Deforestation Reduction Research Articles

Contribution of the Amazon protected areas program to forest conservation

Established in 2002, the Amazon Protected Areas Program (ARPA) supports 120 Conservation Units (CUs) in the Brazilian Amazon, covering 62 Mha. Here, we quantified the impact of ARPA support on reducing deforestation and CO2 emissions between 2008 and 2020. We started by examining critical methodological choices, often brushed over in the impact evaluation studies on protected areas (PAs). We then applied a covariate balancing method to control for variation in covariates so as to compare differences in deforestation between Strictly Protected (SP) and Sustainable Use (SU) CUs with and without ARPA support as well as to assess the influence of ARPA investment mechanism on the differential reductions. Next, we estimated total reductions in deforestation and CO2 emissions by using the Adjusted Odds Ratio. We found that ARPA support accounts for additional deforestation reductions of 9 % in SP CUs and 39 % in SU CUs in relation to non-supported CUs. The effects of ARPA investment mechanism were statistically significant for both categories of CUs. CUs plus Indigenous Lands (i.e., PAs) reduced by 21 % (2.0 ± 0.3 Mha) Amazon deforestation between 2008 and 2020. Of this total, ARPA CUs accounts for 264 ± 25 thousand ha, the equivalent of 104 ± 10 Mtons of CO2 emissions. If deforestation continues unabated, PAs will become the last citadels of the Amazon. However, protecting the Amazon only with PAs does not suffice. Additional investments in a comprehensive conservation policy mix are needed along with a monitoring and evaluation strategy to provide evidence on what works for effective and socially equitable forest conservation.

Recycling for deforestation reduction in Tanzania: Why are households not using waste charcoal?

Abstract. Ngowi NJ, Ngalawa AA. 2022. Recycling for deforestation reduction in Tanzania: Why are households not using waste charcoal?. Asian J For 7: 1-8. Charcoal making and the subsequent waste charcoal produced to contribute to deforestation and the production of greenhouse gases, the major drivers for climate change. Whereas climate change is increasingly becoming a public issue, Africa produces 63% of the total global wood charcoal. Since 2004, the demand for wood charcoal on the continent has risen by 30%, the highest in the world. The low efficiency of locally made earth kilns, between 8% and 36%, reported in Africa has contributed to increased waste charcoal production on the continent. However, more information is needed on the cycling use of waste charcoal in low-income countries. In order to improve forest resource use, we investigated the factors influencing the cycling use of wood waste charcoal in the Kilosa District of East-Central Tanzania between 2020 and 2021. A total of 298 randomly selected households were involved in the survey. SPSS version 20 tools were used in the analysis through cross-tab descriptive statistics and the independent sample t-test. Results show that sex, age, expenditure on fuel energy, environment, and technology for cooking significantly affected household use of waste charcoal (p < 0.05). The availability of wastes (v = 0.272) was the most influential factor in the cycling use of waste charcoal. The paper shows that cycling the use of wood waste charcoal would reduce volumes of trees cleared for firewood and improve sanitation by removing rampantly disposed waste from the environment.

Discursos sobre o manejo florestal sustentável no Domínio da Caatinga

Abstract Sustainable forest management (SFM) can harbor different discourses on sustainability. In this paper, based on discourse theory, the main ideas, concepts and narratives that have been proposed about the SFM of the native vegetation of the Caatinga Domain (DC) were characterized. Three main speeches were highlighted: a) Bioenergetic SFM: emphasizes the production of forest biomass to supply regional energy demands; additionally, it seeks to contribute strongly to the reduction of deforestation and forest conservation; b) Silvopastoral SFM: seeks to offer alternatives to improve forage availability; c) Non-timber SFM: seeks to value traditional knowledge about biodiversity, to expand the ways of managing multiple species and strengthen strategies for coexistence with the semi-arid region. The existence of different discourses, together with the range of sustainable practices they present, offers the opportunity for policy change and institutional innovation.

