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Supply chain policies that leverage the upstream market power of trading companies and importing countries offer great promise to address forest clearing1,2 in regions of rapid commodity expansion but weak forest governance3,4. Yet leakage—when deforestation is not eliminated but instead pushed to other regions—is a potentially major but unquantified factor that could dilute the global effectiveness of regionally successful supply chain policies5,6. We find substantial domestic leakage rates (43-50%) induced by zero deforestation policy implementation in Brazil’s soy sector, but insignificant cross-border leakage (

Zero-deforestation supply chain policies that leverage the market power of commodity buyers to change agricultural producer behavior can reduce forest clearing in regions with rapid commodity expansion and weak forest governance. Yet leakage—when deforestation is pushed to other regions—may dilute the global effectiveness of regionally successful policies. Here we show that domestic leakage offsets 43-50% of the avoided deforestation induced by existing and proposed zero-deforestation supply chain policies in Brazil’s soy sector. However, cross-border leakage is insignificant (, Nature Communications, 13 (1), ISSN:2041-1723

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., Environmental Research Letters, 16 (3), ISSN:1748-9326, ISSN:1748-9318

This article describes the design of a new model-based assessment framework to identify and analyse possible future trajectories of agricultural development and their environmental consequences within the states of Mato Grosso and Para in Southern Amazonia, Brazil. The objective is to provide a tool for improving the information basis for scientists and policy makers regarding the effects of global change and national environmental policies on land-use change and the resulting impacts on the loss of natural vegetation, greenhouse gas emissions, hydrological processes, and soil erosion within the region. For this purpose, the framework combines the regional land-use models, LandSHIFT and alucR, the farm-level model, MPMAS, and the MONICA crop model, with a set of environmental impact models that are operating at the regional and watershed levels. As a first application of the framework, four scenarios with the time horizon 2030 were specified and analysed. Future land-use change will strongly depend on the interplay between the production of agricultural commodities, the agricultural intensification in terms of increasing crop yields and pasture biomass productivity, and the enforcement of environmental laws and policies. On the regional level, the scenarios with the highest increase in agricultural production in combination with weak law enforcement (Trend and Illegal Intensification) generated the highest losses in natural vegetation due to the expansion of agricultural area as well as the highest greenhouse gas emissions. Also, at the watershed level, these scenarios are characterised by the highest changes in river discharge and soil erosion that might lead to a further decline in soil fertility in the long term. Moreover, the analysis of the Sustainable Development scenario indicates that a shift in agricultural production patterns from livestock to crop cultivation, together with effective law enforcement, can effectively reduce land-use change and its negative effects on the environment. With the scenario analysis, we could illustrate that our assessment framework is capable to provide a large variety of valuable information to support the development of future land-use strategies in the study region.

Rapid urban expansion is a significant contributor to land cover change and poses a challenge to environmental sustainability, particularly in less developed countries. Insufficient data about urban expansion hinders effective land use planning. Therefore, a high need to collect, process, and disseminate land cover data exists. This study focuses on urban land cover change detection using Geographic Information Systems and remote sensing methods to produce baseline information in support for land use planning. We applied a supervised classification of land cover of LANDSAT data from 1987, 2002, and 2017. We mapped land cover transitions from 1987 to 2017 and computed the net land cover change during this time. Finally, we analyzed the mismatches between the past and current urban land cover and land use plans and quantified the non-urban development area lost to urban/built-up. Our results indicated an increase in urban/built-up and bare land cover types, while vegetation land cover decreased. We observed mismatches between past/current land cover and the existing land use plan. By providing detailed insights into mismatches between the regional land use plan and unregulated urban expansion, this study provides important information for a critical debate on the role and effectiveness of land use planning for environmental sustainability and sustainable urban development, particularly in less developed countries.

Emerging zoonotic diseases, such as COVID-19, exist at the intersection of human health and the environment Public interest and support are required to maximize the effectiveness of policies to combat the current pandemic and prevent future outbreaks of zoonoses Here, we use internet search data from the United States to investigate changes in public information seeking about topics at the intersection of health and the environment during the COVID-19 pandemic Using breakpoint detection methods, we identify sharp increases in interest for ‘wildlife trade’, ‘bats’, and ‘pangolins’ in the early stages of the pandemic (on Jan 12, Jan 19, and Jan 26, 2020, respectively) Network analyses also revealed increasing connectivity between terms related to human health and the environment, as well as the emergence of novel search terms pointing to a greater interest in wildlife trade and consumption During the pandemic, the network connectivity between coronavirus keywords and conservation keywords increased, which we measured using the number of unique connections (edge connectivity, k′ (G)) and the number of simple paths (Sp) between keywords Both measures of network connectivity increased between ‘coronavirus’ and ‘bats’ or ‘pangolins’ (Δk′ (G) = 1, ΔSp = 37), and between ‘coronavirus’ and ‘conservation’ (Δk′ (G) = 1, ΔSp = 160) These findings suggest that policy and outreach efforts aimed at engaging public interest in intersectional approaches to pandemic prevention (eg: One Health, Planetary Health), may be able to take advantage of increases in public information seeking following catalyzing events during the pandemic Further monitoring is needed to determine if these changes persist over time © 2021 Elsevier Ltd

