# The Amazon: A Planetary Forest #### calendar\_today Date and Time **April 30, 2026** 06:00PM - 08:15PM EDT #### pin\_drop Location **Swissnex Boston** [420 Broadway Cambridge, MA 02138 United States ]() [ More information and registration arrow\_circle\_right ](https://swissnex.org/event/the-amazon-a-planetary-forest/) [A film screening and panel discussion of the Amazon](https://swissnex.org/event/the-amazon-a-planetary-forest/) through the lenses of global history, indigenous knowledge, soil science, and more, organized and moderated by WIGH Fellow **Tomás Bartoletti**. The Amazon transcends easy categorization. Stretching across nine countries, it shelters one in ten of all known species on Earth and locks away an estimated 200 billion tons of carbon in its soil and vegetation. Moisture released by its plants creates “flying rivers” that seed rain and regulate temperatures across continents. Because of its planetary significance, it has become a matter of global concern, debated in international forums, measured by satellites, and managed through carbon markets and conservation agreements. This global perspective risks flattening an extraordinarily complex biome into a global utility — a reservoir of carbon, water, and biodiversity to be managed for the benefit of humanity. But the Amazon is more than that. It is a living ecosystem, a site of encounter and co-creation among a vast network of actors: plants and animals, rivers and mountains, and more than 50 million people, including hundreds of Indigenous communities whose knowledge has shaped the forest for centuries. The evening will begin with a short film screening by **Claudia Tomateo**, a Quechua Chanka architect, designer, planner, and activist whose work explores Indigenous methodologies of data visualization. A panel discussion will follow, led by **Tomás Bartoletti**, a historian researching the development of global forest governance. In addition to Tomateo, the panel will feature **Livio Silva-Mueller**, a sociologist researching the intersection of decarbonization, inequality, and democracy in Latin America; and **Mauricio Fontes**, a scientist studying Amazon soils and their transformation. Situated within Swissnex’s Planetary Embassy in Boston, the conversation invites audiences to move past familiar images of the Amazon as a distant wilderness or planetary utility, and instead engage with it as a place of deep relations — and to ask what it would mean for the Amazon, in all its diversity, to have a voice on the global stage. Share on:- [ Facebook ](#) - [ Twitter ](#) - [ Linkedin ](#) Save: [ Add to calendar calendar\_today ](https://wigh.wcfia.harvard.edu/node/1921776/event-feed.ics) Copy link link