The fragile forest ecosystems in Latin America have long catered for domestic economic interests through timber, minerals, land resettlement and cattle-ranching. More recently, transnational commercial and political forces have exacerbated pressure on the natural resource base, through MERCOSUL, the Kyoto Protocol and international donor organizations, among others. Over the past two decades new complementary approaches have emerged which attempt to incorporate local populations in decentralized systems of resource management. This collection examines several such innovative strategies in the Amazon rainforest which involve multi-institutional responses to environmental threats, with initial results that offer cautious hope for the future.