Soft Law, Ecological Justice, and Epistemologies of the South

the Amazonian Sociobioeconomy as a Normative and Ontological Alternative

Abstract

The worsening global environmental crisis has intensified debates about the limits of conventional economic models and the urgent need for paradigmatic transitions that integrate sustainability, social justice, and epistemic plurality. In this context, soft law instruments gain relevance as mechanisms capable of guiding normative and institutional transformations more attuned to the complexity of contemporary challenges. This article analyzes how such instruments have contributed to the construction of sociobioeconomy as a proposal for reorganizing the relationships between economy, society, and nature. Based on a qualitative, interdisciplinary, and documentary approach, the study examines treaties, guidelines, and international declarations, with particular emphasis on the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and its capacity to influence the domestic legal frameworks of Amazonian countries. It is argued that sociobioeconomy, by integrating traditional knowledge, scientific innovation, and the valorization of biodiversity, represents not only a response to the exhaustion of productivist models but also an ontological alternative for development. The article concludes that soft law instruments play a strategic role in promoting a regenerative, plural, and democratic economy.