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Since the early 2000s, many private companies, public-private coalitions, and governments have committed to remove deforestation from commodity supply chains. Despite these zero-deforestation commitments (ZDCs), high rates of deforestation persist and may even be increasing. On the upside, a few region- and commodity-specific ZDCs have contributed to reductions by up to hundreds of thousands of hectares of deforestation, with mixed evidence on associated leakage. ZDCs have also spurred progress in monitoring, traceability, and awareness of deforestation. On the downside, as currently implemented, supply chain initiatives only cover a small share of tropical deforestation. Government- and company-led ZDCs are just two components of broader policy mixes aimed at reducing deforestation. To be more impactful, ZDCs needs to cover entire biomes, supply bases of companies, and export and domestic markets, with special attention not to exclude marginal producers. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Environment and Resources, Volume 48 is October 2023. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Tropical forests are under increasing pressure, but conservation interventions have had only limited success in mitigating deforestation and ecosystem degradation. Over the past decade, however, jurisdictional approaches to sustainable resource use have attracted increasing attention as a potential alternative to traditional conservation strategies. These approaches operate within formal administrative boundaries and seek to establish policies and practices that apply to all stakeholders. We compiled a global database of conservation initiatives and developed a definition and typology for jurisdictional approaches; of the 80 initiatives included in our database, 25 met this definition. We categorized these jurisdictional approaches according to two criteria: the focus of the intervention and the degree of government involvement. These jurisdictions encompassed approximately 40% of global tropical forests, with most experiencing higher‐than‐average deforestation rates. Although jurisdictional approaches harbor the potential to overcome the limitations of previous approaches, numerous challenges for implementation and operation remain. In addition, because most jurisdictional initiatives currently in operation are still early in their lifecycles, the long‐term effectiveness of this strategy has yet to be proven.

The main challenge for a sustainability transition is to scale up successful solutions. Upscaling requires coalitions of public, private, and civil society actors who align their motivations. Pathways to upscaling may involve leveraging a dominant player's market power, integrating successful initiatives into public policy, or reinforcing government-led change with private efforts. Various actors agree to collaborate to take advantage of their complementary capabilities, e.g., government policies facilitate private action, market incentives reward progressive actors while government sanctions punish laggards, actors take up different tasks of the policy cycle, and large players absorb and disseminate pioneer efforts. To achieve durable impacts, the upscaling of solutions to reach sustainability must continually maintain a balance of incentives among key actors. We identify general lessons for successful upscaling that provide insights on the importance of motivating actors, designing collaborations for lasting success, and incorporating concerns of developing countries.

Deforestation and landscape fragmentation have been identified as processes enabling direct transmission of zoonotic infections. Certain human behaviors provide opportunities for direct contact between humans and wild nonhuman primates (NHPs), but are often missing from studies linking landscape level factors and observed infectious diseases. Our objective is to better understand landscape and livelihood factors influencing human-NHP contact in rural communities whose landscapes undergo deforestation. We investigate core loss and edge density within a buffered area around survey respondent households to identify which landscape changes and behaviors increase the risk of human-NHP contact. Behavioral survey data were collected from small-scale agriculturists living near forest fragments around Kibale National Park in western Uganda. We combined spatially explicit behavioral data with high-resolution satellite imagery. Using land cover classification and change detection, we investigated the relationships between forest loss and fragmentation, behavioral data, and human-NHP contact using logistic regression. Between 2011 and 2015, there were differences in the landscape metrics around the households of individuals who had experienced human-NHP contact compared to those who had not had contact. Increased edge density around households, collection of small trees for construction, and foraging and hunting for food in forested habitat significantly increase the likelihood of human-NHP contact. This study provides empirical evidence that forest landscape fragmentation and certain smallholders’ behaviors in forest patches jointly increase the likelihood of human-NHP contact events. Combining spatially explicit data on land use and human behaviors is crucial for understanding the social and ecological drivers of human-NHP contact.

