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Increased private finance can accelerate forest and landscape restoration globally. Here we conduct semi-structured interviews with asset managers, corporations and restoration finance experts to examine incentives and barriers to private restoration finance. Next, we assess what type of restoration projects and regions appeal to different private funders and how current financial barriers can be overcome. We show that market incentives for corporations include meeting net-emission-reduction commitments, impact and sustainable branding opportunities, and promotion of sustainability in supply chains. Conversely, asset managers face stronger barriers to investing in restoration as it is deemed a high-risk, unknown investment with low profitability. We find that investment finance biases towards restoration projects in low-risk areas and corporate finance towards areas with business presence. Both private finance types tend to omit projects focusing on natural regeneration. Through expanded and diversified markets for restoration benefits, strong public policy support and new financial instruments, private finance for restoration can be scaled for a wider variety of restoration projects in more diverse geographical contexts., Nature Ecology & Evolution, 7 (5), ISSN:2397-334X

Ecosystem restoration is an important means to address global sustainability challenges. However, scientific and policy discourse often overlooks the social processes that influence the equity and effectiveness of restoration interventions. In the present article, we outline how social processes that are critical to restoration equity and effectiveness can be better incorporated in restoration science and policy. Drawing from existing case studies, we show how projects that align with local people's preferences and are implemented through inclusive governance are more likely to lead to improved social, ecological, and environmental outcomes. To underscore the importance of social considerations in restoration, we overlay existing global restoration priority maps, population, and the Human Development Index (HDI) to show that approximately 1.4 billion people, disproportionately belonging to groups with low HDI, live in areas identified by previous studies as being of high restoration priority. We conclude with five action points for science and policy to promote equity-centered restoration., Bioscience, 73 (2), ISSN:0006-3568, ISSN:1525-3244

In response to stakeholder pressure, companies increasingly make ambitious forward-looking sustainability commitments. They then draw on corporate policies with varying degrees of alignment to disseminate and enforce corresponding behavioral rules among their suppliers and business partners. This goal-based turn in private sustainability governance has important implications for its likely environmental and social outcomes. Drawing on paradox theory, this article uses a case study of zero-deforestation commitments in the Indonesian palm oil sector to argue that goal-based private sustainability governance's characteristics set the stage for two types of paradoxes to emerge: performing paradoxes between environmental, social, and economic sustainability goals, and organizing paradoxes between cooperation and competition approaches. Companies' responses to these paradoxes, in turn, can explain the lack of full goal attainment and differential rates of progress between actors. These results draw our attention to the complexities hidden behind governance through goal setting in the corporate space, and raise important questions about the viability of similar strategies such as science-based targets and net-zero goals., Journal of Business Ethics, ISSN:0167-4544, ISSN:1573-0697

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

The global trade of agricultural commodities has profound social-ecological impacts, from potentially increasing food availability and agricultural efficiency, to displacing local communities, and to incentivizing environmental destruction. Supply chain stickiness, understood as the stability in trading relationships between supply chain actors, moderates the impacts of agricultural commodity production and the possibilities for supply-chain interventions. However, what factors determine stickiness, that is, how and why farmers, traders, food processors, and consumer countries, develop and maintain trading relationships with specific producing regions, remains unclear. Here, we use data on the Brazilian soy supply chain, a mixed methods approach based on extensive actor-based fieldwork, and an explanatory regression model, to identify and explore the factors that influence stickiness between places of production and supply chain actors. We find four groups of factors to be important: economic incentives, institutional enablers and constraints, social and power dimensions, and biophysical and technological conditions. Among the factors we explore, surplus capacity in soy processing infrastructure, (i.e., crushing and storage facilities) is important in increasing stickiness, as is export-oriented production. Conversely, volatility in market demand expressed by farm-gate soy prices and lower land-tenure security are key factors reducing stickiness. Importantly, we uncover heterogeneity and context-specificity in the factors determining stickiness, suggesting tailored supply-chain interventions are beneficial. Understanding supply chain stickiness does not, in itself, provide silver-bullet solutions to stopping deforestation, but it is a crucial prerequisite to understanding the relationships between supply chain actors and producing regions, identifying entry points for supply chain sustainability interventions, assessing the effectiveness of such interventions, forecasting the restructuring of trade flows, and considering sourcing patterns of supply chain actors in territorial planning., Global Environmental Change, 78, 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

