Amazon Initiative

The Amazon Initiative (AI), a consortium of major research and development institutes, has been formed to help prevent, reduce and reverse land degradation by promoting policies and technologies for sustainable land management in the region. It was established in 2003 to implement collaborative research and development programmes to promote sustainable land use systems in the region. The Amazon Initiative includes 6 NARS, 4 CGIAR centres (ICRAF, CIAT, CIFOR, IPGRI), and a regional program (Procitropicos). Currently, 224 researchers from 37 institutes are part of this network. ASB partners have been some of the key founding members of this initiative. ASB participated in the first board meeting of the Amazon Initiative in June 2004. Collaboration sought include information dissemination and expansion of the ASB Matrix of land use alternatives; and coordination for training to analyse future scenarios. The Amazon Initiative is interested in the participation of ASB in the technical committee. (Project leader: Roberto Porro).