Unclear Land Rights and Deforestation: Pieces of Evidence from Brazilian Reality

The change from forests to pasture or agricultural land is still the largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in Brazil today. Although Brazil was previously able to reduce its level of deforestation from 27,000 km2 (2004) to 5000 km2 (2012), since 2014 deforestation has increased once more, reaching more than 10,000 km2 in 2021, and is expected to reach record peaks in 2022. There is enough evidence that deforestation occurs mostly on undesignated and unregistered land, as it is used as a speculative asset and/or in a productive way, but the appetite for more land grabbing is still worrisome. The literature shows that the availability of this kind of land in Brazil is between 50 and 100 million hectares, so the risk of perpetuating this pattern and destroying the remaining forests is rather large. This article’s main aim is to show how the Amazon’s deforestation reached its lowest levels mainly due to a combination of strong command-and-control policies and an institutional setting that was able to enforce them. However, most important were the policies designed for the protection of the forest and its communities, which played an important role by clarifying property rights and setting responsibilities for the forest’s preservation, but also creating the legal and institutional conditions to enforce the existing legislation. From this perspective, we analyzed how these different settings affected the decisions of players with respect to deforestation. The first section shows the Amazon’s deforestation patterns and the links to its causes—mainly the existing policies. The next section shows the legal and institutional instruments that enabled the reduction in deforestation at the beginning of the 21st century. The third section shows how the nation clarified the legal rights to land and how it diminished deforestation. The fourth provides evidence as to how those instruments were dismantled, provoking an increase in deforestation. Finally, a synthesis is presented with proposals for recovering the previous results.

How payments for ecosystem services can undermine Indigenous institutions: The case of Peru's Ampiyacu-Apayacu watershed

Payments for ecosystem services have come to dominate international policies for addressing tropical deforestation. Political ecologists, degrowth scholars, and Indigenous activists have critiqued these approaches on the grounds that by centering economic growth, they can disrupt local conservation systems and compromise forest-dwelling communities' ability to protect forests and live well. Meanwhile, Indigenous groups have developed positive alternatives to ‘green growth’ strategies, including buen vivir (good living) in Latin America. In Peru, the National Forest Conservation Program (NFCP) serves as the state's flagship initiative to address tropical deforestation in Indigenous communities by paying communities for demonstrated reductions in deforestation, so long as they invest those funds according to an agreed up on management plan. We analyzed how the NFCP has interacted with quality-of-life plans, Indigenous planning tools rooted in buen vivir. Our findings suggest that the NFCP has eroded local systems for conservation, including the minga, an Amazonian tradition of mutual aid and shared labor for subsistence livelihoods, pushing communities to replace these systems with commodity production and employer-employee relationships. We argue that instead of imposing onerous conditions and steering communities towards evermore commodity production, conservation initiatives should support the implementation of quality-of-life plans. We suggest that climate justice organizers, political ecologists, and degrowth scholars explore and advocate for such initiatives.

Gaps in adoption and implementation limit the current and potential effectiveness of zero-deforestation supply chain policies for soy

Tropical deforestation continues despite global efforts to curb forest loss. Corporate zero-deforestation supply chain commitments (ZDCs) have the potential to address this deforestation, especially if strong state-led forest governance is absent. Yet, because ZDC adoption is limited to particular locations and supply chains, these commitments may fall short at reducing regional deforestation and protecting biodiverse ecosystems. Here, we leverage timeseries of spatially explicit corporate commodity sourcing data and ZDCs to assess the current and potential effect of ZDCs within soybean supply chains on forest loss and biodiversity. We focus on the Brazilian Amazon, where the first ZDC (soy moratorium (SoyM)) was implemented, and the Cerrado, where companies have adopted but not implemented ZDCs. We found that in the Amazon, SoyM signatories that controlled the market caused a 57% reduction in direct deforestation for soy from 2006 to 2015. In the Cerrado, if companies had implemented their ZDCs with the same relative effectiveness as in the Amazon, deforestation for soy could have been reduced by 46%. Thus, ZDC implementation in the Cerrado via stringent monitoring and enforcement could contribute substantially to forest and habitat conservation. Yet, incomplete ZDC adoption leaves >50% of soy-suitable forests and the biodiversity that they harbor outside the reach of ZDCs. To protect these forests, it is vital to incentivize more companies—including smaller, less publicly exposed traders—to make and implement ZDCs, while also promoting forest governance through public policy.

What can the Glasgow Declaration on Forests bring to global emission reduction?

