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Deforestation for agriculture is a key threat to global carbon stocks, biodiversity, and indigenous ways of life. In the absence of strong territorial governance, zero-deforestation commitments (ZDCs), corporate policies to decouple food production from deforestation, remain a central tool to combat this issue. Yet evidence on their effectiveness remains mixed and the mechanisms limiting effectiveness are poorly understood. To advance understanding of ZDCs’ potential at reducing deforestation, we developed the first spatially explicit estimates of farmers’ exposure to ZDC companies in the Brazilian Amazon cattle sector. Exposure was measured by determining the market share of ZDC firms from the first full year of ZDC adoption in 2010 until 2018. Our analysis evaluated how variation in this exposure influenced deforestation. We found the G4 Agreement, the most widespread and strongly implemented cattle ZDC, reduced cattle-driven deforestation by 7,000 ± 4,000 km2 (15 ± 8%) between 2010 and 2018. Additionally, had all firms adopted and implemented an effective ZDC, cattle-driven deforestation could have dropped by 24,000 ± 13,000 km2 (51 ± 28%). These results for the world's principal deforestation hotspot suggests supply chain policies can substantially reduce deforestation. However, their effectiveness is contingent on widespread adoption and rigorous implementation, both of which are currently insufficient to prevent large scale deforestation. Increased adoption and implementation could be incentivized through greater pressure from the Brazilian government and import countries., Global Environmental Change, 80, ISSN:0959-3780, ISSN:1872-9495

To address ongoing deforestation for global food commodities production, companies and governments have adopted a range of forest-focused supply chain policies. In the Brazilian Amazon, these policies take the form of market exclusion mechanisms, i.e., immediately dropping suppliers who have cleared their land after a specific cut-off date. Theory suggests that strict exclusionary policies such as these are likely to result in both negative livelihood effects and reduced effectiveness of the policy if some farmers are not able to comply. It is proposed that a more cooperative model of enforcement that uses flexible and negotiated approaches to compliance management may enable more marginal and disadvantaged farmers to achieve compliance, thereby improving both the effectiveness of supply chain policies and their equity. Through our case study of cattle in the Brazilian Amazon, we examine the degree to which a purportedly cooperative supply chain policy exhibits coercive tendencies at different tiers and the degree to which these tendencies influence effectiveness and equity outcomes of the policy. We show that, surprisingly, even cooperative models of enforcement are prone to exhibit coercive tendencies in multi-tier supply chains, leading to severe equity shortcomings. We provide recommendations and a research agenda to mitigate effectiveness-equity tradeoffs in multi-tier, forest-focused supply chain policies in the aim to improve the design, adoption, and implementation of such policies. Made available in DSpace on 2021-12-22T13:01:09Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 27249.pdf: 2125497 bytes, checksum: 2bcc03300e0d6290c46c9eceeb3ef81b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2022

Ongoing deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon is the outcome of an explicit federal project to occupy, integrate, and “modernize” the region. Although there have been isolated periods of deforestation control, most recently between 2004 and 2012, the overall trajectory of the region since the colonial period has been one of forest loss and degradation. Addressing this challenge is especially urgent in the context of adverse climate-ecology feedbacks and tipping points. Here we describe the trends and outcomes of deforestation and degradation in the Amazon. We then highlight how historical development paradigms and policies have helped to cement the land use activities and structural lock-ins that underpin deforestation and degradation. We emphasize how the grounds for establishing a more sustainable economy in the Amazon were never consolidated, leading to a situation where forest conservation and development remain dependent on external programs—punitive measures against deforestation and fire and public social programs. This situation makes progress toward a forest transition(arresting forest loss and degradation and restoring forest landscapes) highly vulnerable to changes in political leadership, private sector engagement, and global market signals. After summarizing these challenges, we present a suite of measures that collectively could be transformational to helping overcome destructive path dependencies in the region. These include innovations in agricultural management, improved forest governance through landscape approaches, developing a local forest economy, sustainable peri-urbanization, and the empowerment of women and youth. These initiatives must be inclusive and equitable, enabling the participation and empowerment of local communities, particularly indigenous groups who have faced numerous historical injustices and are increasingly under threat by current politics., Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 46, ISSN:1543-5938, ISSN:1545-2050

