Amazonian communities will use a mobile app to record their traditional knowledge about plants and animals, creating a digital inventory that links local practices to global biodiversity databases. This matters because traditional knowledge about Amazonian biodiversity is often excluded from scientific databases, leaving indigenous and local communities vulnerable when market actors enter their territories to extract resources. Without formal recognition, communities struggle to defend their rights in legal disputes over biodiversity use. The project addresses this gap by co-creating a platform with nine communities across three Brazilian states—Pará, Amazonas, and Maranhão—that validates traditional knowledge alongside conventional ecological data. If successful, the platform will give communities epistemic control over their knowledge while integrating it with the Brazilian Biodiversity Information System (SiBBR). This could transform how biodiversity monitoring works in traditional territories, providing a tool kit for communities to resolve conflicts with extractive industries. The project supports compliance with Article 8 of the Biodiversity Convention, which requires states to respect and preserve traditional knowledge relevant to conservation. The research is applied and participatory, not fundamental science—its value lies in empowering communities to document and defend their own knowledge systems.
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This proposal seeks to develop a mobile, digital platform that records and catalogs socio-biodiversity through the co-creation of local, traditional and indigenous knowledge(s). Carried out in 9 communities within 3 states in the Legal Amazon: Pará, Amazonas and Maranhão, researchers will cooperate with traditional Amazonian communities with aim of developing an Artificial Intelligence (AI) system to develop an inventory of traditional knoweldges with the biodiversity of traditional territories. The co-creation strategy associated with the digital platform will enable these traditional knowledges associated with biodiversity to be better integrated with more normative Scientific ecological (i.e. socio-biodiversity) data. The main objective of the proposed project is for this digital tool to record and scientifically validate traditional practices and knowledge of biodiversity and relate them to globally available scientific databases, whilst enabling communities to maintain epistemic control over their knowledges and consequently territories. The records made by traditional peoples and communities will be collated with information from the collections of the Brazilian Biodiversity Information System (SiBBR) – an online platform that integrates data and information about biodiversity and ecosystems from different sources, making them accessible for different uses (SIBBR, 2024). The co-creation strategy will also allow the platform to be regularly updated by traditional communities, and thus to become a tool for monitoring biodiversity in their territories. The platform will also consist of a tool-kit that can be used resolve conflicts between these communities (and similarly positioned social groups) and market-based actors that enter traditional territories to extract, profit and otherwise exploit from their rich biodiversity. The recognition and validation of such traditional knowledge associated with biodiversity in these Amazonian territories is crucial for the development of institutional strategies that enable the continuity of conservation practices of traditional peoples and communities, thus ensuring compliance with the provisions of Article 8 of the Biodiversity Convention – specifically that pertaining to legal disputes between market-agents and traditional Amazonian peoples and communities. KEY WORDS Amazônia; traditional populations; traditional knowledge; biodiversity; monitoring platforms
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