As the United Nations observes its International Day of Education on January 24, a connected 'treehouse classroom' built 32-metres up in the Amazon Rainforest canopy is helping educate adults in remote indigenous communities and give them new skills to pivot away from illegal logging and mining.

Made from sustainable wood, including naturally fallen Amazon trees, it has solar power and high-speed satellite internet, as well as accommodation and a bathroom for overnight stays.

"To build the treehouse took us four months to build. Thirty people, and they work all day from five to five and for us it was tough, very hard. But you know building 32 metres tall treehouse, it needed a lot of effort and it has 141 steps to get to the top," said JJ Durand, vice p resident of Junglekeepers, a local conservation charity dedicated to protecting the Madre de Dios region of the Peruvian Amazon, one of the most biodiverse and pristine areas on earth.

"For the forests, I feel very sad because living animals [are] dying. You see all logs in the ground. It's like people dying. The trees have leaves, branches and sap, everything is going down to the ground and they are dying one at a time. It's very sad,” Durand said.

The treehouse has a dual function as a treetop tourist stop, offering a stay in the jungle canopy at $1450 a night, as well as a classroom and learning hub for researchers and indigenous people, many of whom leave school as young as 11 years-old to start work with illegal loggers or mining.

"As soon as they're able to carry a little bit of weight they got out of the school. I would say the average is around 11 or 12 (years old)," Durand said.

“I feel the people here who does logging, they need ... we all need to upgrade our education. The main thing is, I think, the biggest problem is education," he said.

The project was built by Tamandua Expeditions, with Junglekeepers partnering with Udemy, an online education company, to provide Junglekeepers' indigenous young adult forest rangers access to learning courses to study at their jungle headquarters in the evening.

"This treehouse has to be one of the most remote classrooms all over the world. These people are not only learning their skills up there, but they're learning more about their surroundings, about their community, about nature, about this land they're trying to preserve," said Udemy’s Elise Rooney.

Deforestation across the Amazon rainforest slowed dramatically last year, down more than 55% from the same period in 2022, a major turnaround for the region, according to an analysis provided to Reuters.

The analysis, by the nonprofit Amazon Conservation's MAAP forest monitoring program, offers a first look at 2023 deforestation across the nine Amazon countries.

Brazil, Colombia, Peru and Bolivia all showed declining forest loss.