**Acknowledgements**

of Amazon biodiversity that the Amazon Third Way initiative attempts to address and give visibility to. We will be estimating the real hidden economic value of these assets in a next

The Amazon forest is not a void of human presence. Diverse communities live all over the region. Even some communities of new settlers of the 1970s and 1980s have looked to find ways of generating income in agroforestry systems. There is rich traditional knowledge in many of indigenous and caboclo communities. Supporting the diversity of communities and

From a more general standpoint, sustainable development pathways based on natural resources exploitation should in principle put the local populations as priority. That is not the case for the Amazon currently (low HDI and other social indicators). Therefore, the Third Way Initiative also proposes that new sustainable paradigms have the development policy as a central tenet. The sustainable economy should first and utmost be means of wellbeing to the Amazonian people. That is not the case of the Second Way, where the Amazon is seen important for intensive resource exploitation for the Amazonian countries as a whole and taxation of the resource wealth should redistribute benefits as public services for all in the

The Amazon has a number of good examples of biology laboratories and a number of entrepreneurship initiatives that beyond economic development target social responsibility and deployment of sustainable biodiversity value chains. They are true pioneers into the new era of sustainability. However, they are as yet a small minority. They may even accrue national and international visibility and are role models, but in critically insufficient numbers to create momentum economically and socially to give clout to the rupture needed to put Amazon on

The new model must rely on these existing good examples, on the diversities of forest communities across the Amazon, on state-of-the art knowledge generations laboratories and inno-

In due course, one has to build up momentum for enhancing the policies that are necessary to uplift the Third Way; investment in zero-deforestation value chains; reducing the enormous subsidies for commodities that drive deforestation; but as importantly invest in knowledge generation through a network of advanced biology laboratories in the Amazon, in Amazonian Countries and internationally in association with private R&D labs and science-based startups and creation of innovation ecosystems throughout the regions. That is a pre-requisite to the development of local next generation bio-industries in towns and cities of the future.

By attracting venture capital and productive investments both for R&D and for industries, the political interest in the Third Way will rise in the eyes of governments to a tipping point in which government investments and subsidies will start to flow to this other type of economy, even on the absence of visionary governments that would see the potential of a new Amazon

The implications of harnessing the Fourth Industrial Revolution to unlock the economic value of the Amazon's biological and biomimetic assets for governments, start-ups, corporations

economic pathways for a standing forest-flowing rivers economy is mandatory.

Amazon. However, a regressing taxation system does not realize that.

vative entrepreneurship and build up from there.

bio-economy and would design the pathways to reach it.

phase of the initiative.

206 Land Use - Assessing the Past, Envisioning the Future

a different track.

This work has been supported by the National Institute of Science and Technology for Climate Change via CNPq Grant Number 573797/2008-0 and FAPESP Grant Number 2008/57719-9 and additional financial support by the Climate and Land Use Alliance (CLUA) and Moore Foundation. We express our thanks to Juan Carlos Castilla-Rubio and Luciana Castilla for their contributions to the development of the Amazon Third Way Initiative.
