Reimagining the Amazon: How Local Infrastructure Can Build a Green Bioeconomy

The World Bank's 2025 report A Place-Based Infrastructure Approach for Bioeconomies in the Amazon Region, prepared with the Spanish Fund for Latin America and the Caribbean, brings together research from the World Bank Group, Brazil's Empresa de Pesquisa Energética (EPE), Colombia's Instituto de Planificación y Promoción de Soluciones Energéticas (IPSE), and Peru's Infraestructura de Datos Espaciales del Perú (IDEP). Together, these institutions deliver a sweeping vision for a new development model across the Amazon Basin, one that ties infrastructure, innovation, and ecology into a single narrative of sustainable growth. Their central thesis is simple yet transformative: infrastructure must be adapted to local geography and culture if the Amazon is to prosper without losing its forests.

The Promise and Paradox of the Amazon

The report portrays a region of immense wealth and deep inequality. Home to over 32 million people across Brazil, Colombia, and Peru, the Amazon sustains more than ten percent of global biodiversity and plays a critical role in stabilizing the climate. Yet its people remain disconnected, geographically, economically, and digitally. In northern Brazil, only 80 percent of the population has access to 4G networks, compared with more than 92 percent nationwide. Power outages in parts of Colombia and Peru can last for days. These gaps in energy, transport, and communication create barriers that keep communities dependent on extractive industries like logging and mining. The result is a cycle of poverty and deforestation, in which economic survival undermines the very ecosystems that could sustain a new kind of prosperity.

Mapping the Divide

To tackle this challenge, the study introduces an innovative data-driven tool: the Infrastructure Provision Index (IPI). Using geospatial mapping and machine learning, researchers evaluated the availability of transport, energy, water, and digital networks across thousands of microregions. The results reveal a striking disparity. Roughly nine million people live in areas with low or no infrastructure. Urban centers like Manaus and Belém serve as bright spots of connectivity, while rural and forest communities languish in isolation. The report divides the region into three zones, the Urban, Rural, and Deep Forest Amazons, each requiring a distinct approach. This spatial diagnosis exposes the Amazon's fractured geography and provides a foundation for designing policies tailored to its diversity rather than blanketing it with uniform solutions.

Infrastructure Without Destruction

The authors argue that infrastructure in the Amazon must shift from being an invader of nature to an enabler of sustainable livelihoods. They propose a place-based approach guided by four principles: tailoring investments to territorial realities, strengthening midsize cities as hubs of connectivity, integrating multiple sectors for maximum efficiency, and embracing new technologies. The Amazon/Solimões River corridor between Manaus and Tabatinga exemplifies this vision. The report imagines docks equipped with cold storage for local products, solar-powered microgrids, and fiber-optic cables running beneath the river. These "bundled" investments, pairing transport upgrades with digital and energy infrastructure, could reduce costs, connect isolated producers, and prevent environmental damage by following existing river routes rather than cutting new roads through forests. A small port fitted with solar panels and broadband could double as a processing center for açaí, cocoa, or pirarucú, helping communities capture more value locally.

Financing the Green Transition

Building this kind of infrastructure requires innovative financing. The report highlights Amazon's fragmented investment landscape and points to emerging tools like green bonds, biodiversity credits, and debt-for-nature swaps. Institutions such as the Amazon Fund, the Amazon Sustainable Landscapes Program, and ARPA already illustrate how blended finance can support conservation while generating economic returns. Yet barriers persist, including regulatory uncertainty, limited credit access, and high revenue risks deter private capital. The World Bank calls for new de-risking instruments and clearer governance to channel investments toward community-scale infrastructure that strengthens both ecosystems and local economies.

A Compact for a Living Forest

The report closes with a call for a new social contract between governments, Indigenous peoples, researchers, and financiers, one that binds climate action to social inclusion. Infrastructure, it argues, must no longer be seen as a line cutting through the forest but as a lifeline connecting people, markets, and knowledge. The bioeconomy, grounded in renewable resources and traditional wisdom, offers the Amazon a chance to escape the false choice between preservation and poverty. With thoughtful investment and inclusive governance, the region could become a global model for how nature and development coexist. A Place-Based Infrastructure Approach for Bioeconomies in the Amazon Region thus redefines progress for the 21st century: prosperity not through extraction, but through connection, linking communities to opportunity while keeping the forest alive.