What can the Glasgow Declaration on Forests bring to global emission reduction?

No evidence of local deforestation leakage from protected areas establishment in Brazil's Amazon and Atlantic Forest

Establishing Protected areas (PAs) could displace or cause ‘leakage’ of deforestation into adjacent areas. Such leakage would potentially offset PAs' conservation effort by jeopardizing forest conservation goals and impeding financial mechanisms such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation - REDD+. Here we investigate forest loss inside PAs' borders and whether leakage occurred following the establishment of new PAs (n = 425) within the Amazon and the Atlantic forests in Brazil between 2004 and 2017. We applied a Before-After-Control-Intervention statistical design with a matching approach to evaluate deforestation leakage from PAs' establishment using a spatial (inside and outside PAs)– temporal (before and after PA establishment) measure of deforestation rates. We also used “Random Forest” to investigate the drivers of the effect of PAs' establishment on their surrounding areas. We found that when PAs' establishment led to reducing deforestation inside their boundaries, their surrounding also experienced a reduction in deforestation (“blockage”). Similarly, when PAs' establishment could not reduce deforestation inside their boundaries, their surroundings also experienced increased deforestation. Such a pattern was most common for Indigenous territories, especially in the deforestation arch in the Amazon. However, we did not find significant evidence for leakage as PAs' surroundings with a significant increase in deforestation were associated with PAs unable to significantly reduce deforestation within their boundaries. Therefore, “leakage” should not limit the establishment of new PAs. Instead, greater investments into reinforcement are needed for existing PAs, with high priority given to Indigenous Territories.

Floristic Diversity of Wild Exotic Ornamental Species from Aravalli Hill Ranges of Rewari District of Haryana, India

The Aravalli hill ranges are known for their unique composition of native and exotic flora. The region harbors a large number of exotic plants, which escalate and laud our environmental elements, provide an uplifting outlook towards life, improve estate esteem, and create a sense of prosperity and joy by utilizing these exotics for orna­­­­­mental purposes. The present study was conducted to enumerate wild exotic ornamental plants of the Aravalli hill ranges along with their common names, family, habit, nativity, the continent of origin, ornamental attributes, and purposes. The present study revealed the utilization of 42 wild exotic ornamental species belonging to 21 families from the Rewari district for various ornamental attributes and purposes. The documented planted showed diversity in taxonomic dispersion with 39 dicots, a monocot, and 2 ferns (Adiantum rhizophytum, Asplenium radicans) species. Asteraceae (8), Fabaceae (5), Amaranthaceae (4), Malvaceae, Euphorbiaceae, and Solanaceae (3 each) were the most dominant plant families. The spatial distribution of the plant species was dominated by Herbs (71%), Shrubs (12%), Trees (7%), Climbers, and Ferns (5%) respectively. The wild exotic ornamentals shared their nativity and origin from S. America (29%), C. America (24%), African (15%), Asian (13%), Mediterranean region (8%), European (6%), North American (4%) and least from Madagascar (2%). The present study recommends the use of wild exotic ornamentals as they are an important tool in the reduction of deforestation and land degradation. It is also assumed that Wild exotic ornamental plants may help in increasing genetic diversity and remodeling of urban ecosystems. Â

Applications of Intelligent Model to Analyze the Green Finance for Environmental Development in the Context of Artificial Intelligence.

Green finance can be referred to as financial investments made on sustainable projects and policies that focus on a sustainable economy. The procedures include promoting renewable energy sources, energy efficiency, water sanitation, industrial pollution control, transportation pollution control, reduction of deforestation, and carbon emissions, etc. Mainly, these green finance initiatives are carried out by private and public agents like business organizations, banks, international organizations, government organizations, etc. Green finance provides a financial solution to create a positive impact on society and leads to environmental development. In the age of artificial intelligence, all industries adopt AI technologies. In this research, we see the applications of the intelligent model to examine the green finance for ecological advancement with regard to artificial intelligence. Feasible transportation and energy proficiency and power transmission are two significant fields to be advanced and focused on minimizing the carbon impression in these industries. Renewable sources like solar energies for power generation and electric vehicles are to be researched and developed. This R&D requires a considerable fund supply, thus comes the green finance. Globally, green finance plays a vital role in creating a sustainable environment. In this research, for performing the green finance analysis, financial maximally filtered graph (FMFG) algorithm is implemented in different domains. The proposed algorithm is compared with the neural model and observed that the proposed model has obtained 98.85% of accuracy which is higher than the neural model.

