Ambipar · 2025
Protocolo Amazônia 2040: Futures Design for the Amazon Bioeconomy.
Turning a futures-scenario research project on the Amazon bioeconomy into an immersive design fiction experience, presented during COP30 in Belém.
How do you get someone to debate possible futures instead of simply watching a presentation about them?
Ambipar wanted to go beyond simply being present at COP30 in Belém: it aimed to broaden the conversation about the future of the Amazon bioeconomy and open space for futures that weren't yet being imagined, in a public debate historically focused on present-day urgencies. The challenge was turning dense futures-scenario research into something the public could actually feel and discuss, rather than another lecture on trends.
In partnership with futures studio The Long Game, a broad scanning and research process mapped emerging movements in Brazil and around the world capable of transforming the Amazon bioeconomy over the coming decades. The result was a strategic report and an interactive radar with 96 forces of change organized into constellations, revealing new opportunities and paths for the region. Instead of presenting those trends as a lecture, they became an experience: three fictional bioeconomy projects, inspired by the research's constellations, including a proposal for political representation of the forest and a new model of regenerative medicine uniting ancestral knowledge and emerging technologies, were presented as real during COP30. The public was invited to learn about each proposal, debate its impacts and vote on which one should occupy an experimental territory in the Amazon, only discovering afterward that none of the projects actually existed. The reveal opened space for a collective co-creation of new possibilities for the bioeconomy.
Fase 01
Research and scanning
Mapping emerging movements in Brazil and worldwide, organized into a radar of 96 forces of change and strategic constellations for the Amazon bioeconomy.
Fase 02
Design fiction
Creating three speculative bioeconomy projects from the research's constellations, presented as real during COP30 in Belém.
Fase 03
Reveal and co-creation
After the public voted and debated the fictional proposals, revealing that none of them existed, followed by an invitation to collectively co-create new possibilities for the region.
“Imagining the future is not an exercise reserved for specialists, it is a collective construction.”
- 96
- forces of change mapped in the strategic radar
- 3
- design fiction projects presented as real at COP30
- 1
- interactive radar published as the research's legacy
- Strategic radar with 96 forces of change, published as a living reference tool for the sector
- Design fiction experience presented live during COP30, with active public participation in debates and voting
- Intense public reactions: defending ideas, disagreeing and making real choices about proposals that were only later revealed to be fictional
Mandiko: the forest's living embassy
Inácode: regenerative medicine
Live presentation at COP30
- Client
- Ambipar
- Agency
- PontoCo, via 037 Creations
- My role
- Strategic futures research team
- Partners
- The Long Game (futures design studio)
- Year
- 2025
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