Multi-stakeholder partnerships in agricultural commodity supply chains and deforestation-free commitments in the Amazon: a delicate balance

Abstract

Multi-stakeholder commitments to end deforestation have increased since the UN Climate Summit (UNCS) in 2014, where many agreed to halve deforestation by 2020 and end it by 2030. In addition to being absent among the signatories of the NYDF 2014, Brazil has failed in its voluntary commitment to eliminate deforestation and restore national biomes, despite having achieved considerable success in the last 15 years. In this research, we discuss historical challenges, bottlenecks, and lessons learned about deforestation-free commitments at the local level, and the establishment of sustainable agricultural commodity supply chains. The concept of "agricultural-forest frontier fluidity," in the field of governance (sustainability governance), seeks to contextualize the multi-actor dynamics given the social and environmental costs of occupying the territory, territorial development patterns, governance, and economic activities. We apply a qualitative approach, based on the review of the Brazilian environmental legislation and agreements between 2011-12 and 2017-18. We examined the interactions and dependencies of the soy and beef supply chains and land-use change (according to data from MAPBiomas) to access productive territorial dynamics regarding these commitments at the local level in the Brazilian Amazon. Before the many policies and institutional changes that occurred in Brazil with the newly-elected government since 2019, reinforcing an already existing trend of dismantling the delicate Costa PRACS: Revista Eletrônica de Humanidades do Curso de Ciências Sociais da UNIFAP https://periodicos.unifap.br/index.php/pracs ISSN 1984-4352 Macapá, v. 13, n. 2, p. 31-59, jul./dez. 2020 balance between command and control policies, governance, and institutional frameworks in the Brazilian Amazon, negatively impacting the performance of agricultural commodity supply chains and free-deforestation commitments.