Recent Environmental Legislation in Brazil and the Impact on Cerrado Deforestation Rates

This study aims to relate the recent trajectory of Brazilian environmental policies with the last 20 years deforestation rates observed in the Cerrado through the PRODES-Cerrado monitoring initiative. The main hypothesis is that the improvement of environmental legislation in Brazil, mainly during the period between 2005 and 2012, influenced the decrease in deforestation rates. In addition, policies to control environmental compliance, such as the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR) also influenced the reduction of deforestation. In the early 2000s, there was a significant increase in public environmental policies and implementation of an environmental management structure with the creation of conservation, protection, and management agency for conservation units (ICMBio), the Brazilian Forest Service for the management of public forests and Rural Environment Registry (CAR). Comparing the annual deforestation rate, it was observed that between 2000 and 2005, when 12.60% of the Cerrado was deforested, the annual deforestation average rate was 2.52%. Between 2006 and 2012, the period that precedes the revision of the Forest Code, the total deforestation is equivalent to 7.98%, which results in an annual average rate of 1.33%. After the enactment of the new Forest Code, between 2013 and 2020, there was a deforestation of 7.03% of the Cerrado area, which is equivalent to a deforestation annual average rate of 1.00%. One of the positive aspects of the new legislation was the creation of CAR, which obliges rural landowners to make an environmental attributes declaration of their property, this program being the main environmental management tool created in Brazil recently. After CAR regulation in 2014, there was a decrease in deforestation from 10,904 km2 to 7905 km2 in 2020. On the other hand, since 2016, changes occurred in the political scenario that increased agribusiness influence and the rise of a more conservative agenda, which jeopardizes the future of environmental quality in Brazil (illustrated, for example, by the increased release of pesticides from 104 in 2010 to 493 in 2020). As the main conclusion of this research, we showed that the state’s commitment to environmental management can contribute to deforestation reduction. The regulation of programs such as CAR can also contribute to the reduction of deforestation since it is one more tool for monitoring and ensure compliance of environmental regularization and recovery vegetation programs. At the same time, is necessary to keep on monitoring deforestation once the influence of the agricultural lobby has gained strength.

Models of deforestation for setting reference levels in the context of REDD: A case study in the Peruvian Amazon

One of the main elements in the mechanisms proposed by REDD+ , is to pay countries (and then the users and/or forest owners, depending on each type of project), for real reductions in deforestation and the resulting GHG emissions, as well as to ensure other benefits, such as technical assistance and qualification, among others. To be able to estimate the emission reductions, it is necessary to establish a Reference Level either through different forms of a historical average or in the form of a BAU or “Business as Usual” scenario. In this sense, current proposals set the Reference Levels equal to historical deforestation, which apply another political logic to the predictions made by the Forest Transition (FT) theory. According to this theory, when using a simple historical extrapolation, it is possible that: “countries with a lot of forest and little deforestation”, lose in the initial stages of forest transition, while “countries with little forest and a lot of deforestation”, win in the later stages of the FT. Our study shows how the predictions of FT and other socio-economic variables can be incorporated into predictive models (historical trend), by including the forest area as an explanatory variable. Sub-national data from the 15 departments with forest cover in the Peruvian Amazon are used to develop 6 optional deforestation models for comparative purposes. It is observed that the most important predictive variable to explain current deforestation is historical deforestation. In the same way, it is observed that when applying and implementing econometric models with different variables, there are projections very close to the results of spatially explicit models for Peru (models that include spatial data for distance to roads, elevation, slope, distance to populated centers, among others). The variation of results is only 3–4%, so it can be concluded that the projections based on the historical trend considering the forest transition of each region and other socio-economic variables, are very good estimators of the deforestation expected in the future and are adequate to define the possible reductions by deforestation and degradation in the Peruvian Amazon or other areas with similar conditions.