Mitigating the predicted impacts of climate change requires rapid expansion of renewable energy production, including Utility-Scale Solar Energy (USSE) on an unprecedented scale. In the US, a significant share of planned USSE targets working lands—particularly farms and ranches—yet the decision factors informing private landowners’ decisions to host USSE on their lands are little understood. Our research addresses this gap through a qualitative case study of working lands in California’s San Joaquin Valley and San Francisco Bay Area, based on 60 interviews with farmers and ranchers, solar developers, and community and government organizations. Applying land system science and agricultural decision-making theory, we find that landowner decisions to host USSE are based on profit-maximization, water availability, visual and ecological landscape values, and agricultural land preservation ethic. Solar interest varies across landowner types, with farmers typically maximizing operational income while maintaining agricultural production, and ranchers often prioritizing lifestyle-related landscape benefits. The current feasibility of integrating solar with agriculture appears to be low beyond sheep grazing, with benefits and drawbacks discussed in detail. Optimal areas for future USSE development include farmlands with declining water availability, lands without permanent crops or high amenity value, and regions with energy-intensive agricultural operations. Study findings can inform state land use planning and community engagement by solar developers.

More than 500 companies engaged in supply chains of forest-risk commodity have adopted zero-deforestation commitments (ZDCs). We use corporate social responsibility strategy and policy implementation theories to analyse the processes and conditions for ZDC implementation. We base our study on 35 semi-structured interviews with company representatives and sector actors, publicly available ZDC data, and company reports. The objective is to understand the opportunities and challenges of ZDC implementation at the level of companies. While past research addressed ZDC coverage and effectiveness, knowledge is still lacking on companies' perspectives on the implementation of their commitments. This study provides a unique perspective by integrating the direct experience and knowledge of private actors on an environmental governance regime. We find that companies see implementation of ZDCs as a journey and often rely on voluntary sustainability standards, aligning their strategies and key performance indicators (KPIs) to these. They engage directly in the supply chain, conducting projects “on-the-ground.” Implementing ZDCs requires the involvement of procurement departments and upper management, and collaborations within and between companies. Companies rely on service providers for in-depth knowledge and field implementation. They use monitoring tools, e.g. remote sensing, and see supply chain traceability as a prerequisite for implementation. Companies face numerous implementation challenges. Internally, companies often lack leadership on their ZDC, struggle to align commitments with the organization's operations and to manage suppliers, especially smallholders, and allocate insufficient resources. Externally, they lack common standards and stakeholder support, and face challenging regulatory conditions and missing market incentives. An uneven playing field creates leakage markets. Companies identify better leadership, technology and pre-competitive collaboration as potential solutions. Zero-deforestation commitments are unlikely to greatly contribute to reducing deforestation until better implementation processes, mechanisms, and conditions are in place.

A variety of policy interventions from public authorities and private companies attempt to reduce deforestation in private forest concessions. These include fines for illegal deforestation and market incentives for forest management practices that meet sustainability standards. While some studies have found significant differences in forest outcomes between concessions that participate in sustainability commitments and those that do not, others have found small or inconclusive differences. We contribute to this literature by examining all privately allocated concessions in the Peruvian Amazon to determine whether sustainability commitments correspond with lower deforestation rates. Conversely, we examine whether fines correspond with higher deforestation rates, a question for which fewer analyses have been published. Using matching methods, we do not find significantly different deforestation rates between control groups and logging concessions with third party environmental certification. We also do not see significant differences in deforestation rates in petroleum concessions managed by companies who have made sustainability commitments. Regarding punitive fines, we do not find significant differences in deforestation rates between control groups and logging concessions with fines levied. The same holds true for fines levied in brazil nut concessions. Potential explanations for these findings include insufficient monitoring or inadequate stringency for sustainability commitments, and insufficiently punitive fines or low enforcement levels.