Population growth and rising incomes have led to increasing global demand for meat products. Meeting this demand without converting remaining natural ecosystems or further degrading ecosystems is one of the largest global sustainability challenges. A critical step to overcoming this challenge is to increase the productivity of livestock grazing systems, which occupy the largest land area of any type of agriculture globally. Integrated crop−livestock systems (iCL), which re-couple crop and livestock production at the farm scale, have been considered a promising strategy to tackle this challenge by restoring degraded pasturelands and providing supplemental nutrition to livestock. However, few studies have analyzed the economic viability of such systems, especially in Brazil, an important player in global food systems. This paper presents an economic analysis of iCL in Mato Grosso, Brazil, the largest grain and beef producer in the country, which spans the ecologically diverse Amazon, Cerrado and Pantanal biomes. We compare the economic performance of an integrated soybean/corn and beef cattle system to a continuous crop (soybean/corn) system and a continuous livestock (beef cattle) production system from 2005 to 2012. We use empirical case study data to characterize a ‘typical’ farm for each production system within the study region. We find that the integrated crop−livestock system has a higher annual net present value (NPV) per hectare (ha) than continuous cropping or livestock under a range of discount rates. However, under a scenario of substantially higher crop prices, the continuous cropping outperforms iCL. While iCL is not feasible in all regions of the Amazon and Cerrado, our results indicate that in places where the biophysical and market conditions are suitable for production, it could be a highly profitable way to intensify cattle production and potentially spare land for other uses, including conservation. Nevertheless, additional credit and technical support may be needed to overcome high upfront costs and informational barriers to increase iCL areas as a sustainable development strategy for agriculture in the Amazon and Cerrado regions.

Land system science (LSS) has substantially advanced understanding of land dynamics throughout the world. However, studies that explicitly address the causative role of culture in land systems have been fairly limited relative to those examining other structural dimensions (e.g. markets, policies, climate). In this paper, we aim to start a discussion on how to better include culture in LSS. Through four examples, we show how aspects of culture influence land systems in myriad ways. Building on existing causal land system models, we propose a conceptual framework for the role of culture in land use and summarize promising methodological innovations for exploring it further. We conclude with some thoughts on how the study of culture and its integration through reflexive, locally grounded approaches, while challenging, provides new opportunities for the development of LSS.

Crop and livestock production have become spatially decoupled in existing commercial agricultural regimes throughout the world. These segregated high input production systems contribute to some of the world's most pressing sustainability challenges, including climate change, nutrient imbalances, water pollution, biodiversity decline, and increasingly precarious rural livelihoods. There is substantial evidence that by closing the loop in nutrient and energy cycles, recoupling crop and livestock systems at farm and territorial scales can help reduce the environmental externalities associated with conventional commercial farming without declines in profitability or yields. Yet such 'integrated' crop and livestock systems remain rare as a proportion of global agricultural area. Based on an interdisciplinary workshop and additional literature review, we provide a comprehensive historical and international perspective on why integrated crop and livestock systems have declined in most regions and what conditions have fostered their persistence and reemergence in others. We also identify levers for encouraging the reemergence of integrated crop and livestock systems worldwide. We conclude that a major disruption of the current regime would be needed to foster crop-livestock reintegration, including a redesign of research programs, credit systems, payments for ecosystem services, insurance programs, and food safety regulations to focus on whole farm outcomes and the creation of a circular economy. An expansion of the number of integrated crop and livestock systems field trials and demonstrations and efforts to brand integrated crop and livestock systems as a form of sustainable agriculture through the development of eco-labels could also improve adoption, but would likely be unsuccessful at encouraging wide-scale change without a more radical transformation of the research and policy landscape. Made available in DSpace on 2020-03-18T14:43:32Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Drivers-of-decoupling.pdf: 1071766 bytes, checksum: 042134bf5cdd1952a07781e992a5a3d8 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2020

