Both the mystique of the tropics and the value of its natural products drove the chain of events that led to our modern geopolitical order. So many aspects of our industrialized way of life—the tires on our cars, the drugs that save our lives, the spices we grind every day—depend on the products of ecological interactions between species in the tropics. Many of these natural products that we take for granted were first tapped by Indigenous peoples, largely in the tropics, from species living both in the primary rain forest and at its edges, in gardens. Yet the knowledge and sovereign lands of
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