The increasing global interconnectivity influencing land system change brings with it new challenges for land-system science. We evaluate whether recent land-system science (LSS) research into telecoupling provides a basis to set normative goals or priorities for addressing sustainability in coupled human-natural systems. We summarize the challenges for sustainability in an increasingly telecoupled world, particularly the coordination of multisited, multiscalar networks of public and private sector actors. Transnational flows of capital, commodities, energy, people, and waste often span multiple territorial jurisdictions. Thus, effective governance of such systems requires attention to collective decision-making and negotiation among governments, firms, land users, consumers, financial actors, and others. Fil: Munroe, Darla K.. Ohio State University; Estados Unidos Fil: Batistella, Mateus. Ministerio da Agricultura Pecuaria e Abastecimento de Brasil. Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuaria; Brasil Fil: Friis, Cecilie. Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin; Alemania Fil: Gasparri, Nestor Ignacio. Universidad Nacional de Tucumán. Instituto de Ecología Regional. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Tucumán. Instituto de Ecología Regional; Argentina Fil: Lambin, Eric F.. Université Catholique de Louvain; Bélgica Fil: Liu, Jianguo. Michigan State University; Estados Unidos Fil: Meyfroidt, Patrick. Université Catholique de Louvain; Bélgica Fil: Moran, Emilio. Michigan State University; Estados Unidos Fil: Nielsen, Jonas Østergaard. Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin; Alemania

Sand, gravel, and crushed rock, together referred to as construction aggregates, are the most extracted solid materials. Growing demand is damaging ecosystems, triggering social conflicts, and fueling concerns over sand scarcity. Balancing protection efforts and extraction to meet society's needs requires designing sustainable pathways at a system level. Here, we present a perspective on global sand sustainability that shifts the focus from the mining site to the entire sand-supply network (SSN) of a region understood as a coupled human-natural system whose backbone is the physical system of construction aggregates. We introduce the idea of transitions in sand production from subsistence mining toward larger-scale regional supply systems that include mega-quarries for crushed rock, marine dredging, and recycled secondary materials. We discuss claims of an imminent global sand scarcity, evaluate whether new mining frontiers such as Greenland could alleviate it, and highlight three action fields to foster a sustainable global sand system.

Governance of global natural resources is increasingly hybrid, with complementary public and private sector initiatives layered on landscapes to improve environmental outcomes. The challenge of polycentric land use governance is alignment of goals across diverse governance mechanisms when agricultural producers, public agencies, and corporations have distinct motivations. This case study of soil carbon governance on California rangelands explores a new payment for ecosystem services (PES) initiative led by the food and agriculture industry, called the Ecosystem Services Market Consortium (ESMC). Applying hybrid governance theory to agricultural lands, we conduct an ex-ante policy evaluation of potential policy impact based on (i) alignment between corporate sustainability goals and ranchers’ priorities and (ii) complementarity of the ESMC market with existing public and private policies enabling rangeland conservation. We found corporations developing the PES market to be motivated by carbon insetting, the objectives of which converge with ranchers’ goals of preserving soils. Each policy offers distinct benefits and challenges, with synergies around climate change adaptation and soil health. As a new policy tool, carbon markets like the ESMC are positioned to meet demand for soil health financing, support resilience and ranch productivity, and improve ranchers’ access to soil health data for adaptive management. Given carbon markets’ outcome-based payment structure, we highlight the importance of complementary governance mechanisms that mitigate upfront risk with financial and technical support during the transition period, including Farm Bill cost-share programs and private sector financing tools. This policy evaluation highlights the challenges and opportunities surrounding rangelands soil carbon governance, particularly the trade-offs that ranchers, corporations, and society at large must consider for landscape-scale conservation programs.

Oil palm expansion resulted in 2 million hectares (Mha) of forest loss globally in 2000–2010. Despite accounting for 24% (4.5 Mha) of the world’s total oil palm cultivated area, expansion dynamics in sub-Saharan Africa have been overlooked. We show that in Southwest Cameroon, a top producing region of Africa, 67% of oil palm expansion from 2000–2015 occurred at the expense of forest. Contrary to the publicized narrative of industrial-scale expansion, most oil palm expansion and associated deforestation is occurring outside large agro-industrial concessions. Expansion and deforestation carried out by non-industrial producers is occurring near low-efficiency informal mills, unconstrained by the location of high-efficiency company-owned mills. These results highlight the key role of a booming informal economic sector in driving rapid land use change. High per capita consumption and rising palm oil demands in sub-Saharan Africa spotlight the need to consider informal economies when identifying regionally relevant sustainability pathways., Deforestation for palm oil production is often attributed to large-scale, agro-industrial expansion. Here, Ordway et al. show that much recent expansion in Southwest Cameroon can be attributed to an informal sector of non-industrial producers establishing near informal, non-industrial palm oil mills.

