The biodiversity of Latin America has been a fundamental factor in the invention and colonization of the Americas. Up until recently, the flora, fauna, and biomes of the region were considered laboratories for various processes and dynamics related to globalization, from the so-called "Columbian Exchange" through to biopiracy and up to the implementation of new forms of agroforestry like the plantations or, finally, the cultivation of GMO soy. These different examples connect Latin American biocultural experiences to the different cycles and the acceleration of earth-system that have occurred in the past five hundred years, making the region’s biodiversity a crucial topic to study in order to understand the Anthropocene. In this sense, the debates around the use, appropriation, mercantilization, and the conceptualization of Latin America's biodiversity are vital for understanding the genealogy of the recent period of the Anthropocene from the long-term perspective that begins in 1492. This volume of the Handbook "The Anthropocene as Multiple Crisis" intends to enrich the recent debates about the Anthropocene with critical perspectives from the social sciences and humanities. In this way, we commence with the hypothesis to understand biodiversity not only in biological terms and a thing apart from society, but rather as biocultural diversity present in the social world and various cultures. Such a perspective of "an environment in entanglements" implies an attempt to relieve social conflicts, ameliorate the abuses of structures of power, and slow the appropriation of the biosphere.

Within this conceptual frame, we are particularly interested in the following 6 fields of investigation surrounding biocultural diversity. The fields are not strictly separated, instead overlapping and articulating through myriad paths and channels.

First, we will explore the topic of knowledge production about biocultural diversity. We consider the existence of different worldview's means of relating "the natural" with "the cultural," and that the modern Western vision of a separation between the two is only one possible epistemology. Apart from different biocultural epistemologies, we are especially interested in dialogues about wisdom, hybridization, and the points of conflict between Western, indigenous, Afro-American, and popular understandings. Latin America has a particular position in world history in this respect, illustrated by the continuous encounters and clashes between different cosmologies which accompanied European colonization and heritage.

Second, and related to the previous point, we break down the field of the imaginaries of biocultural diversity. Our intention is to identify the collective symbols and tropes such as the rainforest being referred to as the "lung of the world," "wild," or "barbarous" vs. "civilization," the tropics as paradise / the tropics as Hell. The myth of an Edenic nature coexists with the myth of the degradation of Nature and the same would be true of human beings as well with their affective relations - between fear and idealization.

Third, we direct our attention to understanding the interactions between animals, humans, and non-humans. We allude as much to the smallest of organisms, like bacteria, as to the processes of domestication and other practices involving animals confronted with humans or human spaces, like the processes of habitation, accommodation, and migration. In this sense, our objective is to demonstrate the agency of different species in the formation of relationships between animals, humans, and non-humans.

The fourth field focuses on the fundamental aspect of the alteration of the Latin American biosphere for humanity, or more precisely the Western-colonial humanity: the accelerated circulation of invasive species. We begin our exploration from the beginning of the "Colombian Exchange" (as much interested in flows to the Americas as flows back to the "Old World) going through greenhouses to arrive at genetic modification.

Fifth, we explore the socio-cultural transformations, interventions, and regulations of the diversity of the biosphere. We wonder, for example, about the legal regulations from colonial laws about wood and move on to the establishment of protected areas until the designation of nature preserves. We also include cultural norms, as well as civil regulation about hunting, fishing, and the extraction of lumber and other forest resources.

Sixth, complementing the previous point, we investigate the biocultural diversity of the Technosphere as well. Within the continent characterized for urbanization, we explore the dynamics of organisms in the urban and industrialized environments of the Technosphere.  We also understand the industrialized systems of livestock, agriculture, forestry, and fish farming to be integral expressions of the Technosphere exploring them in terms of their impacts on the reduction of biocultural diversity and their contribution to the sixth extinction in the era of the Anthropocene.