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

Consider both water and land When designing terrestrial reserves, it is common to consider the needs of species and systems from a terrestrial perspective, with an assumption that any freshwater systems will benefit as well. Leal et al. tested this assumption by analyzing data from two locations in the Brazilian Amazon and found that it is far from accurate: Terrestrial systems confer little benefit to freshwater systems (see the Perspective by Abell and Harrison). However, the authors also found that integrating the needs of freshwater species into overall reserve planning increased freshwater benefits by 600% while only decreasing terrestrial outcomes by 1%. They argue that reserve planning must take freshwater systems into account if they are to protect across both realms. Science , this issue p. 117 ; see also p. 38

Brazil is the world's leading coffee exporter, contributing billions of dollars to the global food economy. Yet, a majority of Brazilian coffee farms are operated by 'smallholders', producers with relatively small properties and primarily reliant on family labor. While previous work indicates that climate change will decrease the area suitable for coffee production in Brazil, no study has assessed the impacts of climate change on coffee yields or the relative exposure and vulnerability of coffee producing regions to changes in climate hazards (climate-associated losses in yield). To address these knowledge gaps, we assess the sensitivity of coffee yields to temperature and precipitation variation from 1974 to 2017 to map coffee climate hazards. Next, we identify which coffee producing regions in Brazil have the highest exposure to climate hazards due to high dependence of coffee production as a proportion of agricultural area. Finally, we generate a Vulnerability Index to identify which regions are theoretically least able to adapt to climate hazards. Our study finds that since 1974, temperatures in Brazilian coffee growing municipalities have been increasing by ~0.25 °C per decade and annual precipitation has been decreasing during the blooming and ripening periods. This historical climate change has already resulted in reductions in coffee yield by more than 20% in the Southeast of Brazil. Minas Gerais, the largest coffee producing state in Brazil, has among the highest climate hazard and overall climate risk, exacerbated by ongoing coffee expansion. Additionally, many municipalities with the lowest adaptive capacity, including the country's mountainous regions, also have high climate exposure and hazards. Negative climate hazard and exposure impacts for coffee producing regions could be potentially offset by targeting climate adaptation support to these high-risk regions, including research, extension, and credit subsidies for improved coffee varieties, irrigation, and agroforestry and diversifying agricultural production., Environmental Research Letters, 15 (10), ISSN:1748-9326, ISSN:1748-9318

Governing land use to achieve sustainable outcomes is challenging, because land systems manifest complex land use spillovers—i.e. processes by which land use changes or direct interventions in land use (e.g. policy, program, new technologies) in one place have impacts on land use in another place. The ERL issue ‘Focus on Leakage: informing Land-Use Governance in a Tele-coupled World’ builds on discussions in an international expert workshop conducted in Berlin in November 2017 to explore innovative ways to improve our understanding of how governance interventions, new technologies and other factors can affect land-use change both directly and indirectly through spillovers. This editorial starts by clarifying the definitions and relationships between land-use spillover, indirect land use change—a form of spillover where land use change in one place is caused by land use change in another place—leakage—a form of land use spillover, which is caused by an environmental policy (e.g. a conservation or restoration intervention), and the spillover reduces the overall benefits and effectiveness of this intervention—, and land use displacement processes. We then use this terminology to summarize the individual contributions of this special issue and conclude with lessons learned as well as directions for future research.

© 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.

Low productivity cattle ranching, with its linkages to rural poverty, deforestation and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, remains one of the largest sustainability challenges in Brazil and has impacts worldwide. There is a nearly universal call to intensify extensive beef cattle production systems to spare land for crop production and nature and to meet Brazil's Intended Nationally Determined Contribution to reducing global climate change. However, different interventions aimed at the intensification of livestock systems in Brazil may involve substantial social and environmental tradeoffs. Here we examine these tradeoffs using a whole-farm model calibrated for the Brazilian agricultural frontier state of Mato Grosso, one of the largest soybean and beef cattle production regions in the world. Specifically, we compare the costs and benefits of a typical extensive, continuously grazed cattle system relative to a specialized soybean production system and two improved cattle management strategies (rotational grazing and integrated soybean-cattle) under different climate scenarios. We found clear tradeoffs in GHG and nitrogen emissions, climate resilience, and water and energy use across these systems. Relative to continuously grazed or rotationally grazed cattle systems, the integreated soybean-cattle system showed higher food production and lower GHG emissions per unit of human digestible protein, as well as increased resilience under climate change (both in terms of productivity and financial returns). All systems suffered productivity and profitability losses under severe climate change, highlighting the need for climate smart agricultural development strategies in the region. By underscoring the economic feasibility of improving the performance of cattle systems, and by quantifying the tradeoffs of each option, our results are useful for directing agricultural and climate policy. Made available in DSpace on 2019-02-11T23:44:35Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 2018cpamtlucianolopestradeoffsquestclimatesmartagriculturalintensificationmatogrosso.pdf: 2088603 bytes, checksum: 7303bc46e355216bd05fb8492b71b089 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2019-02-11

