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Agroforestry is increasingly promoted to support biodiversity conservation by increasing tree cover in agricultural landscapes, but the extent to which landscape context affects how benefits accrue remains uncertain. We used shade-coffee systems to ask how the proximity and extent of forest and forest-agriculture mosaic in the landscape influenced bird communities in 160 coffee plantations that differed in coffee plant density and shade tree richness and abundance in two departments of Colombia with differing regional forest cover. Our findings suggest that regional forest cover and landscape conditions can mediate the response of birds to local habitats on plantations. Avian richness and community completeness was positively related to the amount of forest-agriculture mosaic within landscapes surrounding coffee plantations only within the comparatively forested department of Antioquia (mean 32 % regional forest cover), particularly where plantations had high richness and abundance of trees. In the largely deforested department of Cauca (mean 1 %), neither distance to forest nor cover by forest-agriculture mosaics explained avian richness and community completeness, both of which were positively related only to local tree richness and abundance. We show that biodiversity benefits from increasing habitat quality at local and landscape scales, and habitat quality within plantations becomes increasingly influential as the amount of habitat in the broader landscape declines. Our results emphasize the role of landscape context in conservation planning to promote biodiversity in coffee-growing regions.

Many farmers around the world are confronted with the decision of adopting high-yielding varieties or maintaining the diverse portfolio of ancient varieties and cultivars that constitute the basis of local and global agrobiodiversity. This dilemma often resolves towards ensuring short-term individual profits at the expense of long-term biodiversity conservation. In this paper we argue that specialty markets can act as a driving force to resolve this balance towards the conservation of agrobiodiversity, supported by collective action. We use the case of the Ecuadorian cacao producers to illustrate this possibility. The upper Amazon is the center of origin of cacao, one of the top traded global commodities. Since the 1990s Ecuadorian farmers have been substituting regional varieties with a clone developed in the country, the CCN-51 that has shown to be a high-yielding variety that is also resistant to monilia , a common cacao disease. In some areas of the country, however, farmers belonging to cooperatives have been able to keep local varieties, obtain ecological certifications for adhering to the recommended practices, and reach specialty markets that pay higher prices for their cacao. We call this set of benefits upgrading. We conducted a study of 205 household surveys and several interviews in four provinces along the West coast of Ecuador. We assessed the role of collective action (in the form of cooperative participation) in enhancing farmers’ access to high-value chains. Our results show that collective action enables economic upgrading by providing participants with higher incomes and more formal contracts. As farmers join direct trade and certification, other benefits are accrued, such as cacao and non-cacao tree biodiversity conservation. This analysis shows that, once niche markets are open for farmers, collective action boosts the benefits of such opportunities.

The Amazon biome, spanning nine countries, has one of the highest rates of deforestation worldwide. This deforestation contributes to biodiversity loss, climate change, the spread of infectious diseases, and damage to rural and indigenous livelihoods. Hundreds of articles have been published on the topic of deforestation across Amazonia, yet there has been no recent synthesis of deforestation drivers and deforestation-control policy effectiveness in the region. Here we undertook the first systematic review of papers published between 2000 and 2021 that have causally linked proximate and underlying drivers and policies to deforestation outcomes in Amazonia. In the 155 articles that met our inclusion criteria, we find that causal research is concentrated in Brazil, and to a lesser degree Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia. There has been little study of the Guianas, Venezuela or Colombia. Large- and small-scale agriculture linked to improved market access and high agricultural prices are frequently researched underlying drivers of deforestation across the heavily researched regions. In the Guianas research focuses on mining with little focus on underlying causes. Research on infrastructure expansion, mining, and oil extraction and on technological, sociocultural, and institutional factors remains sparse. Many public and private policies have been found to be effective in controlling deforestation across the biome, with protected areas and public policies standing out as particularly successful in slowing deforestation vis-à-vis supply chain approaches. Frontier age, land tenure, and policy interactions are key moderating factors affecting the outcomes of different underlying causes and policies. Our findings indicate a greater need for research on (i) additional deforestation drivers beyond agriculture and economic factors, (ii) the complex interactions between different drivers and deforestation control policies, (iii) causes underlying deforestation in low or new deforestation areas, and (iv) the dynamics between Amazonian subregions and countries. Understanding the extent and diversity of deforestation drivers and effectiveness of existing deforestation mitigation policies across Amazonia is a necessary first step toward designing policies to further reduce deforestation in the biome.

