Food production’s environmental, economic, and social challenges should be demystified through quantitative data. Therefore, the objective of this paper was to investigate the ecoregional sustainability of the Amazon biome from the perspective of the environmental life cycle, economic feasibility, and social life cycle analysis, emphasizing the pillars of sustainability in the production of three commodities: soybean, beef cattle, and Brazil nuts. Carbon footprint, net present value, and worker endpoint were the metrics evaluated. According to the results found in this study, the livestock presented greater environmental burdens in terms of carbon balance when compared to the production of Brazil nuts and soybean production with carbon balances in the order of 4.75 tCO₂eq/ha, −0.02 tCO₂eq/ha, and −1.20 tCO₂eq/ha, respectively. From an economic viewpoint, the extractive production of Brazil nuts presented the highest net profit per hectare/year (USD 559.21), followed by the agricultural system (USD 533.94) and livestock (USD 146.19). Finally, in relation to the social aspect of the production systems analyzed, the negative impacts linked to beef cattle production are related to the subcategories of forced labor and equal opportunities, and the positive impacts linked to soybean production are related to the subcategories of salary and benefits. The results highlight a genuine and sustainable balance in Brazil nuts extraction, presenting it as an investment for a sustainable future while demystifying the multifaceted information related to food production as a whole, in order to assist in decision-making and the formulation of public policies.

The exploitation of the Amazon biome in search of net profit, specifically in the production of cocoa (Theobroma cacao) and açaí (Euterpe oleracea), has caused deforestation, degradation of natural resources, and high greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, highlighting the urgency of improving the environmental, economic and social sustainability of these crops. These species were selected for their rapid expansion in the Amazon, driven by global demand, their local economic relevance, and their potential to either promote conservation or drive deforestation, depending on the production system. This study analyzes the pillars of environmental, social, and economic sustainability of cocoa and açaí production systems in the Amazon, comparing monoculture, agroforestry, and extractivism to support forest conservation strategies in the biome. Analysis of the environmental life cycle, social life cycle, and economic performance were used to determine the carbon footprint, the final point of workers, and the net profit of the activities. According to the results found in this study, cocoa monoculture had the largest carbon footprint (1.35 tCO₂eq/ha), followed by agroforestry (1.20 tCO₂eq/ha), açaí monoculture (0.84 tCO₂eq/ha) and extractivism (0.25 tCO₂eq/ha). In the carbon balance, only the areas outside indigenous lands presented positive carbon. Regarding the economic aspect, the net profit of açaí monoculture was USD 6783.44/ha, extractivism USD 6059.42/ha, agroforestry USD 4505.55/ha, and cocoa monoculture USD 3937.32/ha. In the social sphere, in cocoa and açaí production, the most relevant negative impacts are the subcategories of child labor and gender discrimination, and the positive impacts are related to the sub-category of forced labor. These results suggest that açaí and cocoa extractivism, under responsible management plans, offer a promising balance between profitability and environmental conservation. Furthermore, agroforestry systems have also demonstrated favorable outcomes, providing additional benefits such as biodiversity conservation and system resilience, which make them a promising sustainable alternative.

In recent decades, microalgae biodiesel has been repeatedly presented as a fundamental pillar of future bioenergy systems in relation to fossil diesel. This is largely due to the high photosynthetic efficiency of microalgae, their high growth rates, and their ability to accumulate neutral lipids—particularly triacylglycerols (TAGs)—which constitute the main raw materials for biodiesel production. However, this route has not yet become economically competitive with conventional fuels and vegetable oils. In this context, the simultaneous increase in biomass productivity and TAG content remains essential to reduce the cost difference, but achieving these goals depends on a detailed understanding of lipid metabolism and its regulation under different environmental and nutritional conditions—and on overcoming the intrinsic trade-offs between growth and storage. Thus, this article aims to critically analyze the viability of microalgae biodiesel, seeking to identify the main factors that explain why this route has not yet become competitive with conventional fuels after decades of research. In parallel, the growing trend of multi-product microalgae biorefineries is examined, highlighting bottlenecks in downstream processing and product purification, as well as the inherent trade-offs between production strategies. Practical limitations related to biomass productivity per area, culture dilution, intracellular lipid storage, and vital steps such as transesterification are also discussed, which together impose high energy and operational penalties throughout the production chain. Finally, emerging trends and integrated approaches are discussed, with emphasis on strain and process co-optimization, as well as greater integration between cultivation and downstream operations, aiming to enable more efficient and realistically consistent microalgae biodiesel concepts.