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.

Across the world, an increasing number of farmers are piloting agroecological systems. The recoupling of crops and livestock is one type of agroecological practice that has potential to help reduce the use of off-farm inputs, improve soil quality, and reduce costs for farmers. Yet, a major part of the world's agricultural landscapes remain dominated by conventional specialized crop and livestock practices. In particular, grazing animals in perennial cropping systems may reduce pesticide and fuel use, decrease labor, and build soil organic carbon and soil fertility. In this study, we examined adopters and non-adopters’ perceptions of a niche system, integrated sheep-vineyard systems (ISVS) in California. We aimed at understanding the conditions under which ISVS, a specific case of ICLS (integrated crop-livestock systems), could be mainstreamed. We then contextualized these interviews using the Multi-Level Perspective framework to analyze the levers favoring or impeding mainstreaming of this niche system. We considered both pull factors arising from changes in the landscape, and push factors arising through decentralized, grassroot processes. Our inductive analysis is a promising first insight into farmers’ perceptions and motivations toward ISVS adoption in California, considering both vineyard managers and contractors (i.e. shepherds renting their sheep to vineyard managers). We found a positive perception of ISVS among both current adopters and non-adopters regarding the potential agronomic, environmental and economic benefits of these practices. All adopters were satisfied with this system as they experienced labor and fuel savings, soil quality improvement and marketing advantages. Local push factors (bottom-up levers emerging from the niche systems) were highlighted by interviewees as contributing to adoption. Push factors identified include knowledge exchange and networking between vineyard managers and developing marketing pathways for “carbon-positive” wool, meat and wine products. However, some pull factors (macro-economic and policy levers acting as top-down levers) could help move the system beyond limited adoption. We point out biotechnical and socio-economic research avenues to encourage the scaling-up of ISVS and ICLS more broadly. On the biotechnical dimension, we recommend continuing and scaling-out system experiments to redesign vineyards considering sheep integration and evaluate the effect of grazing on soil quality and fire management. On the socio-economic dimension, we encourage the exploration of relevant spatial scenarios through co-design of collaborative arrangements between vineyard managers and contractors at the landscape level. Greater research on the social, environmental and economic services provided by ISVS is urgently needed to inform state and federal agricultural policies, including whether such systems should be supported through payment for ecosystem services and as part of environmental good practices and fire safety recommendations.

© 2017 Elsevier Ltd Crops and livestock play a synergistic role in global food production and farmer livelihoods. Increasingly, however, crops and livestock are produced in isolation, particularly in farms operating at the commercial scale. It has been suggested that re-integrating crop and livestock systems at the field and farm level could help reduce the pollution associated with modern agricultural production and increase yields. Despite this potential, there has been no systematic review to assess remaining knowledge gaps in both the social and ecological dimensions of integrated crop and livestock systems (ICLS), particularly within commercial agricultural systems. Based on a multi-disciplinary workshop of international experts and additional literature review, we assess the current knowledge and remaining uncertainties about large-scale, commercial ICLS and identify the source of remaining knowledge gaps to establish priorities for future research. We find that much is understood about nutrient flows, soil quality, crop performance, and animal weight gain in commercial ICLS, but there is little knowledge about its spatial extent, animal behavior or welfare in ICLS, or the tradeoffs between biodiversity, pest and disease control, greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation, and drought and heat tolerance in ICLS. There is some evidence regarding the economic outcomes in commercial ICLS and supply chain and policy barriers to adoption, but little understanding of broader social outcomes or cultural factors influencing adoption. Many of these knowledge gaps arise from a basic lack of data at both the field and system scales, which undermines both statistical analysis and modeling efforts. Future priorities for the international community of researchers investigating the tradeoffs and scalability of ICLS include: methods standardization to better facilitate international collaborations and comparisons, continued social organization for better data utilization and collaboration, meta-analyses to answer key questions from existing data, the establishment of long term experiments and surveys in key regions, a portal for citizen science, and more engagement with ICLS farmers.

