New supply chain interventions offer promise to reduce deforestation from expansion of commercial agriculture, as more multinational companies agree to stop sourcing from farms with recent forest clearing. We analyzed the zerodeforestation cattle agreements signed by major meatpacking companies in the Brazilian Amazon state of Pará using property-level data on beef supply chains. Our panel analysis of daily purchases by slaughterhouses before and after the agreements demonstrates that they now avoid purchasing from properties with deforestation, which was not the case prior to the agreements. Supplying ranchers registered their properties in a public environmental registry nearly 2 years before surrounding non-supplying properties, and 85% of surveyed ranchers indicated that the agreements were the driving force. In addition, supplying properties had significantly reduced deforestation rates following the agreements. Our results demonstrate important changes in the beef supply chain, but the agreements' narrow scope and implementation diminish outcomes for forest conservation.

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We quantified the avoided deforestation impacts of environmental land registration in Brazil's Amazonian states of Mato Grosso and Pará between 2005 and 2014. We find that the program reduced deforestation on registered lands. The magnitude of the effect implies that deforestation in the two states would have been 10% higher in the absence of the program. The impacts of registration varied over time, likely due to changing suites of policies linking environmental registration to land use incentives. Our results also reveal that agriculturally suitable lands and those located in regions undergoing the most land-use change were more likely to be registered than those in less suitable, less dynamic regions. We conclude that environmental registration is an important first step in implementing avoided deforestation policies targeting private landholders.

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A global surge in ‘artisanal’, smallscale mining (ASM) threatens biodiverse tropical forests and exposes residents to dangerous levels of mercury. In response, governments and development agencies are investing millions (USD) on ASM formalization; registering concessions and demarcating extraction zones to promote regulatory adherence and direct mining away from ecologically sensitive areas. The environmental outcomes of these initiatives are seldom systematically assessed. We examine patterns of mining-related deforestation associated with formalization efforts in a gold-rich region of the Peruvian Amazon. We track changes from 2001 to 2014 when agencies: (a) issued 1701 provisional titles and (b) tried to restrict mining to a >5000 km2 ‘corridor’. We use fixed-effect regression models and matching methods to control for gold price, geology, and accessibility. Mining increased dramatically during this period, clearing ∼40 000 ha of forest. After the mining corridor was declared and enforcement increased, new mining sites were opened more frequently within titled areas and inside the corridor than elsewhere. However, mining also increased in protected area buffer zones and native communities, and the proportion of mining area occurring outside the corridor grew, concentrated in a few hotspots. Interviews (n = 47) revealed that the hoped-for regulatory adherence failed to materialize because miners who were issued provisional titles started operations without complying with attendant environmental rules. Overlapping land claims for agriculture and forest extraction proved a major obstacle for obtaining full legal rights to mine. Miners resented the slow, costly formalization process but many sought titles to bolster territorial claims, avoid policing, obtain credit and recruit paying ‘guest’ miners who generally ignored regulations. We find that responses to formalization varied with changing context and while formalization may curb mining in some circumstances, it may exacerbate it in others. Without adequate enforcement, interagency coordination, and attention to competing land claims, formalizing ASM may accelerate ecological destruction.

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