There is a wealth of research showing how land-use change is pushing Amazonia, which is one of the Earth's tipping elements, over a critical point of no return. Much less emphasis is put on remedies for this situation. One of these remedies would be the valorization of biodiversity, as it is largely empirically proven, if not comprehensively scientifically proven, that higher functional diversity and redundancy are also associated with the higher resilience of an ecosystem. This is especially true for soil biodiversity and the cascade of elements related to it, which inhibit ecosystem health, social cohesion, or governmental functioning in the long run. Thus, managing functional diversity potentially can avoid the crossing of tipping points. However, the discussion of conservation and sustainable use of resources is a difficult one. How can we convince people that using the services provided by functional diversity will pay off in the end and in the long run? Can deeper scientific and local-traditional knowledge of functional diversity and its functions in ecosystems, economies, and societies lead to sustainable management schemes which achieve resilience across biophysical, cultural and governance contexts? To answer these questions, multifactorial analysis is needed, comprising an integrated effort of natural- and social sciences to understand the underlying processes. In this symposium, we discuss the foundations and applications of functional biodiversity, resilience, and tipping points, and decipher the functional redundancy hypothesis as a basis for management options in humid tropical southwestern Amazonia. We take soil diversity as the key to ecosystem resilience and place the scientific findings of functional soil biodiversity in the context of socioecological systems and governance in the Amazonian landscape. We introduce the utility of bioindicators to explain underlying ecosystem resilience processes and tipping point thresholds. Furthermore, we integrate socioecological systems into scenarios for biodiversity-based livelihoods to be translated into viable management options and policies and discuss science-based capacity building and tools to incorporate local knowledge into a participatory action agenda for forest health.