In June 2025, the Tällberg Foundation convened the “Two Basins Workshop: Integrating Nature and Governance” in Cartagena, Colombia, with support from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) and in collaboration with the Universidad de los Andes. Against the backdrop of accelerating climate change and ineffective top-down climate governance, the workshop brought together a diverse group of global leaders—including scientists, jurists, conservationists, and past winners of the Tällberg-SNF-Eliasson Global Leadership Prize—to explore how bottom-up, community-driven strategies might help preserve the Amazon and Congo rainforests, two of the planet’s most vital ecological hot spots.
Led by Sam Muller and Alan Stoga, the discussions centered on developing new governance frameworks rooted in local realities. Participants proposed the creation of rainforest “hot spots”—small, high-priority areas where urgent environmental, economic, and justice interventions could be tested and scaled. These hot spots would be designed to empower local communities with tools for self-governance, sustainable development, and equitable justice, while also engaging responsible private sector actors, particularly in regions like the Congo Basin that are critical to the global green transition. The workshop marked an important first step in reimagining how to create the conditions for systemic change—and offered hope that, with urgency and innovation, the rainforests can still be saved.
