Understanding the origin, evolution, and maintenance of tropical biodiversity and ecosystems remains a significant challenge for tropical biologists. Human activities increasingly impact these ecosystems, and the economic, social, and cultural factors driving these changes add complexity to conserving tropical biodiversity, both within and outside protected areas.

 

In the 21st century, humanity faces unprecedented environmental challenges that demand a profound and multifaceted understanding, as well as innovative and collaborative solutions. In this context, sustainability can be seen as the relationship between societies and ecosystems that allows the needs of all people to be covered equitably and sufficiently, while maintaining the ecological and evolutionary processes and mechanisms inherent to tropical life.

 

Actions for solving, mitigating, and adapting to global-change problems,  which are characterized by their socioecological complexity, require an approach that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries. Here, multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary research emerge as  beacons of hope, offering epistemological frameworks that not only allow us to understand the interconnectedness among factors driving global-change problems,  but also propose effective ways of addressing  them.

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