Zero deforestation commitments (ZDCs) are voluntary initiatives where companies or countries pledge to eliminate deforestation from their supply chains. These commitments offer much promise for sustainable commodity production, but are undermined by a lack of transparency about their coverage and impacts. Here, using state-of-the-art supply chain data, we introduce an approach to evaluate the impact of ZDCs, linking traders and international markets to commodity-associated deforestation in the sub-national jurisdictions from which they source. We focus on the Brazilian soy sector, where we find that ZDC coverage is increasing, but under-represents the Cerrado biome where most soy-associated deforestation currently takes place. Though soy-associated deforestation declined in the Amazon after the introduction of the Soy Moratorium, we observe no change in the exposure of companies or countries adopting ZDCs to soy-associated deforestation in the Cerrado. We further assess the formulation and implementation of these ZDCs and identify several systematic weaknesses that must be addressed to increase the likelihood that they achieve meaningful reductions in deforestation in future. As the 2020 deadline for several of these commitments approaches, our approach can provide independent monitoring of progress toward the goal of ending commodity-associated deforestation., Environmental Research Letters, 15 (3), ISSN:1748-9326, ISSN:1748-9318

Private investments to address environmental issues are perceived as a powerful engine of sustainability. For the agri-food sector, multiple instruments have been developed to green supply chains. Yet little is known about the underlying process and conditions under which green sourcing concerns lead to the adoption of specific sustainability instruments among agri-food companies. This study: i) offers a synthesis of the most commonly used instruments agri-food companies adopt to promote sustainability in their supply chains; ii) proposes an analytical framework to elucidate how those decisions are made, based on the competitive environment in which firms operate—with respect to location of their raw materials, technologies available to their suppliers, leverage over upstream suppliers, and end-markets’ characteristics; and iii) presents seven case-studies illustrating the decision-making process leading to the adoption of a specific instrument by a particular company. Companies that do not have sustainable technologies available to improve their environmental practices but operate in highly sensitive places are better off taking their operation somewhere else. But companies with available cleaner technologies, effective law enforcement and control over the supply chains, as well as a brand to protect, can capitalize on their environmental efforts by introducing strict standards, such as third-party certifications. Enforcement of social and environmental regulations at countries of origin is a key factor that deters companies form adopting very strict standards, even if they have a brand value to enhance. The multiplication of private labels and initiatives are, in most cases, not driven by a desire to disorient the consumer, but rather by a careful consideration of the complex conditions under which agri-food supply chains operate. With minor adaptations, the framework could be applied to other economic sectors that have environmental impacts, from mining and energy-generating industries, to apparel, and electronics.

Growing demand for agricultural commodities is causing the expansion of agricultural frontiers onto native vegetation worldwide. Agribusiness companies linking these frontiers to distant spaces of consumption through global commodity chains increasingly make zero-deforestation pledges. However, production and land conversion are often carried out by less-visible local and regional actors that are mobile and responsive to new agricultural expansion opportunities and legal constraints on land use. With more stringent deforestation regulations in some countries, we ask whether their movements are determined partly by differences in land-use policies, resulting in "deforestation havens." We analyze the determinants of investment decisions by agricultural companies in the Gran Chaco and Chiquitano, a region that has become the new deforestation "hot spot" in South America. We test whether companies seek out less-regulated forest areas for new agricultural investments. Based on interviews with 82 companies totaling 2.5 Mha of properties, we show that, in addition to proximity to current investments and the availability of cheap forestland, lower deforestation regulations attract investments by companies that tend to clear more forest, mostly cattle ranching operations, and that lower enforcement attracts all companies. Avoiding deforestation leakage requires harmonizing deforestation regulations across regions and commodities and promoting sustainable intensification in cattle ranching.

