The second Law and the Amazon International Conference, and the first to take place within the Amazon itself, was held 2–5 December 2025 in Belém do Pará, Brazil. The meeting was organized by Forum Latin America, a Max Planck Law Initiative, with additional support from the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory in Frankfurt , the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg , Tilburg University, Maastricht University, the Advocacia-Geral da União (AGU) and the Federal University of Pará (UFPA), one of the most important academic institutions located in the region.
The conference gathered around fifty researchers from Africa, Europe, and the Americas, together with Indigenous leaders, representatives of local institutions and members of civil society. Several participants came from Institutes within the Max Planck Law network. Coming only ten days after COP30, it offered an opportunity to rethink the legal agenda from within the Amazon, taking seriously the social, legal, and ecological realities that shape daily life in the region.
The event set out to reassess COP narratives, to value Amazonian forms of knowledge and legal imagination, and to discuss new possibilities for socio-environmental governance that respond to the complexities of the territory. The programme was structured around three thematic axes that connected debates on law, climate, territory, rights and the epistemic plurality of the Amazon.
Dr Bruno Lima, one of the Initiative organizers, highlighted the importance of strengthening cooperation with local actors and said: ‘The conference reinforces the role of the scientific community and the commitment of the Max Planck Society in producing knowledge together with local epistemic communities.’
The discussions also showed how the Amazon challenges established legal categories. As another Initiative organizer, Dr Melanie Merlin de Andrade noted: ‘The Amazon forces law to reinvent itself. The conflicts, cosmologies, and relationships that exist here simply do not fit within traditional categories. For those working with legal theory and method, the region shows that law advances only when it can listen to complex territories and create new tools to understand the world.’
The conference made clear that studying the Amazon requires commitment rather than distance. It calls for methodological creativity, long-term engagement and an honest effort to build knowledge with the region and not merely about it. The Belém do Pará meeting was a concrete step in that direction.
Learn more about the Forum Latin America and all the organizers behind it on the Initiative’s webpage.