Fires have been on the rise in the Brazilian Amazon for a decade, causing biodiversity loss, carbon emission, and damage to local people's assets and health. Often blamed as being responsible for starting most of the fires, local farmers are also the main actors involved in fire prevention and firefighting. We explore small-scale farmers' perceptions of fire and governance arrangements through Q methodology and semi-structured interviews. We find that fire prevention and firefighting are both perceived as collective issues. Lack of engagement in these activities is largely related to fire risk perceptions and its controllability, which depends on local collective action, landscape flammability, and the size of the area of fire contagion. To counter large fires, government action is essential. Policies that are supportive of fire control norms and enabling of firefighting seem more likely to achieve positive results than fire bans.

Once fire-resistant rainforests are becoming fire prone. Uncontrolled fires reflect new ecologies of the Anthropocene, driven by interactions of multiple actors and sectors across scales. They threaten the ecological integrity of tropical forests, impact global climate regimes and importantly cause considerable social and economic burdens. Numerous smallholder farming communities throughout the forested tropics experience the immediate place-based damages of uncontrolled fires and increasingly flammable landscapes. However, these burdens remain largely ‘invisible’ as leading narratives concentrate on losses accrued at aggregate scales, including to climate and biodiversity. Rather, smallholder farmers are often cast as culprits of contagion rooted in colonial condemnation of their customary fire-based agricultural practices. We use an environmental justice lens, notably the dimensions of recognition and distribution, to reveal the distributional burdens of uncontrolled fires for these land managers. We use empirical data from four case studies in three countries: Brazil, Madagascar and the Philippines, to explore the i) burdens of uncontrolled fire, ii) changing risks, iii) drivers and iv) responses to uncontrolled fire, and finally, the v) level of smallholder dependence on intentional fire. We show that place-based burdens of uncontrolled landscape fire are significant, including in landscapes where fire frequency is low. Burdens are both material and non-material and include infringements on food security, health, livelihoods, social relations and the burden of prohibitive fire policy itself. Equitable responses to uncontrolled fires must be sensitive to the distinctions between fire types. Further, we suggest that through bringing visibility to the place-based burdens of uncontrolled fires, we can begin to co-design resilient responses that avoid placing the final burden of risk reduction on to marginalized smallholder farming communities., World Development, 145, ISSN:0305-750X

Forest fires exacerbate carbon emissions, threaten biodiversity and cause welfare losses to local populations. Most fires accidentally ignite from mismanaged swidden and pasture fires. We provide evidence that fire risk in the Brazilian Amazon, the world's largest remaining tropical forest, perpetuates low yield and environmentally degrading agricultural activities. Using a combination of household interviews and remotely sensed data on fire occurrence in Eastern Amazon municipalities of Paragominas and Santarém, we show that smallholders in consolidated farm-forest frontier regions are locked into a vicious cycle that inhibits their adoption of fire-free practices. Households that invest in more capital-intensive fire-free agricultural technologies experience greater revenue losses from escaped fires than non-fire users. Changes in revenues are as sensitive to these fire impacts as they are to changes in physical capital investments. To overcome this fire-poverty trap, a “big push” of coordinated local incentives is needed. Policies mitigating fire risk may achieve a triple-win that reduces greenhouse gas emissions, forest degradation, and fosters inclusive economic development., Global Environmental Change, 63, ISSN:0959-3780, ISSN:1872-9495

Fires are a major threat to the conservation of the Amazon forest. Despite a large decline in deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon between 2004 and 2012, frequency and extent of forest fires have been increasing over the last two decades. Fires cause huge carbon emissions, biodiversity losses and local economic costs. Fires are anthropogenic and mostly due to the accidental spread of agricultural fires. Yet, there is little data and knowledge about fire mitigation policies' effectiveness. We experimentally assess the impact of two policies under varying drought risk scenarios among Brazilian smallholders. Command and control is more effective than payments for environmental services. We conjecture that the first policy operates through participants' risk aversion (to the fine) and local demand for justice, while payments seem to switch farmers' motivation from normative to monetary payoffs. We also find evidence of a human-mediated, self-reinforcing loop of droughts and fires: droughts increase the exogenous component of fire risk, reducing farmers' incentives to control own fires and to invest in fire-free techniques.