Overlapping land use allocations, in which one parcel of land is allocated two or more times for different uses, either intentionally or unintentionally, are common globally. We assess how overlapping land use allocations impact forest cover change using Peruvian government data for the lowland Amazon. Results are based on propensity score matched difference-in-differences methods using 1-ha resolution forest loss data for 2000–2014, along with Peruvian government land use allocation data. We find that deforestation is lower in overlapping than in same-type, non-overlapping allocations. This finding is consistent across all types of overlapping land use allocations. These results support the hypothesis that multiple use management decreases deforestation, and provide no evidence indicating that overlapping allocations are a form of tenure insecurity that might increase deforestation. Our findings inform conservation policy related to multiple use management, land tenure security, and conflict avoidance.

© 2018 Elsevier Ltd Changes in land systems generate many sustainability challenges. Identifying more sustainable land-use alternatives requires solid theoretical foundations on the causes of land-use/cover changes. Land system science is a maturing field that has produced a wealth of methodological innovations and empirical observations on land-cover and land-use change, from patterns and processes to causes. We take stock of this knowledge by reviewing and synthesizing the theories that explain the causal mechanisms of land-use change, including systemic linkages between distant land-use changes, with a focus on agriculture and forestry processes. We first review theories explaining changes in land-use extent, such as agricultural expansion, deforestation, frontier development, and land abandonment, and changes in land-use intensity, such as agricultural intensification and disintensification. We then synthesize theories of higher-level land system change processes, focusing on: (i) land-use spillovers, including land sparing and rebound effects with intensification, leakage, indirect land-use change, and land-use displacement, and (ii) land-use transitions, defined as structural non-linear changes in land systems, including forest transitions. Theories focusing on the causes of land system changes span theoretically and epistemologically disparate knowledge domains and build from deductive, abductive, and inductive approaches. A grand, integrated theory of land system change remains elusive. Yet, we show that middle-range theories – defined here as contextual generalizations that describe chains of causal mechanisms explaining a well-bounded range of phenomena, as well as the conditions that trigger, enable, or prevent these causal chains –, provide a path towards generalized knowledge of land systems. This knowledge can support progress towards sustainable social-ecological systems.

Conversion of shaded agroforests to unshaded monocultures endangers the resilience of tropical landscapes. Landscape-scale impacts of alternative shade managements have rarely been assessed. This study explored plantation- and landscape-level impacts of different shade management strategies on aboveground biomass, functional group diversity, and economic potential of cocoa production in northern Ecuador. We simulated several cocoa shade management scenarios, using the dynamic forest model LANDIS-II: (i) ‘baseline’ projections representing the current mosaic of traditional agroforests, planted agroforests, and unshaded monoculture plantations; (ii) ‘traditional’ agroforestry shaded by native fruit and timber trees; (iii) ‘planted’ agroforests shaded by planted fruit trees; and (iv) ‘monoculture’ unshaded plantations. The impacts of setting aside 20, 30, and 40% of cocoa plantations for natural regeneration was tested for the monoculture scenario. Traditional agroforests shaded by native trees stored up to 7% more aboveground biomass and had higher abundances of rare functional groups compared to monocultures after 50 years of simulation. Smaller effects were found for planted agroforests. Shaded plantations and land set aside for natural regeneration reduced forest fragmentation at the landscape level. The estimated yield gap for monoculture and shaded plantations could not be compensated by additional revenues for carbon storage at current carbon market price. Improving payment-for-ecosystem services and certification schemes are needed to incentivize smallholders to maintain substantial non-cocoa tree cover that may provide an environmental-friendly way to improve economic potential and food security for smallholders, while supporting biomass and functional group diversity at the landscape level.