To address concerns about the negative impacts of food supply chains in forest regions, a growing number of companies have adopted policies to influence their suppliers’ behaviors. With a focus on forest-risk food supply chains, we provide a systematic review of the conservation and livelihood outcomes of the mechanisms that companies use to implement their forest-focused supply chain policies (FSPs)—certifications, codes of conduct, and market exclusion mechanisms. More than half of the 37 cases that rigorously measure the outcomes of FSP implementation mechanisms find additional conservation and livelihood benefits resulting from the policies. Positive livelihood outcomes are more common than conservation additionality and most often pertain to improvements in farm income through increases in crop yields on coffee and cocoa farms that have adopted certifications or codes of conduct. However, in some cases certifications lead to a reduction in net household income as farmers increasingly specialize in the certified commodity and spend more on food purchases. Among the five cases that examine conservation and livelihoods simultaneously, there is no evidence of tradeoffs or synergies—most often an improvement in one type of outcome is associated with no change in the other. Interactions with public conservation and agricultural policies influence the conservation gains achieved by all mechanisms, while the marketing attributes of cooperatives and buying companies play a large role in determining the livelihood outcomes associated with certification. Compliance with the forest requirements of FSP implementation mechanisms is high, but challenges to geospatial monitoring and land use related selection biases limit the overall benefits of these policies. Given the highly variable methods and limited evidence base, additional rigorous research across a greater variety of contexts is urgently needed to better understand if and when FSPs can be successful in achieving synergies between conservation and livelihoods.

Most of the literature on the causes of tropical deforestation has focused on the proximate and distal causes. However, research exploring the psychological drivers of deforestation, i.e., motivations, is still scant despite being crucial to understand the processes of land-use change and individual decision making within social-ecological systems. We studied the combined effect of structural and individual causes of deforestation, with particular emphasis on motivations, for a sample of rural households in Colombia's foremost tropical deforestation frontier. We implemented a new instrument based on self-determination theory to measure five different types of motivations to protect the forests: intrinsic, guilt/regret, social, extrinsic motivations, and amotivation (lack of motivation). Our findings show that, controlling for the structural and household drivers widely identified in the deforestation literature, intrinsic motivations positively correlate with less self-reported deforestation. Also, amotivated people and those with extrinsic motives, such as expected payments for conservation, are more likely to deforest. Our results show that motivations can explain variation in land-use decisions and thus should be considered when designing, implementing, and evaluating conservation policies aiming to halt deforestation.

Texto curatorial “Periferias” La periferia, comprendida como el espacio que rodea o circunda un centro, es reconocida como uno de los posibles puntos de encuentro entre las imágenes que aquí se presentan. Lo periférico se hace manifiesto de diversas maneras: algunas de las reflexiones visuales giran en torno al interés por reconocer y visibilizar aquellos lugares, imaginarios, objetos y dinámicas cotidianas que habitualmente permanecen invisibles y que son puestos en juego en relación con el espacio específico de la galería y el territorio que le circunda. Otras propuestas se ocupan de generar filtraciones entre la intimidad –propia del cuerpo, del deseo, de los objetos personales– y lo público, propio de un espacio de exhibición. Otras más se centran en la exploración de los posibles puntos de encuentro y las interferencias entre las diferentes formas de comunicación. “Periferias” también se constituye como un espacio en el que se visibilizan ejercicios plásticos que a su vez son la materialización particular alrededor de otro centro, el de la pregunta por la creación y sus posibilidades como forma de enunciación propia y de relación creativa con un contexto.