REDD+ has been perceived in Brazil as a way of complementing an effective command-and-control policy to help small-scale farmers transition out of deforestation. A large array of incentives have been suggested within the REDD+ framework, involving trade-offs between efficiency and equity. However, few studies have so far addressed the adaptation of these incentives to the needs of the farmers. In order to develop this perspective, our work aims at understanding how small-scale farmers perceive deforestation and what would make them engage in a transition towards sustainable alternatives. Interviews were conducted in São Felix do Xingu, where The Nature Conservancy has been developing a REDD+ pilot programme. The three discourses identified following the application of Q methodology reveal differing needs to reduce deforestation. If equity is defined as the opportunity for all to engage in a transition, a differentiated REDD+ initiative targeting the farmers' needs may be more equitable than standardized support options.

In response to the clearing of tropical forests for agricultural expansion, agri-food companies have adopted promises to eliminate deforestation from their supply chains in the form of ‘zero-deforestation commitments’ (ZDCs). While there is growing evidence about the environmental effectiveness of these commitments (i.e., whether they meet their conservation goals), there is little information on how they influence producers’ opportunity to access sustainable markets and related livelihood outcomes, or how design and implementation choices influence tradeoffs or potential synergies between effectiveness and equity in access. This paper explores these research gaps and makes three main contributions by: i) defining and justifying the importance of analyzing access equity and its relation to effectiveness when implementing forest-focused supply chain policies such as ZDCs, ii) identifying seven policy design principles that are likely to maximize synergies between effectiveness and access equity, and iii) assessing effectiveness-access equity tensions and synergies across common ZDC implementation mechanisms amongst the five largest firms in each of the leading agricultural forest-risk commodity sectors: palm oil, soybeans, beef cattle, and cocoa. To enhance forest conservation while avoiding harm to the most vulnerable farmers in the tropics, it is necessary to combine stringent rules with widespread capacity building, greater involvement of affected actors in the co-production of implementation mechanisms, and support for alternative rural development paths., Global Environmental Change, 70, ISSN:0959-3780, ISSN:1872-9495

Ongoing deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon is the outcome of an explicit federal project to occupy, integrate, and "modernize" the region. Although there have been isolated periods of deforestation control, most recently between 2004 and 2012, the overall trajectory of the region since the colonial period has been one of forest loss and degradation. Addressing this challenge is especially urgent in the context of adverse climate-ecology feedbacks and tipping points. Here we describe the trends and outcomes of deforestation and degradation in the Amazon.We then highlight how historical development paradigms and policies have helped to cement the land use activities and structural lock-ins that underpin deforestation and degradation. We emphasize how the grounds for establishing a more sustainable economy in the Amazon were never consolidated, leading to a situation where forest conservation and development remain dependent on external programs?punitive measures against deforestation and fire and public social programs. This situation makes progress toward a forest transition (arresting forest loss and degradation and restoring forest landscapes) highly vulnerable to changes in political leadership, private sector engagement, and global market signals. After summarizing these challenges, we present a suite of measures that collectively could be transformational to helping overcome destructive path dependencies in the region. These include innovations in agricultural management, improved forest governance through landscape approaches, developing a local forest economy, sustainable peri-urbanization, and the empowerment of women and youth. These initiatives must be inclusive and equitable, enabling the participation and empowerment of local communities, particularly indigenous groups who have faced numerous historical injustices and are increasingly under threat by current politics. Made available in DSpace on 2021-08-25T17:00:56Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Garrett2021.pdf: 1974010 bytes, checksum: df7d257d21ba4b2fbd85fe90eb8eee79 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2021