The utilization of carbon dioxide (CO₂) from industrial emissions as an input in microalgal biorefineries represents an integrated strategy that contributes to mitigating and transforming residual resources into value-added products. The valorization of CO₂ from gaseous effluents through biotechnological routes also contributes to the development of a bio-based circular economy. This article aims to present the carbon footprint of a microalgal biorefinery system with CO₂ recovery from exhaust gases for the 193 countries of the world. The results reveal that the tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO₂e) emissions of the proposed biorefinery system can be as low as 3 tCO₂e per year and as high as 590 tCO₂e per year. Countries with emissions greater than 445.98 tCO₂e per year were considered, following a statistical approach, as having low environmental performance in terms of the implementation of the proposed technology. This study’s insights help establish benchmarks for the implementation of microalgal biorefineries that are more capable of recovering industrial emissions—environmentally.

The growing demand for more sustainable energy alternatives has increased interest in microalgae-based fuels, promising options due to their high biomass productivity, carbon dioxide assimilation capacity, and potential for cultivation using wastewater. However, despite this strong theoretical basis, the industrial consolidation of these routes remains limited, revealing a persistent gap between scientific progress and the technological maturity achieved across specific biofuel pathways. This review examines the current state of the main microalgae-to-fuel conversion routes, emphasizing their technological readiness, proximity to industrial application, and the factors underlying their uneven progress. It also discusses the main opportunities and challenges associated with these biofuels, including cultivation performance, photobioreactor limitations, process intensification, scale-up, integration with waste streams, and downstream processing and product recovery requirements. Overall, this review identifies three main insights. First, the industrial viability of microalgae-based fuels depends less on maximizing individual conversion yields than on overcoming systemic bottlenecks across the production chain. Second, wet biomass conversion routes, particularly hydrothermal liquefaction and anaerobic digestion, appear more compatible with current industrial constraints. Third, lipid- and carbohydrate-based fuels remain more limited by biomass production costs and downstream processing requirements. Accordingly, further progress will depend on process intensification, integrated biorefineries, and technological innovations capable of simultaneously improving productivity, economic viability, and environmental performance.

Microalgae are promising platforms for biomass production, carbon capture, biofuels, and high-value bioproducts. However, despite significant advances in cultivation technologies, reactor engineering, and metabolic engineering, industrial implementation remains limited. This gap suggests that the main challenge of microalgae biotechnology lies not in the availability of productive strains or cultivation systems, but in managing the environmental and physiological heterogeneity that emerges during scale-up. This structured narrative review selected literature using predefined descriptors and relevance-based inclusion criteria and organized the evidence into five thematic domains encompassing cultivation-scale constraints, cellular physiology, bioengineering, precision technologies, and industrial translation. This review examines macrospatial bottlenecks related to light distribution, gas transfer, hydrodynamics, and reactor operation, alongside microspatial constraints involving cell cycle regulation, carbon allocation, metabolic adaptation, and stress responses. Recent advances in adaptive cultivation, real-time monitoring, artificial intelligence, digital twins, computational modeling, and bioengineering are discussed as tools to transform biological and environmental variability into actionable information. Based on concepts established in precision agriculture, this review proposes precision microalgae as a conceptual framework that integrates reactor engineering and cell physiology with three operational pillars: real-time monitoring, predictive modeling, and adaptive control. Its specific contribution is to connect currently fragmented technological and biological advances within a common framework for managing multiscale heterogeneity during cultivation and scale-up. Overall, the available evidence supports the operational logic of this framework, although its generalized effectiveness under industrial conditions remains to be demonstrated.