Sustainable intensification of agriculture is central to deal with the challenges of feeding a growing population while promoting a rational use of environmental and economic resources. Nowhere is this challenge more prominent than in Brazil, where low productivity and environmentally degrading agricultural activities occupy vast areas. We used the emergy synthesis approach, including innovative indices - emergy footprint and carbon-emergy output intensity - to assess and compare the environmental performance of an integrated crop-livestock system to a continuous crop and a continuous livestock system. Our analysis uses survey and empirical case study data from the 2017/18 crop season in Mato Grosso state, Brazil - the largest grain and beef producer in the country. Economic indicators such as gross revenue, production costs and profitability were calculated to complement the sustainability assessments. The emergy indices indicate that integrated crop-livestock system shows a balanced performance between input use and economic and environmental outcomes. In contrast, due to its heavy dependence on external inputs, the cropping system has poor environmental results, but the highest profitability. By excluding these environmental costs, current accounting of soy-corn production in Brazil dramatically overstates its net benefits to society and overall sustainability. The Emergy Sustainability Index for the integrated system was 0.66 and its Net Profit was USD 235.69 ha-1, while for the continuous crop system the values were 0.47 and USD 295 ha−1, respectively. The livestock system performed poorly in both, economic and environmental outcomes, underscoring the need to transition away from existing extensive systems. Livestock shows the highest positive greenhouse gas emissions, 7.98 E−09 tonCO2eq for each joule produced, and Net Loss of USD 0.58 ha-1. These results provide further support for Brazil’s investment in integrated systems as part of its climate mitigation and sustainable agricultural development plans and warrant consideration in sustainable agriculture initiatives in other countries where cattle production is widespread.

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

Zero-deforestation commitments are a type of voluntary sustainability initiative that companies adopt to signal their intention to reduce or eliminate deforestation associated with commodities that they produce, trade, and/or sell. Because each company defines its own zero-deforestation commitment goals and implementation mechanisms, commitment content varies widely. This creates challenges for the assessment of commitment implementation or effectiveness. Here, we develop criteria to assess the potential effectiveness of zero-deforestation commitments at reducing deforestation within a company supply chain, regionally, and globally. We apply these criteria to evaluate 52 zero-deforestation commitments made by companies identified by Forest 500 as having high deforestation risk. While our assessment indicates that existing commitments converge with several criteria for effectiveness, they fall short in a few key ways. First, they cover just a small share of the global market for deforestation-risk commodities, which means that their global impact is likely to be small. Second, biome-wide implementation is only achieved in the Brazilian Amazon. Outside this region, implementation occurs mainly through certification programs, which are not adopted by all producers and lack third-party near-real time deforestation monitoring. Additionally, around half of all commitments include zero-net deforestation targets and future implementation deadlines, both of which are design elements that may reduce effectiveness. Zero-net targets allow promises of future reforestation to compensate for current forest loss, while future implementation deadlines allow for preemptive clearing. To increase the likelihood that commitments will lead to reduced deforestation across all scales, more companies should adopt zero-gross deforestation targets with immediate implementation deadlines and clear sanction-based implementation mechanisms in biomes with high risk of forest to commodity conversion., Global Environmental Change, 54, ISSN:0959-3780, ISSN:1872-9495

Garrett and Rueda analyse the drivers of food systems globalisation and the ways in which increasingly global and homogeneous consumption practices are creating new couplings between places of consumption and production. The authors present recent data on food consumption trends and then describe the changes in demographics, economies, information flows, and energy policies that explain such trends. Using the lens of telecoupling, they then analyse how changes in consumption are influencing demand for land and production practices in distant regions and how these telecouplings between distal socio-ecological systems of production and consumption, as they become more visible, are giving rise to feedback mechanisms in the form of environmental and social governance.