Significance Global demand for species used in traditional medicine is increasing among wealthy urban consumers. This growing trade provides livelihood opportunities for harvesters, but also risks causing resource overexploitation. A dearth of reliable data hinders assessments of whether these species are declining, and why. We investigate these issues for Himalayan caterpillar fungus—one of the world’s most expensive medicinal species—by integrating local harvesters’ knowledge of production trends with ecological modeling. We find that harvesters increasingly attribute declining production to overexploitation, while models indicate that climate warming is also contributing to this decline. Our results underscore the “double whammy” threatening highly valuable species, and demonstrate the complementarity of different knowledge systems for assessing the sustainability of the medicinal resource trade., Demand for traditional medicine ingredients is causing species declines globally. Due to this trade, Himalayan caterpillar fungus (Ophiocordyceps sinensis) has become one of the world’s most valuable biological commodities, providing a crucial source of income for hundreds of thousands of collectors. However, the resulting harvesting boom has generated widespread concern over the sustainability of its collection. We investigate whether caterpillar fungus production is decreasing—and if so, why—across its entire range. To overcome the limitations of sparse quantitative data, we use a multiple evidence base approach that makes use of complementarities between local knowledge and ecological modeling. We find that, according to collectors across four countries, caterpillar fungus production has decreased due to habitat degradation, climate change, and especially overexploitation. Our statistical models corroborate that climate change is contributing to this decline. They indicate that caterpillar fungus is more productive under colder conditions, growing in close proximity to areas likely to have permafrost. With significant warming already underway throughout much of its range, we conclude that caterpillar fungus populations have been negatively affected by a combination of overexploitation and climate change. Our results underscore that harvesting is not the sole threat to economically valuable species, and that a collapse of the caterpillar fungus system under ongoing warming and high collection pressure would have serious implications throughout the Himalayan region.

New partnerships between governments, private companies, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are reshaping global environmental governance. In particular, there has been a rise of voluntary sustainability standards in an attempt to manage social and environmental impacts of global supply chains. We analyze the large spectrum of interactions between private, public, and civil society actors around voluntary sustainability standards, primarily for tropical agriculture and forestry. This review uncovers a policy ecosystem dominated by a proliferation of standards that complement, substitute, or compete against each other, with coordination mechanisms beginning to arise. Contrary to widely held views, interactions between governments, NGOs, and private companies surrounding the adoption of sustainable practices are not generally antagonistic, and public and private environmental governance regimes rarely operate independently. The influence of these interactions on the effectiveness of sustainability standards needs more attention. Better understanding how private regulations interact with the policy ecosystem will help design more effective interventions.

Rigorous impact assessments test for causal effects of interventions on outcomes of interest. When findings of such assessments become part of political and scholarly controversies, they can be interpreted in unintended ways. The value of the ensuing debate is enhanced by a shared understanding of key concepts, methodological approaches, and evaluative criteria. Here we illustrate the importance of such shared understanding by example of a recent controversy surrounding the estimated impacts of decentralized zoning on deforestation in a major agricultural frontier, the Argentine Dry Chaco. In a recent analysis, we concluded that provincial zoning plans had significantly reduced deforestation in three provinces; critics suggest it had not. In attempting to resolve this debate, we identify six areas in which shared understanding can support more productive interaction. These include: (1) the distinction between impact and other measures of effectiveness, (2) an appreciation of recent advances in methods for causal inference, (3) the distinction between effective and perfect enforcement, (4) the challenge of attributing impacts to mechanisms and actors, (5) transparency in standards used to judge the desirability of observed outcomes, as well as (6) caution in the generalization of findings to other geographies.

Bhutan is characterized by a landscape dominated by forests. A substantial share of these forests is dedicated to nature conservation, with an extensive protected area network connected by biological corridors. Forestlands are also partly allocated to timber production, including forest management units subjected to strict regulations. We assessed the effectiveness of these various land-use zoning units to protect forest cover. We used a matching procedure to control for covariates and obtain robust estimates of the impact of each type of unit on forest cover changes during the 2000s. We also investigated subsets of the protected area network to test for effectiveness heterogeneities within this network. Our results showed that protected areas prevented 63% of the forest loss expected in forestlands under this protection status. These units also curtailed forest gain. Long-established protected areas were more effective at avoiding forest loss than recent ones, while the levels of stringency and operationality of protected areas had no differentiable impact on forest loss. We detected more forest loss in forests surrounding protected areas compared to more distant forestlands, showing a leakage effect. Biological corridors had no impact on forest loss and gain. Forest management units decreased forest loss by half. After accounting for the selection bias, this study demonstrated the effectiveness of land use zoning for forest conservation in Bhutan.

