieldwork, our publication ‘Unlocking the Potential of the Global Funding Ecosystem to Invest in a Sustainable Amazon Bioeconomy through the Lens of Local Communities’ identifies nine key opportunities in two main areas for public and private sector investors to improve the targeting, accessibility, effectiveness, and efficiency of their investments in the Amazon region.
We invite you to download the study and its recommendations below and join our commitment to create an enabling financial environment that fosters Indigenous entrepreneurship, contributing to a prosperous, sustainable, and inclusive Amazonian bioeconomy, with local and Indigenous communities at its center.
NESsT Amazon Bioeconomy Blog Series
NESsT Amazon Bioeconomy Blog Series
NESsT Amazonia Portfolio
Fund Enterprises
Incubation Enterprises
Indigenous-Led Enterprises
NESsT Amazonia News
Strategic Partners
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