Networks and institutions in sustainable forest use: Evidence from South-East Tanzania

Despite growing interest in the impacts of both forest certification and networks in effective natural resource management, there is little literature that brings these two lines of inquiry together. Combining longitudinal remote sensing and village-level forest governance network data, we estimate Cox proportional hazard models predicting the risk of forest loss within 100-square meter forest plots in areas that eventually came under Forest Stewardship Council certification. Our models indicate Forest Stewardship Council certification substantially reduces deforestation, despite that the system is not explicitly designed to do so. While villages with ties to civil society organizations also tend to experience reduced deforestation, those with ties to private sector organizations experience more forest loss. Further, we find that forest loss declines as the share of closed triangles in villages’ governance networks increases. Our results indicate network structure may complement Forest Stewardship Council certification’s impact on forest cover and account for some reduction in deforestation previously attributed to certification itself.

The costs and benefits of primary prevention of zoonotic pandemics.

The lives lost and economic costs of viral zoonotic pandemics have steadily increased over the past century. Prominent policymakers have promoted plans that argue the best ways to address future pandemic catastrophes should entail, “detecting and containing emerging zoonotic threats.” In other words, we should take actions only after humans get sick. We sharply disagree. Humans have extensive contact with wildlife known to harbor vast numbers of viruses, many of which have not yet spilled into humans. We compute the annualized damages from emerging viral zoonoses. We explore three practical actions to minimize the impact of future pandemics: better surveillance of pathogen spillover and development of global databases of virus genomics and serology, better management of wildlife trade, and substantial reduction of deforestation. We find that these primary pandemic prevention actions cost less than 1/20th the value of lives lost each year to emerging viral zoonoses and have substantial cobenefits.

Напрями удосконалення управління лісогосподарським землекористуванням на регіональному рівні

Goal. To determine the directions of improving the management of forestry lands based on balance by regions of Ukraine. Methods. The methodological basis of the study were general and special methods, in particular: dialectical method of cognition, methods of correlation analysis, analogies, abstract, statistical, and graphic research methods. Results. Studies of the rate of forest regeneration by region indicate the need to direct management decisions to achieve optimal forest cover. The negative dynamics of forest certification and the unevenness of its volumes on a regional basis are highlighted. The influence of the general resource indicator on the staffing of the forest sector has been studied. The regional imbalances of the socio-economic component of forestry land use in Ukraine are studied. It is substantiated that Ukraine needs to improve the management of forestry land use in the direction of ecological and socio-economic balance on a regional basis. Conclusions. The scientific basis is formed for the need to improve the management of forest land use to ensure environmental and socio-economic balance at the regional level. The directions of improvement of forest land management are determined, in particular: ensuring optimal forest cover, intensification of forest certification, improvement of personnel policy, improvement of the remuneration system, reduction of illegal deforestation.

How are urbanization, energy consumption and globalization influencing the environmental quality of the G-7?

<abstract> <p>Many developed countries including G-7 became part of the Kyoto Protocol for improving their environmental quality in 2005. Its main goals were to develop national-level programs for energy conservation and the eradication of greenhouse gas emissions. To achieve such goals, certain policy measures including reduction in deforestation, urban population and promotion of renewable energy consumption were adopted. This study aims to examine the consequences of these policies on the environmental quality of G-7 from 1988 to 2018. LLC and IPS unit root tests were applied to check the stationarity of analyzed variables. The results of Pedroni and Kao's co-integration tests proved the long-run relationship between the dependent and explanatory variables. The application of multiple cross-sectional dependence tests revealed that the cross-sections are independent of each other. The findings of the panel Autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model exhibited that urbanization, economic growth and nonrenewable energy consumption are hampering the environmental quality. While renewable energy consumption and globalization are improving it in the long term. Urbanization, renewable and nonrenewable energy consumption significantly improve the environmental quality during the short term whereas globalization insignificantly deteriorates the environment. The study confirms the presence of reversed U environmental Kuznets curve between urbanization and carbon emissions with a turning point at 80 per cent of urbanization. The study suggests that the transformation of energy consumption from nonrenewable to renewable sources and strict compliance with environment management policies will prove prolific for improving the environmental quality of G-7.</p> </abstract>

Beyond Deforestation Reductions: Public Disclosure, Land-Use Change and Commodity Sourcing

