This article describes the activities of ArBio Italia (Italian Association for the resilience of the Forest to the Inter-Oceanic highway) and its experience in the KIP Pavilion at Expo 2015. The association was established in 2012 by a group of young people to help protect the Amazon rainforest from deforestation. It acts by giving support to the association ArBio Peru and has an area of the ​​Amazon rainforest with a forty-year concession contract. The area is located in the Madre de Dios region (Peru), affected by passage of the Inter-oceanic route.

ArBio works to change the current model of development towards a sustainable development model, in which society can coexist with the forest ecosystem. Indigenous communities are flanked in the process of activating self-sustaining practices. The model that ArBio is implementing is based on analog forestry, through which it is possible to grow fruits and vegetables through a system that comprises the diversification and integration of newly-introduced and native species.

ArBio brought the forest inside Expo Milan 2015: visitors could 'taste the forest' by tasting products and, at the same time, discover the history and the meaning of what they were eating. Furthermore, a new product was born. By sharing the exhibition space with ‘Latte nobile dell’Appennino campano – Napoli’, a “noble yogurt” flavoured with jams of the Amazon was launched in October 2015, thanks to this new collaboration.

During the Expo, ArBio Italia attended the meetings of the Local Economic Development Agencies – LEDAs -  that have proven to be a tool for training and knowledge, as well as an important occasion for creating links with other realities which promote human development around the world. On October 24, 2015 ArBio participated in the International Meeting on Territorial Development.   For ArBio, the Manifesto for a World System for Territorial Development presented at that meeting represents an important and concrete proposal to promote an innovative, equitable and participatory cooperation system. The network discovered through the KIP International School is an asset that can be drawn upon to identify the most effective strategies for the enhancement of territories and, at the same time, is a system to contribute to through our own experimentations.

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