International audience; Better aligning agriculture and environmental policies is an important issue for Mediterranean areas. Minimizing conflicts between the two sectors requires better understanding farmers’ concerns. Using survey data among a sample of livestock farmers in the French Mediterranean Alps, we examine the main constraints they are con- fronted with. While France has adopted environmental policies aimed at the conservation of natural habitats and wildlife, which have contributed to a “rewilding ” of mountains, farmers’ responses suggest that the growing presence of wolves is a major concern, in addition to institutional and market-related constraints. Given that grassland changes, notably agricultural land abandonment in Mediterranean areas, is considered as problematic for its consequences on agriculture, biodiversity and landscape management, we examine whether the con- straints perceived by farmers are related to land abandonment. Applying a probit regression to our survey data, we show that farmers’ perception of the wolf’s presence is positively associated with the level of abandonment of alpine grasslands. It is the only perceived constraint significantly associated with land abandonment. Our results have implications for the design of land use policies to support the permanence of mountain farming and to help livestock breeders confront their particular constraints.

Significance Supply chains tied to multinational corporations represent over 80% of global trade and engage over one in five workers. Supply-chain management therefore has a significant impact on key social and environmental challenges. Despite this importance, there is currently no comprehensive, empirically grounded understanding of how companies address sustainability in their supply chains. We develop a global database based on a random sample of publicly listed companies with annual reports in English to provide insight into how the private sector contributes to advancing global sustainability via their supply chains. This study provides a large-scale empirical analysis of corporate sustainable-sourcing practices across multiple sectors and geographies., Global supply chains play a critical role in many of the most pressing environmental stresses and social struggles identified by the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Responding to calls from the global community, companies are adopting a variety of voluntary practices to improve the environmental and/or social management of their suppliers’ activities. We develop a global survey of 449 publicly listed companies in the food, textile, and wood-products sectors with annual reports in English to provide insight into how the private sector contributes to advancing the SDGs via such sustainable-sourcing practices. We find that while 52% of companies use at least one sustainable-sourcing practice, these practices are limited in scope; 71% relates to only one or a few input materials and 60.5% apply to only first-tier suppliers. We also find that sustainable-sourcing practices typically address a small subset of the sustainability challenges laid out by the SDGs, primarily focusing on labor rights and compliance with national laws. Consistent with existing hypotheses, companies that face consumer and civil society pressure are associated with a significantly higher probability of adopting sustainable-sourcing practices. Our findings highlight the opportunities and limitations of corporate sustainable-sourcing practices in addressing the myriad sustainability challenges facing our world today.

The chocolate market is experiencing a wave of market differentiation thanks to the emergence of the bean-to-bar movement. Cacao is seeing both a rise in demand for mass markets and a process of market bifurcation into more specialized, high-quality products for wealthy urban consumers. For the specialized market, the quality and origin of the beans are important attributes. Direct trading between chocolate makers and famers seeks to promote the conservation of rare cultivars and traditional agroforestry systems, while lifting farmers out of poverty. Here we assess whether these alternative configurations of the global value chain truly offer smallholders new opportunities, beyond the traditional intensification or marginalization pathways that are generally offered to them. We conducted detailed socio-economic and biophysical surveys with a sample of farms in three of the largest cacao producing provinces of Ecuador. Our results show that, even though smallholders lack the assets needed to join mainstream commodity markets, they have been able to capitalize on the qualities of their traditional varieties to access niche markets. Through strong cooperatives, the knowledge held by buyers about what constitutes a high-quality bean has been transferred to farmers. A unique natural capital may provide smallholders with rewarding pathways to develop their agriculture, exploiting new market opportunities offered by globalization. Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