Forest degradation is the long-term and gradual reduction of canopy cover due to forest fire and unsustainable logging. A critical consequence of this process is increased atmospheric carbon emissions. Although this issue is gaining attention, forest degradation in the Brazilian Amazon has not yet been properly addressed. The claim here is that this process is not constant throughout Amazonia and varies according to colonization frontiers. Moreover, the accurate characterization of degradation requires lengthy observation periods to track gradual forest changes. The forest degradation process, the associated timeframe, spatial patterns, trajectories, and extent were characterized in the context of the Amazon frontiers of the 1990s using 28 years (1984–2011) of annual Landsat images. Given the large database and the characteristic of logging and burning, this study used data mining techniques and cell approach classification to analyze the spatial patterns and to construct associated trajectories. Multitemporal analysis indicated that forest degradation in the last two decades has caused as many interannual landscape changes as have clear-cuts. In addition, selective logging, as a major aspect of forest degradation, affected a larger amount of forest land than did forest fire. Although a large proportion of logged forest was deforested in the following years, selective logging did not always precede complete deforestation. Instead, the results indicate that logged forests were abandoned for approximately 4 years before clearance. Throughout the forest degradation process, there were no recurrent forest fires, and loggers did not revisit the forest. Forest degradation mostly occurred as a result of a single selective logging event and was associated with low-intensity forest damage.

Dam construction and operation modify land systems. We synthesized 178 observations of dam-induced land system changes from 54 peer-reviewed case studies. Changing extents of forests (23%), agricultural land (21%), and built-up areas (11%) were reported frequently, alongside alterations in land use intensity (23%). Land cover changes were mostly related to hydropower and multi-purpose dams, while irrigation dams dominantly caused land use intensity changes. While a significant share of the changes was caused by reservoir flooding (29%), indirect effects which interact with societal and environmental systems (42%) were of utmost importance. We suggested the distance to the dam and the time since commissioning as potential controls for the direction of land system changes. Our insights provide opportunities for future inductive investigations across large populations of dams at regional to global scales and highlight that multi-disciplinary research perspectives are imperative for the production of generalizable knowledge. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s13280-018-01144-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Brazil’s Soy Moratorium solidified the world’s largest traders’ commitment to stop soybean purchases from production areas deforested after July 2006. The aim was to remove deforestation from the soybean supply-chain and halt one of the main drivers of forest loss in the Amazon biome. In this study, we investigated changes in deforestation at the property-level for the period 2004 to 2014. The objective was to examine direct and indirect deforestation, defined as on-property displacement and cross-parcel displacement deforestation for soybean expansion in the Amazon region of Mato Grosso, the leading soy-producing state of the Brazilian Amazon. We used publicly available property and land use data to quantify deforestation associated with cropland expansion. Similar to previous studies, we found that direct deforestation for soybean expansion declined following the implementation of the Soy Moratorium. Moreover, our analysis suggest that indirect deforestation occurred already before the implementation of the Soy Moratorium, and decreased following the first period of analyses. However, slight increases of indirect deforestation in the more recent periods, combined with decreasing direct deforestations rendered indirect deforestation to be responsible for more than half of the deforestation associated with soybean expansion. While we acknowledge the overall reduction of deforestation for soybean, our results suggest, given the increasing trends of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon since 2013, to address indirect deforestation within the Soy Moratorium. This may be achieved by zero-property-deforestation commitments and by strengthening the integration between supply-chain actors, the soybean and beef purchasing companies and the federal policies aiming to control deforestation.

This paper investigates spatial determinants of recreational ecosystem service values by combining Geographic Information System (GIS) and meta-analysis, and by presenting the first review on meta-analysis studies in this field. Using meta-analytic value transfer, we map the spatial distribution of recreational values across Europe. By combining meta-analysis and GIS we identify spatial biophysical and socio-economic determinants of recreational ecosystem service values. Nevertheless, comparing the results of past meta-analyses reveals difficulties in establishing robust relationships between spatial variables and recreational values per visit, as existing meta-analyses show contradicting results and methodological variables show stronger effects. Based on our findings we give guidance on how to improve geostatistical analysis within future meta-analyses on ecosystem service valuation studies. Furthermore, we find that spatial variations of recreational visitor numbers are by far greater than variations of the value per visit. Therefore, we conclude that accurate estimates of visitor numbers are of greater relevance than accurate estimates of the value per visit.

