The Amazon biome is under threat due to increasing deforestation rates and loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services while sustaining a high burden of neglected tropical diseases. Socio-economic and environmental landscape transformations are linked to the agrarian economy dynamics. Providing solutions for these complex problems demand everincreasing exchanges of knowledge between academic disciplines. This talk will discuss results from a Scientific Synthesis project, “Trajetorias”, nursed within the Synthesis Center on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (Sinbiose- CNPq). The objective is to provide a framework for the joint debate of the economic, environmental and health dimensions and contribute to a more systemic understanding of the relationships between biodiversity and human health in the region. We will introduce the "Trajetorias" dataset for monitoring health and the environment, linked to the rural technoproductive trajectories that mediate the relationship between man and the environment. In 2017, peasant trajectories dominated approx. 50% of the territory, mostly in areas covered by continuous forest where malaria is an important morbidity and mortality cause. Cattle-raising trajectories are associated with higher deforestation rates. Meanwhile, commodity economies, comprising large-scale cattle and grain production, are associated with rapid biodiversity loss and a high prevalence of neglected tropical diseases, such as leishmaniasis, dengue and Chagas disease. Overall, these results defy simplistic views that the dominant development trajectory for Amazon will optimise economic, health and environmental indicators.
Codeço et al. (Tue,) studied this question.