Polycrisis and Regeneration: Latin America Facing the Opportunity to Build New Futures

This article argues that Latin America occupies a distinctive but tension-filled position in the global polycrisis, holding ecologically strategic territories such as the Amazon, the Andean systems, and major wetlands while sustaining economies heavily dependent on extractive models that pressure those same systems. The author contends that climate change, biodiversity loss, soil degradation, and pollution are interconnected symptoms of a deeper civilisational crisis that cannot be addressed through isolated policies. Highlighting outcomes from the Club of Rome’s “Thought and Action: The Path to Regeneration” conference in Buenos Aires, the article calls for integrated approaches that combine science, public policy, regional cooperation, and local knowledge to simultaneously tackle poverty, inequality, and environmental degradation, while warning that this progress coexists with political discourses in the region, including recent debates in Argentina over its glacier protection law, that deny scientific evidence and dismiss planetary limits. It concludes that regeneration requires a new humanistic vision that redefines the relationship between economy, society, and nature, framing this as a political, cultural, and ethical challenge central to the region’s future.