Some environmental and development policies of the 1980s and 1990s were based on simplistic views on the causes and dynamics of land-use changes (Lambin et al., 2001). For example, the assumption that tropical deforestation was mainly linked to local population growth, poverty, and shifting cultivation led to a failure to address commodity-driven deforestation, which later became a dominant cause of forest conversion. The assumptions that rangelands have a fixed carrying capacity and that pastoralists overstock their rangelands, causing dryland degradation, were used to justify strategies to control and modify traditional patterns of pastoralism in sub-Saharan Africa, with negative consequences on land access and livelihoods. Since our identification, twenty years ago, of empirically-supported pathways of land-use change (Lambin et al., 2001), land system science has made major advances in its understanding of land use as coupled human-environment systems (Turner et al., 2021). This richer understanding proves essential to address current policy challenges related to land use and sustainability solutions. We briefly discuss four examples below.

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-22418-3

A major reduction in global deforestation is needed to mitigate climate change and biodiversity loss. Recent private sector commitments aim to eliminate deforestation from a company’s operations or supply chain, but they fall short on several fronts. Company pledges vary in the degree to which they include time-bound interventions with clear definitions and criteria to achieve verifiable outcomes. Zero-deforestation policies by companies may be insufficient to achieve broader impact on their own due to leakage, lack of transparency and traceability, selective adoption and smallholder marginalization. Public–private policy mixes are needed to increase the effectiveness of supply-chain initiatives that aim to reduce deforestation. We review current supply-chain initiatives, their effectiveness, and the challenges they face, and go on to identify knowledge gaps for complementary public–private policies.

Food retailers and manufacturers are increasingly committing to address agricultural sustainability issues in their supply chains. In place of using established eco-certifications, many companies define their own supply chain sustainability standards. Scholars remain divided on whether we should expect such company-led programs to affect change. We use a major food retailer as a critical case to evaluate the effectiveness of a company-led supply chain standard in improving environmental farm management practices. We find that the company-led standard increases the adoption of most environmental best management practices among the company's fruit, vegetable and flower growers in South Africa. This result is robust across two identification strategies: a panel analysis of over 950 farm audits and a cross-sectional matching analysis using original survey data. In-depth interviews suggest that the program's unique focus on capacity building through audit visits by highly trained staff, coupled with a close business relationship between the retailer and their growers help to explain the increased effectiveness of the program as compared to other private environmental standards. Contrary to the argument that company-led initiatives are mere window dressing, this study provides a critical example of the positive role private governance mechanisms can play in improving environmental farm management practices globally.

Oil palm production expanded 1.2 million hectares in sub-Saharan Africa since 1990, with expansion accelerating in several heavily forested countries since 2000. Despite a narrative of expansion driven by multinational corporations, we provide evidence of a dynamic non-industrial oil palm production sector linked to a burgeoning informal milling enterprise. Surveys were conducted with oil palm farmers in Cameroon (n = 546), the third largest palm oil producer on the continent with the greatest amount of deforestation due to recent expansion, to determine who is expanding into forest. Seventy-three percent of survey respondents reported clearing forest, the magnitude of which was explained by differences in milling strategies and supply chain integration. Large-scale, non-industrial producers played a disproportionate role in deforestation, many of which were engaged in informal supply chains through the use of non-industrial mills. Farms associated with more clearing tended to use high-yielding seedlings. Even the highest yielding farms, however, averaged only 7.7 tons fresh fruit bunches (FFBs) ha−1 yr−1, well below the potential 20 tons FFBs ha−1 yr−1 yield for Cameroon. We also found a strong relationship between deforestation and land claims. Most farms claimed ownership of their land, although only 5% had official land titles. Conservation challenges in the region arise from land tenure laws that incentivize forest clearing. This study sheds light on the role of informal supply chains in deforestation and highlights the need for strict implementation and enforcement of land use zoning policies.

