In spring 2023, CLACS launched a research network that links MSU scholars of the Amazon and climate change to internationally recognized scholars from Amazonian countries. A grant to CLACS from the Vice President for Research and Innovation’s Climate Change Initiative, along with matching funds from ISP and CANR deans, funded travel to MSU by prominent scholars from top universities and research institutes in Brazil, Peru, and Colombia for a full-day symposium followed by two days of workshops. During the workshops, the scholars, from disciplines as diverse as physics and anthropology, worked to identify research questions with the highest potential policy impact and to develop interdisciplinary approaches to address those questions. For two full days, they debated with and challenged one another, as the social scientists began to consider the physical processes of evapotranspiration and the natural scientists worked to understand the “invisibilization” of Amazonian communities. Ultimately, they leveraged the extreme interdisciplinarity of the group to develop a research agenda that will explore the capacity of the Amazonian bioeconomy to reverse forest degradation and its impacts on climate change. They have since submitted several proposals based on this work. 
As a researcher-to-researcher network, this initiative is distinct from other recent initiatives in International Studies and Programs, such as the Alliance for African Partnership or AsiaHub, which are built on institution-to-institution relationships. Network partners come from top research institutions in countries with their own sources of research funding. All participating scholars have their own professional networks, whose members can be drawn into this initiative as needs and opportunities evolve. Horizontal, flexible, and nimble, the network is able to focus immediately on urgent research.
CLACS launched this network model with a focus on the Amazon and climate change, because of the significant number of MSU faculty engaged in collaborative research with partners from Amazonian countries. Led by Emilio Moran from Geography, Maria Claudia Lopez from Community Sustainability, Scott Stark from Forestry, and Nathan Moore from Geography, MSU scholars built on already-established research partnership with subsets of scholars to bring together this larger group, whose disciplinary breadth makes it possible to address larger and more complex issues.
In the future, CLACS hopes to apply this model to build additional networks that focus on topics of shared faculty interest, such as ecosystem restoration in Central America or Indigenous and Afro-Latin American activism.