Sustainable intensification of existing global croplands and rangelands is a pressing challenge to reconcile competing demands on land systems for food production and conservation of natural ecosystems. In Brazil, the world’s second-largest beef-producing country, intensification of pasture-based production systems is central to both improving livelihoods and reducing deforestation, since low-productivity, low-income cattle ranches occupy a majority of the agricultural land area. Integrated crop-livestock systems (ICLS) present a promising opportunity in the array of possible agricultural intensification strategies for Brazil because they have the potential to reclaim vast areas of degraded pastures while mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. Much of the previous research on ICLS, particularly in Brazil, has focused on agronomic and economic aspects. Here we examine local perspectives of ICLS to better illuminate what other concerns, besides agronomic and economic outcomes, might guide farmers’ decisions to adopt this (and other) agricultural intensification strategies. We are particularly interested in the degree to which structural factors interact with personal experiences to shape information and values and farmers’ understanding of the costs and benefits of adopting a new technology. Using semi-structured interviews with a diverse sample of producers in four states in the Brazilian Amazon, we find that existing adopters perceived ICLS as a beneficial strategy for increasing the economic value and competitiveness of their farm, while most non-adopters did not. Ranchers in particular perceived intensification as a necessity to maintain their livelihood amidst declining profits and increased environmental oversight. However, both adopters and non-adopters described numerous structural barriers that impeded greater adoption of ICLS in the region, including problems obtaining qualified labor, a lack of marketing options, poor infrastructure, an unsupportive regulatory environment, and in some regions, poorly drained soils. Furthermore, non-monetary motives, such as maintaining one’s existing quality of life and traditions, often drove decisions regardless of expected profit-maximization pathways. This work underscores the need to employ a more diverse set of policy tools beyond credit subsidies to encourage adoption of sustainable intensification strategies, including education programs, payments for the ecosystem services, and improved transportation and supply chain infrastructure that can support intensification and help create a climate of innovation.

The reintegration of crop and livestock systems within the same land area has the potential to improve soil quality and reduce water and air pollution, while maintaining high yields and reducing risk. In this study, we characterize the degree to which federal policies in three major global food production regions that span a range of socioeconomic contexts, Brazil, New Zealand, and the United States, incentivize or disincentivize the use of integrated crop and livestock practices (ICLS). Our analysis indicates that Brazil and New Zealand have the most favorable policy environment for ICLS, while the United States provides the least favorable environment. The balance of policy incentives and disincentives across our three cases studies mirrors current patterns of ICLS usage. Brazil and New Zealand have both undergone a trend toward mixed crop livestock systems in recent years, while the United States has transitioned rapidly toward continuous crop and livestock production. If transitions to ICLS are desired, particularly in the United States, it will be necessary to change agricultural, trade, environmental, biofuels, and food safety policies that currently buffer farmers from risk, provide too few incentives for pollution reduction, and restrict the presence of animals in crop areas. It will also be necessary to invest more in research and development in all countries to identify the most profitable ICLS technologies in each region. ISSN:2071-1050

Oil crops play a critical role in global food and energy systems. Since these crops have high oil content, they provide cooking oils for human consumption, biofuels for energy, feed for animals, and ingredients in beauty products and industrial processes. In 2014, oil crops occupied about 20% of crop harvested area worldwide. While small-scale oil crop production for subsistence or local consumption continues in certain regions, global demand for these versatile crops has led to substantial expansion of oil crop agriculture destined for export or urban markets. This expansion and subsequent cultivation has diverse effects on the environment, including loss of forests, savannas, and grasslands, greenhouse gas emissions, regional climate change, biodiversity decline, fire, and altered water quality and hydrology. Oil palm in Southeast Asia and soybean in South America have been identified as major proximate causes of tropical deforestation and environmental degradation. Stringent conservation policies and yield increases are thought to be critical to reducing rates of soybean and oil palm expansion into natural ecosystems. However, the higher profits that often accompany greater yields may encourage further expansion, while policies that restrict oil crop expansion in one region may generate secondary “spillover” effects on other crops and regions. Due to these complex feedbacks, ensuring a sustainable supply of oil crop products to meet global demand remains a major challenge for agricultural companies, farmers, governments, and civil society.