In this paper we analyze how new actors, interests, and resources become salient to food system governance and how the domain of food system governance transforms as a result. Specifically, we focus on how the boundaries of food systems are redefined and new institutions are developed through the explicit recognition of distal interactions and feedbacks - telecoupling - operating in the food system space. Telecoupling can stimulate new forms of governance, such as the development of codes of conduct and certification schemes, with positive impacts on food and livelihood security; when ignored, telecouplings can exacerbate undesirable social and ecological outcomes in linked systems. We present a typology of telecoupled food systems, highlighting three dimensions of distance that can be present in systems that become telecoupled: social, institutional, and physical. We use that typology to explore the evolution of telecoupling and governance change in two case studies. We associate the tendency for changes in governance that occur in each case with the nature of "distance" in the systems in question: whether the systems are distal in terms of social and/or institutional ties, or in the resource base, or some combination of all three dimensions of distance. The challenge of overcoming distance is not the only issue that affects the possibility of governance change; the cases illustrate that the cultural and economic conditions of the connected systems, the agency of actors involved, and their political and social relations and networks all come to play in enabling governance transformation in telecoupled systems.

Multi-stakeholder roundtables offering certification programs are promising voluntary governance mechanisms to address sustainability issues associated with international agricultural supply chains. Yet, little is known about whether roundtable certifications confer additionality, the benefits of certification beyond what would be expected from policies and practices currently in place. Here, we examine the potential additionality of the Round table on Responsible Soybeans (RTRS) and the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) in mitigating conversion of native vegetation to cropland. We develop a metric of additionality based on business as usual land cover change dynamics and roundtable standard stringency relative to existing policies. We apply this metric to all countries with RTRS ( n = 8) and RSPO ( n = 12) certified production in 2013–2014, as well as countries that have no certified production but are among the top ten global producers in terms of soy ( n = 2) and oil palm ( n = 2). We find RSPO and RTRS both have substantially higher levels of stringency than existing national policies except in Brazil and Uruguay. In regions where these certification standards are adopted, the mean estimated rate of tree cover conversion to the target crop is similar for both standards. RTRS has higher mean relative stringency than the RSPO, yet RSPO countries have slightly higher enforcement levels. Therefore, mean potential additionality of RTRS and RSPO is similar across regions. Notably, countries with the highest levels of additionality have some adoption. However, with extremely low adoption rates (0.41% of 2014 global harvested area), RTRS likely has lower impact than RSPO (14%). Like most certification programs, neither roundtable is effectively targeting smallholder producers. To improve natural ecosystem protection, roundtables could target adoption to regions with low levels of environmental governance and high rates of forest-to-cropland conversion.

Eco-certification of food and other agricultural products has been promoted as a way of making markets work for sustainability. Certification programs offer a price premium to producers who invest in more sustainable practices. The literature on the impacts of certification has focused primarily on the economic benefits farmers perceive from participating in these schemes. These benefits, however, are often subject to price variability, offering only a partial explanation of why farmers join and stay in certification programs. We evaluated the potential of the Rainforest Alliance certification program to foster more resilient social-ecological systems in the face of globalization. Using the case of Santander, Colombia, and a pair-based comparison of 86 households to effectively produce a robust counterfactual, we showed that certification provides important environmental benefits, while improving the well-being of farmers and their communities. Furthermore, the study showed that price premiums are only one of many elements defining the success of certification, particularly important for motivating farmers to join, but less so to explain retention and upgrading. The case of Colombian coffee growers illustrates how the connections between local social-ecological systems and larger global forces can produce more sustainable livelihoods and land uses.

The land use impacts of globalization and of increasing global food and fuel demand depend on the trade relationships that emerge between consuming and producing countries. In the case of soybean production, increasing trade between South American farmers and consumers in Asia and Europe has facilitated soybean expansion in the Amazon, Chaco, and Cerrado biomes. While these telecouplings have been well documented, there is little understanding of how quality preferences influence trade patterns and supply chains, incentivizing or discouraging particular land use practices. In this study we provide empirical evidence that Brazil’s continued production of non-genetically modified (GM) soybeans has increased its competitive advantage in European countries with preferences against GM foods. Brazil’s strong trade relationship with European consumers has facilitated an upgrading of the soybean supply chain. Upgraded soybean supply chains create new conservation opportunities by allowing farmers to differentiate their products based on environmental quality in order to access premiums in niche markets in Europe. These interactions between GM preferences, trade flows, and supply chain structure help to explain why Brazilian soybean farmers have adopted environmental certification programs on a larger scale than Argentinian, Bolivian, Paraguayan, and Uruguayan soybean producers.