This article aims to reflect on the conversion of the Amazon into a regional, national and above all global issue. The foundations of this reflection are the process of global economic restructuring, changes in the territorial policies of the national state, and the ways and new mechanisms for integrating the region. Thus, the article is organised in two parts, the first comprising an assessment of how the elements of the ongoing economic restructuring interfere with policies, provoking contradictory movements which at certain times result in progress or other setbacks. The second part will address the benefits that the region can use when formulating its public policies to be competitive in this international context, highlighting that experiences of international articulation arising at the time of the Rio Conference have been territorialised in conservation programmes and projects. The final considerations inquired both about the State’s ability to play a leading, normative and regulatory role at the present time, as well as ways of identifying and constructing models for the national and global integration of the Amazon.