Deforestation associated with agricultural expansion, particularly that of extensive cattle ranching, remains a pressing challenge for sustainable development and climate mitigation efforts in South America. In response to these challenges, national and local governments, as well as private and non-governmental actors, have developed new forest conservation governance mechanisms. In addition to reducing deforestation for agricultural expansion, it is hoped that these policies may lead to the intensification of existing agricultural regions, thereby contributing to global food availability and continued rural development. The objective of this study is to understand the timing and spatial patterns of crop and pasture intensification in agriculture-forest frontiers in the context of changing conservation policies and rural development. We focus on Mato Grosso, the largest soy and cattle producing state in Brazil, which spans the Cerrado and Amazon biomes and has experienced among the highest levels of deforestation for agricultural expansion globally. Using econometric analysis of remotely sensed and agricultural survey data, we find that cropland and pasture intensification are both linked to increasing forest conservation restrictions and broader supply chain development. However, the effect of conservation restrictions on intensification is lower in regions where there is more forest remaining. While crop and pasture area dynamics are often coupled in agriculture-forest frontiers, crop intensification does not appear to have contributed to pasture intensification through animal feed production. Intensification of crop and pasture areas was associated with temporary, immediate reductions in local deforestation, but crop intensification was associated with increased deforestation over longer time periods. These results suggest that targeted investments in supply chain infrastructure in the Amazon frontier could promote intensification and relieve pressure to clear forests, but must be coupled with substantial, long-term negative incentives for deforestation, including more effective public forest governance and private zero-deforestation commitments.

International audience; AbstractThe integration of crop and livestock systems has been recognized for its potential to reduce the environmental impacts associated with agriculture and improve farmer livelihoods. However, to date, most research has focused on the integration of cattle into crop and pasture systems. Here, we examine the integration of sheep into vineyards and assess farmers’ perceived benefits and costs of the practice. Viticulture expansion has led to significant land use change in recent years and new environmental challenges, particularly with respect to herbicide use. Sheep integration into vineyards offers the potential to utilize the synergies of both systems to reduce external inputs, promote soil health, and increase farmer profit. Our study focuses in New Zealand, the world’s 15th largest wine producer, particularly in Marlborough, which produces 75% of the country’s wine. As a result, the case study is an excellent representation of New Zealand viticulture, while also providing unique insights into a novel practice. Using a semi-structured interview and survey, we interviewed fifteen farmers representing 5% of total New Zealand wine production to examine ecological and economic benefits of sheep integration in viticulture systems. We find that seasonal integration of sheep during vine dormancy is common, while integration during the growing season is rare. Overall, farmers perceive significantly more benefits than challenges with the integration of sheep into vineyards, particularly reduced mowing (100% of farmers) and herbicide use (66% of farmers). On average, farmers reported 1.3 fewer herbicide applications annually, saving US$56 per hectare. As well, farmers indicated they were doing 2.2 fewer mows annually saving US$64 per hectare. These results suggest that wide-scale adoption of seasonal integration of sheep and viticulture can provide large ecological benefits and higher profitability vis-à-vis conventional viticulture practices; however, further integration of the two systems may provide even greater benefits not currently realized.

In this paper we present a framework for understanding regional land use processes by incorporating the concept of agglomeration economies into agricultural frontier theory. We show that agricultural firms can obtain positive externalities from locating in close proximity to other agricultural firms, leading to agglomeration economies. Agglomeration economies lead to high levels of competition and diversity within a local agricultural supply chain and influence local prices, information flows, and private enforcement of environmental institutions. We use the theory of agglomeration economies to understand the development of soybean production in two counties along the Santarem-Cuiaba (BR-163) highway in the Brazilian Amazon: Santarem, Para and Sorriso, Mato Grosso. We conclude that differences in environmental and land tenure institutions influenced the occurrence of agglomeration economies in these two counties, which in turn affected the total factor productivity of soy in each region. In particular, the supply chain became extremely competitive and diverse in Sorriso where few environmental regulations existed, while environmental restrictions reduced the diversification of the supply chain in Santarem. The presence of a soy agglomeration economy in Sorriso spurred innovation, increased productivity, and led to extremely rapid soy expansion in that county, while the monopolistic supply chain in Santarem reduced producers’ access to land and capital and impeded soy expansion.