Understanding and transforming how cities think is a crucial part of developing effective knowledge infrastructures for the Anthropocene. In this article, we review knowledge co-production as a popular approach in environmental and sustainability science communities to the generation of useable knowledge for sustainability and resilience. We present knowledge systems analysis as a conceptual and empirical framework for understanding existing co-production processes as preconditions to the design of new knowledge infrastructures in cities.

The forest reforms unfolding during the last two decades in the western Amazon have embraced policy regimes founded on the principles of sustainable forest management. The policy frameworks adopted for smallholder forestry aimed to clarify forest rights including those of the indigenous people and smallholders, support the adoption of sustainable forest management and put a system in place to assure a legal timber supply. The emerging forest policy regimes have significantly shaped who has access to the forest, how the forest resources are used and the benefits that are utilized.

Appropriation of public lands associated with agricultural frontier expansion is a longstanding occurrence in the Amazon that has resulted in a highly skewed land-tenure structure in spite of recent state efforts to recognize tenure rights of indigenous people and smallholders living in or nearby forests. Growing concerns to reduce environmental impacts from agricultural development have motivated state governments to place greater attention on sustainable land management and forest conservation.