Beyond Deforestation Reductions: Public Disclosure, Land-Use Change and Commodity Sourcing

Economic growth and sustainability: An analysis of the Environmental Kuznets Curve on the Legal Amazon

The objective of this work was to analyze how deforestation of the Legal Amazon (AMZ-L) is affected by the economic growth of the states it covers, from 2000 to 2017. This study is based on the Environmental Kuznets Curve theory (EKC), proposed by Grossman and Krueger (1991). We used the panel data method considering the fixed effects to answer the research problem. The hypothesis of the EKC, in fact, happens in the initial stage, showing that, with the increase in income, deforestation rates drop, causing the curve to reverse, taking an inverted “U” shape. However, at high-income levels, deforestation increases again, thus the curve takes an “N” shape. Considering this scenario, we can conclude that the increase in income alone does not guarantee deforestation reduction. However, we must emphasize that deforestation rates are lower than in the initial stage at high-income levels, showing the government intervention is needed.

Routes of Soil Uses and Conversions with the Main Crops in Brazilian Cerrado: A Scenario from 2000 to 2020

The Brazilian Savannah, also known as Cerrado Biome, is a hotspot for Brazilian biodiversity. The hypothesis tested in this study is that there are diverse routes of soil uses for agriculture production in Cerrado, derived mainly from areas with pasture (natural and planted) due to the decrease in Cerrado deforestation in the last 20 years (from 2000 to 2020). The aim of this study was (i) to determine the profile of crop production in Brazilian Cerrado; (ii) to demonstrate the routes of soil uses during the last 20 years; (iii) to demonstrate the increase of soybean and corn production in Cerrado. The design of the study was based on data of (i) the accumulation of biomass and carbon in Cerrado; (ii) production area and yield of corn, soybean, coffee, sugarcane, cotton, and pasture (natural and planted); (iii) Cerrado deforestation. Results showed that the vegetation of Cerrado promotes a higher accumulation of biomass and carbon on the subsurface, followed by accumulation in the surface, deadwood, and litter. In the last 20 years, there has been a reduction of 75% in deforestation and an increase of 66% in crop areas and 78% in crop yield. However, there was no clear reduction in deforestation specifically in the Matopiba region. In Minas Gerais/MG, Goiás/GO, and Mato Grosso/MT, there were higher productions of coffee/MG, soybean/MT, corn/MT, sugarcane/MG-GO, and cotton/MT. Planted pasture (and not natural pasture) covered the larger areas, representing 75% of the total area with pasture. The low routes of soil uses from deforestation to (i) planted pasture and (ii) crop production explained the decrease in deforestation. The increases in yield and crop areas are explained by the routes from pasture (planted and natural) to agriculture. Our results provided clear insights that programs of Cerrado preservation should continue the decrease of deforestation with the sustainable development in agriculture, mainly in the Matopiba region where there was no clear decrease in deforestation in the last 20 years.

The Role of High-Volume Ranches as Cattle Suppliers: Supply Chain Connections and Cattle Production in Mato Grosso

Brazil’s zero-deforestation Cattle Agreements (CAs) have influenced the supply chain but their impact on deforestation has been limited in part because slaughterhouses monitor deforestation only on the properties they buy from directly. Consequently, deforestation continues to enter the supply chain indirectly from properties that are not monitored. Knowledge gaps and data limitations have made it challenging to close this loophole and achieve meaningful reductions in deforestation. Here we leverage our large property-level supply chain database that links together six years of records from the Animal Transport Guide (GTA), high-resolution satellite data, property boundaries, and land cover data to quantify different types of supply chain connections and characterize cattle production in Mato Grosso. We find that a relatively small number of high-volume suppliers—defined as the top 5% of cattle suppliers in terms of the volume of cattle sold–supplied 50–60% of the total volume purchased by major slaughterhouses. One-fourth of high-volume direct suppliers cleared forest between 2009–2018, and 90% of them also bought from indirect suppliers with deforestation, leading these high-volume direct suppliers to act as funnels for deforestation into the supply chain. Because they serve as important hubs in the supply chain, high-volume suppliers may represent a key starting point to expand the CAs to cover large numbers of indirect suppliers.