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Climate change will reduce the culture and knowledge of the Amazon

Climate change can have a significant impact on many of the plants used by the Amazonian population and, consequently, on their culture and knowledge. In fact, the decline in the availability of culturally important plants, together with the trend towards the disappearance of indigenous languages, could lead to the loss of a quarter of the documented knowledge associated with the uses of Amazonian plant species by the end of the century. This is the main conclusion of the work published in Nature. The work highlights the threat that climate change poses to the biocultural heritage of the Amazon.

The Amazon rainforest is an important center of biological and cultural heritage. It covers more than 10% of the world’s biodiversity and is home to more than 400 indigenous groups.

The researchers compiled more than 90,000 documents on the use of Amazonian plants, dating from 1504 to 2023. And they found that the Amazonian population uses almost 5,796 species of plants, a third of the plants known in the Amazon. This is twice as much as the previous calculations.

“Even in the most optimistic scenario, 28% of the plants used by the Amazonians will disappear.”

They then simulated how climate change will affect the distribution of 8,429 plant species between 2060 and 2080, and found that climate change will affect more species used by Amazonians than those who do not. In addition, the models predicted that even in the most optimistic scenario of climate change, 28% of the plants used by the Amazonians will disappear. With them will disappear the uses of these of the countryside and, therefore, part of the culture and knowledge of the Amazon.

The researchers suggest that these losses will have critical consequences for Amazonian societies, and that these data should serve as a starting point for the preservation and restoration of the Amazonian biocultural heritage.