Ecosystem protection payments pay off Trees take up a lot of CO 2 , so one approach to reducing the rate of increase in atmospheric CO 2 levels is to reduce the cutting down of trees. Jayachandran et al. evaluated a program in which forest owners in Uganda were paid to not cut down their trees. Encouragingly, payments did reduce deforestation, and owners did not compensate by cutting down trees in neighboring forests. Furthermore, even in a scenario where cutting resumed after payments ceased, the beneficial delay in CO 2 release from cut trees, as quantified by the social cost of carbon, outweighed the monetary cost. Science , this issue p. 267

Reducing large-scale deforestation is a key objective of global efforts to mitigate climate change. An important debate concerns the levels of governance at which deforestation can be reduced effectively. Political economic theory and evidence suggests that national governments are more likely than subnational governments in agricultural frontiers to adopt restrictive forest conservation policies, due to differences in political constituencies and capacity. Here we examine the validity of this claim using an impact study of provincial-level land use planning in Argentina's main deforestation frontier, the Dry Chaco. In 2007, Argentina's provinces were obliged to define land use zoning for their native forests, but had considerable leeway in its implementation. We use data from 30,126 properties in the provinces of Salta, Santiago del Estero, and Chaco, and a rigorous counterfactual estimation strategy to quantify the extent to which adopted zoning plans affected deforestation. We find evidence that provincial-level land use zoning reduced deforestation in all three provinces, but not in all zones and periods. Differences in impact are associated with differences in the location of zones and the timing of planning. Our findings suggest that subnational governments can make important contributions to reducing large-scale deforestation in agricultural frontiers.

Reducing large-scale deforestation in commodity frontiers remains a key challenge for climate change mitigation and the conservation of biodiversity. Public and private anti-deforestation policies have been shown to effectively reduce forest loss, but the conditions under which such policies get adopted are rarely examined. Here we propose a set of conditions that we expect to be associated with the adoption of effective anti-deforestation policies in commodity frontiers. We then examine whether these conditions have influenced policy adoption in South America’s major soy-and-cattle frontiers: the Brazilian Amazon, the Cerrado, the Chaco, the Chiquitano, and Paraguay’s Atlantic Forest. By collating empirical data from diverse sources, including literature review, extensive expert interviews, and analysis of primary and secondary data, we show that the Cerrado, the Chaco, and the Chiquitano differ from the Brazilian Amazon in multiple ways that might have inhibited adoptions of effective anti-deforestation instruments. These conditions include: a higher importance of the agricultural sector within the respective countries, lower carbon stocks and species richness, higher prevalence of private land tenure, and higher baseline compliance with forest reserve regulations on private lands. We also observe that the adoption of the most effective private anti-deforestation instrument, commodity moratoria, may respond to similar conditions as those influencing the adoption of public instruments. Incentivizing public and private actors to adopt effective anti-deforestation policies in the Cerrado, Chaco, and the Chiquitano will likely be more challenging than it has been in the Brazilian Amazon.

PurposeNatural American Spirit (NAS) cigarettes, which have recently grown in popularity, are marketed as eco-friendly and natural. The present study examined whether NAS's on-the-pack messaging influences adolescents' health perceptions of the brand.MethodsIn a mixed-factor design, adolescent participants (N= 1,003, ages 13-17, 75% female) were randomized to one of the six exposure conditions. All viewed images of an NAS and a Pall Mall (comparison brand) cigarette pack, but differed in pack color (blue, green, or gold/orange) and brand viewed first. Perceptions of pack logos, addictiveness, harms to the smoker, others, and the environment were assessed directly after viewing pack images for each brand.ResultsAdolescents who perceived NAS as more pro-environment tended to perceive NAS cigarettes to be less addictive, r=-.19, p < .01. NAS cigarettes also were perceived as less addictive and better for the environment than Pall Mall. Most (90%) participants provided nature-friendly words (e.g., environment, recycle) when asked to describe logos on the NAS packs. In adjusted models, relative to Pall Mall, NAS was perceived as healthier for smokers, healthier for smokers' family and friends, and safer for the environment. Findings did not differ by pack color and ever tobacco use.ConclusionsAdolescents perceived a health advantage for NAS cigarettes with its on-the-pack, eco-friendly and pro-health marketing. The findings are consistent with prior research with adults. Given the accumulating evidence of consumer misperceptions, eco-friendly messaging on cigarettes is a public health concern that warrants further consideration for regulatory intervention.