Local, regional, and global processes affect deforestation and land-use changes in the Brazilian Amazon. Characteristics are: direct conversions from forest to pasture; regional processes of indirect land-use change, described by the conversion of pastures to cropland, which increases the demand for pastures elsewhere; and teleconnections, fueled by the global demands for soybeans as animal fodder. We modeled land-use changes for two scenarios Trend and Sustainable Development for a hot spot of land-use change along the BR-163 highway in Mato Grosso and Para´, Brazil. We investigated the differences between a coupled modeling approach, which incorporates indirect land-use change processes, and a noncoupled landuse model. We coupled the regional-scale LandSHIFT model, defined for Mato Grosso and Para´, with a subregional model, alucR, covering a selected corridor along the BR-163. The results indicated distinct land-use scenario outcomes from the coupled modeling approach and the subregional model quantification. We found the highest deforestation estimates returned from the subregional quantification of the Trend scenario. This originated from the strong local dynamics of past deforestation and landuse changes. Land-use changes exceeded the demands estimated at regional scale. We observed the lowest deforestation estimates at the subregional quantification of the Sustainable Development story line. We highlight that model coupling increased the representation of scenario outcomes at fine resolution while providing consistency across scales. However, distinct local dynamics were explicitly captured at subregional scale. The scenario result pinpoints the importance of policies to aim at the cattle ranching sector, to increase land tenure registration and enforcement of environmental laws.

The Brazilian Amazon has experienced one of the world's highest deforestation rates in the last decades. Cattle ranching and soy expansion constitute the major drivers of deforestation, both through direct conversion and indirectly by land use displacement. However, deforestation rates decreased significantly after the implementation of the action plan to prevent and control deforestation in 2004. The aim of this study is to quantify the contribution of cattle and soy production with deforestation before and after the implementation of the action plan in the two states Mato Grosso and Par a along the BR-163. Specifically, we aim to empirically test for land use displacement processes from soy expansion in Mato Grosso to the deforestation frontier between 2001 and 2012. First, we calculated the relationships between deforestation rate and the change in cattle head and planted soy area respectively for the BR-163 region. Second, we estimated different panel regression models to test the association between processes of land use displacement. Our results indicate a close linkage between cattle ranching and deforestation along the BR-163 between 2001 and 2004. Soy expansion in Mato Grosso was significantly associated with deforestation during this period. However, these relations have diminished after the implementation of the action plan to control and prevent deforestation. With the decrease in deforestation rates in 2005, cattle ranching and deforestation were not directly linked, nor was soy expansion in Mato Grosso and deforestation at the forest frontier. Our analysis hence suggests that there was a close coupling of processes and spatial displacement until 2004 and a decoupling has taken place following the political interventions. These findings improve the understanding of land use displacement processes in Brazil and the methods offer potential for exploring similar processes in different regions of the world.

The viability of the climate pledges made by Brazil at the COP21 in Paris, 2015, heavily depends on the success of the country policies related to forest governance. Particularly, there are high expectations that the enforcement of the Brazilian Forest Code (BFC) will drive large-scale forest recovery and carbon mitigation. In this study, we quantified the potential role that ongoing forest regeneration may play in offsetting deficits from private properties with less vegetation cover than determined by the BFC, considering different law implementation settings. Focusing on the Amazon Biome, we overlaid property level data from a mandatory registry (≈ 250,000 properties) onto land cover maps to quantify on-site forest deficit offsets by ongoing forest recovery. Similarly, we estimated the share of regrowing forests in private properties potentially eligible for off-site deficit compensation (i.e. via market-based forest certificates trade). Regrowing forests could reduce, on-site, 3.2 Mha of forests deficits, decreasing non-compliance from private properties by 35%. Likewise, forest certificates availability increased by 3.4 Mha when we included regrowing forests in the calculations. This means an increase in the forest certificate offer-demand ratio from 0.9 to 2.0. On the one hand, trading certificates issued from recovering forests may represent a low-cost strategy for compliance with the BFC, a pathway for achieving restoration targets, and an additional source of income for landholders. To meet this potential, it is necessary to better conceptualize second-growth forests, advancing the poor definitions presented by the BFC, and offer an operational basis for their protection. On the other hand, including regrowing forests’ certificates in compensation schemes may further restrain the potential of the trading mechanism for conservation of unprotected old-growth forests and lead to positive net carbon emissions. We highlight that the BFC implementation must be carefully regulated to maximize synergies between compliance and forest resources conservation and enhancement.