Supply-chain mechanisms for safeguarding South American Chaco’s last intact forests

Agricultural expansion continues to drive the loss of tropical forests, resulting in huge social-ecological trade-offs, including biodiversity loss, carbon emissions, and the erosion of the resource base of forest-dependent communities.

Halting deforestation has thus become a global policy goal but is currently hindered by four main knowledge gaps, all of which this action will address.

First, not all tropical forests are equal, and many are degraded, but where remaining high-nature-value (HNV) forests are is often unknown. Second, many forest conservation tools are available, but their effectiveness in protecting HNV forests is unclear. Third, supply-chain interventions are potentially powerful, but missing supply-chain data limits their application.

Finally, the relative importance of domestic vs. foreign consumption is often unknown.

Focussing on the South American Chaco, an understudied global deforestation hotspot, this action will use state-of-the-art remote sensing, impact evaluation, and supply-chain analyses to provide the first assessments of the distribution of HNV forests in the Chaco, which policy options effectively protect them, and what the environmental footprints of domestically used vs. traded forest-risk commodities produced are.

Through the action, the ER will broaden his research scope, acquire new technical and transferable skills, and train leadership ability. Together, this will make him a very competitive candidate for independent positions in sustainability science.

The outcomes of the action include high-impact publications as well as policy-relevant information delivered to key stakeholders in South America and Europe through various dissemination pathways.

Overall, this action will impact our understanding of the status and governance of HNV forests in the neglected dry tropics, which is critical for the EU’s due diligence initiatives seeking clean supply chains, and for maintaining social-ecological integrity in the Global South.