Expanding the Soy Moratorium to Brazil’s Cerrado

Soterroni, Aline C.; Ramos, Fernando M.; Mosnier, Aline; Fargione, Joseph; Andrade, Pedro R.; Baumgarten, Leandro; Pirker, J.; Obersteiner, Michael; Kraxner, Florian; Câmara, Gilberto; Carvalho, Alexandre Filordi de; Polasky, Stephen

doi:10.1126/sciadv.aav7336

Cited by 139 publications

(110 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…By allowing up to four times the deforestation within a given farm in the Cerrado compared to in the Amazon, the FC alone is unlikely to control deforestation in this region. Some studies already indicate that zero-deforestation soy production in the Cerrado would be feasible [67,68], which could prevent the direct conversion of 19 MHa. Likewise, a zero-deforestation approach to cattle production in the Cerrado could potentially prevent at least another 20 MHa from being deforested for pasture.…”

Section: Challenges To Containing Legal Clearing In the Amazon And Cementioning

confidence: 99%

Estimating the Potential for Conservation and Farming in the Amazon and Cerrado under Four Policy Scenarios

et al. 2020

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Since 2013, clearing rates have rapidly increased in the Amazon and Cerrado biomes. This acceleration has raised questions about the efficacy of current regional public and private conservation policies that seek to promote agricultural production while conserving remnants of natural vegetation. In this study, we assessed conservation and agricultural outcomes of four potential policy scenarios that represent perfect adherence to private sector, zero-deforestation commitments (i.e., the Amazon soy moratorium—ASM and the Amazon cattle agreements—CA) and to varying levels of implementation of the Brazilian Forest Code (FC). Under a zero-clearing scenario, we find that the extent of croplands as of 2017 within the two biomes (31 MHa) could double without further clearing if agriculture were to expand on all previously cleared land that is suitable for crops. Moreover, at least 47 MHa of land that is already cleared but unsuitable for crops would remain available for pasture. Under scenarios in which only legal clearing under the FC could occur, 51 MHa of additional natural vegetation could be cleared. This includes as many as 1 MHa of nonforest vegetation that could be cleared in the Amazon biome without triggering the ASM and CA monitoring systems. Two-thirds of the total vegetation vulnerable to legal clearing is located within the Cerrado biome, and 19 MHa of this land is suitable for cropland expansion. Legal clearing of all of these areas could reduce biodiversity persistence by 4% within the two biomes, when compared with the zero-clearing scenario, and release up to 9 PgCO2e, with the majority (75%) coming from the Cerrado biome. However, when we considered the potential outcomes of full implementation of the FC, we found that 22% (11 MHa) of the 51 MHa of vegetation subject to legal clearing could be protected through the environmental quotas market, while an additional 1 MHa should be replanted across the two biomes, predominantly in the Amazon biome (73% of the area subject to replanting). Together, quotas and replanting could prevent the release of 2 PgCO2e that would otherwise be emitted if all legal clearing occurred. Based on our results, we conclude that ongoing legal clearing could create additional space for cropland and cattle production beyond the substantial existing stocks of cleared areas but would significantly impair local carbon and biodiversity stocks.

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Section: Challenges To Containing Legal Clearing In the Amazon And Cementioning

confidence: 99%

Estimating the Potential for Conservation and Farming in the Amazon and Cerrado under Four Policy Scenarios

et al. 2020

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“…Four tiles were used for training (1,5,12,13) and two for validation (6,10). The remaining tiles were used for testing (2,3,4,7,8,9,11,14,15). The polygons indicate deforested areas.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In particular, Amazon and Cerrado biomes cover the most significant portion of the Brazilian territory, with an area of about 49% and 24%, respectively, comprising together an area of around 6.2 million square kilometers of the Brazilian territory. In both biomes, the deforested areas are predominantly converted to pasture [6,7], in addition to a strong expansion of soy in the Cerrado biome [8]. These biomes have different characteristics and accommodate rich biodiversity of endemic species, many of them vulnerable [9].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of Deep Learning Techniques for Deforestation Detection in the Brazilian Amazon and Cerrado Biomes From Remote Sensing Imagery

et al. 2020

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Deforestation is one of the major threats to natural ecosystems. This process has a substantial contribution to climate change and biodiversity reduction. Therefore, the monitoring and early detection of deforestation is an essential process for preservation. Techniques based on satellite images are among the most attractive options for this application. However, many approaches involve some human intervention or are dependent on a manually selected threshold to identify regions that suffer deforestation. Motivated by this scenario, the present work evaluates Deep Learning-based strategies for automatic deforestation detection, namely, Early Fusion (EF), Siamese Network (SN), and Convolutional Support Vector Machine (CSVM) as well as Support Vector Machine (SVM), used as the baseline. The target areas are two regions with different deforestation patterns: the Amazon and Cerrado biomes in Brazil. The experiments used two co-registered Landsat 8 images acquired at different dates. The strategies based on Deep Learning achieved the best performance in our analysis in comparison with the baseline, with SN and EF superior to CSVM and SVM. In the same way, a reduction of the salt-and-pepper effect in the generated probabilistic change maps was noticed as the number of training samples increased. Finally, the work assesses how the methods can reduce the time invested in the visual inspection of deforested areas.

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“…The Soy Moratorium, however, was essentially a response to Amazonian conversion (as illustrated by Greenpeace's 2006 report 'Eating up the Amazon' that helped create momentum that to the creation of the moratorium). The belated critique that the moratorium is flawed for not also covering the Cerrado can, therefore, be considered the result of changing framings and the widening of this policy field to include more than just the Amazon (see Soterroni et al 2019).…”

Section: The Amazon-cerrado Nexus and Deforestation In Brazilmentioning

confidence: 99%

Leakage and boosting effects in environmental governance: a framework for analysis

Lima

Persson

Meyfroidt

2019

Environ. Res. Lett.

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In an increasingly interconnected world, leakage-broadly understood as unintended displacement of impacts caused by an environmental policy intervention-has become a major governance concern. Yet, leakage remains both loosely conceptualized and poorly understood as a phenomenon in policy making. To fill this gap and broaden the leakage research agenda, we conduct a state-of-theart review of scientific assessments on leakage (particularly on land use) and combine it with conceptual and analytical frameworks from the environmental governance literature. We then propose a rigorous definition of leakage, discuss frequently overlooked political dimensions, and develop a typology of leakage pathways. Our analysis of leakage through a governance lens yields five core insights: (1) Leakage is not simply a mechanistic phenomenon, but a complex governance issue involving questions of institutional fit, interactions, and political agency.(2) Although the land use literature traditionally focuses on leakage through markets or activity displacement, a governance lens shows that it also occurs through information, motivation, or institutional channels. (3) As policymakers may act strategically, the unintentionally of leakage should not be assumed but rather become an object of research. (4) A phenomenon not initially regarded as leakage can come to be framed as such through the action of 'problem brokers' and changes in policy fields. (5) Policy-makers and researchers should broaden their focus from only avoiding leakage to seeking positive spillovers and institutional synergies. These insights are illustrated with examples from two cases relating to land use policy in Brazil and Southeast Asia.

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Expanding the Soy Moratorium to Brazil’s Cerrado

Cited by 139 publications

References 18 publications

Estimating the Potential for Conservation and Farming in the Amazon and Cerrado under Four Policy Scenarios

Estimating the Potential for Conservation and Farming in the Amazon and Cerrado under Four Policy Scenarios

Evaluation of Deep Learning Techniques for Deforestation Detection in the Brazilian Amazon and Cerrado Biomes From Remote Sensing Imagery

Leakage and boosting effects in environmental governance: a framework for analysis

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