2021 Conference

Timelines and Critical Junctures: Re-examining Crises as Opportunities for Change

Our world is in crisis. Headline crises of 2019 and 2020 include climate change, forest fires in the Amazon, Congo Basin and Australia, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Tropical forests are central to these ongoing, chronic crises that capture global attention. However, persistent local scale forest crises can fail to garner the same level of urgency and may be exacerbated by shifts in attention. The increased occurrence of acute events that further contribute to long-term, chronic crises are the result of years of tropical forest degradation, biodiversity loss, and socioeconomic and environmental injustice. We have witnessed, in the midst of global preoccupation with COVID-19, illegal deforestation in Indigenous Amazonian territories emboldened by the current political climate, resulting in unprecedented forest loss, and increasing fire risk and carbon emissions.