This handbook reframes the Amazon Rainforest as central to international relations. With contributions from a diverse group of authors, it shows how political, social and economic forces both endanger the forest and open real pathways to protect it. Chapters examine the bioeconomy; cross-border and narco-deforestation; land grabbing and gold laundering; forest carbon projects (REDD+); Indigenous and riverine rights and governance (including ILO Convention 169); Amazonian cities; China’s role; the EU Deforestation Regulation; and carbon markets. Using decolonising, participatory and visual methods alongside grounded fieldwork, case studies and conceptual chapters, we connect law, culture, power, ecology and economy across local, regional and global scales. Written in accessible language, this handbook bridges scholarship and practice for researchers, students, journalists and policymakers interested in geopolitics, climate change, biodiversity, sustainability, development, security and governance in the Amazon to clearly refuse determinism and offer fresh analytical tools and practical policy options for the Pan-Amazonian region.

Christoffer Guldberg, teaches at King’s College London focusing on Brazil and the Global South. He holds a joint PhD (KCL–USP) and has published in Critical African Studies (2024), the Journal of PGR Pedagogic Practice (2022), and King’s Blogs on research and teaching methods, artificial intelligence, state violence and disinformation.

Ana Flávia Barros-Platiau is an International Relations professor at the University of Brasilia and Superior Defence College (ESD). She is the former director of the Brasilia Research Centre (2019-2024) for the Earth System Governance network.

Thais Tartalha do Nascimento Lombardi is a Territorial Planning assistant professor at the Federal University of ABC (UFABC) and of Social Science at the University of Campinas (Unicamp). Her main research is on impacts of large-scale infrastructure projects, Agrarian dynamics and co-production of tools and knowledge for sustainability in the Brazilian Amazon.

Thomas M. Froehlich is a research fellow at King’s College London where he works on the global energy transition, natural resource governance, and international relations. His research explores how climate and industrial policies shape extractive economies and the geopolitics of sustainability, with a regional focus on the Americas and the European Union.