Cadernos do OIMC, the Interdisciplinary Observatory on Climate Change’s series dedicated to the publication of academic texts dealing with various aspects of the climate emergency, presents, in its eighteenth volume, the article A New Amazon Regionalism? Catalytic Co-operation and the Transformative Potential of the Belém Agenda, written by political scientist Lucas de Oliveira Paes (NUPI – Norway). Developed as a result of the Rebundling sovereignty over local nature in global governance (RESOLVING) project, sponsored by the Research Council of Norway (RCN), the text discusses the promises of the Belém Agenda, a political commitment signed in 2023 by representatives of the South American countries whose sovereignties extend over the Amazon basin, in the light of the limitations and relative successes of the historical process of Amazonian cooperation.

PhD in Politics and International Studies from the University of Cambridge (UK), Lucas de Oliveira Paes is a Senior Research Fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI). Between 2020 and 2024, he carried out post-doctoral research on Amazonian regionalism, as part of a comparative project on cross-border ecosystem governance, funded by the European Research Council. He was awarded a Young Research Talents Grant from the Norwegian Research Council to coordinate a research project on sovereignty practices and multi-level governance networks in the Amazon and the Gulf of Guinea between 2025 and 2028. His research addresses hierarchical dynamics and asymmetries in the exercise of state sovereignty on multiple issues in the international order.

This volume of Cadernos is linked to the Pan-Amazonian Governance, Climate Change and Sustainable Development project, a partnership between the OIMC, the Legal Amazon Geopolitical Studies Laboratory (LEGAL) and the South American Political Observatory (OPSA), funded by the Rio de Janeiro State Research Support Foundation (FAPERJ) under the Amazônia+10 call for proposals. On 31 March 2025, at 4pm, the author of this issue will take part in the panel Extraregional Powers in the Pan-Amazon between Cooperation and Strategic Interests: the European Union, Norway and the USA, part of the programme for the seminar Governance and Development of the Pan-Amazon in face of Climate Change, together with the authors of the last Cadernos.