A Sustainable Land-Use Transition for the Amazon? Leverage Points and Institutional Innovations to Address Tropical Deforestation

Tropical deforestation remains an urgent environmental issue.

Much of it is caused by the production of a few agricultural commodities (e.g. beef, soy), whose demand also provides entry points for change. However, growing zero-deforestation commitments from governments and companies are yet to spur effective action.

Supply chain transparency and monitoring capabilities have seen major advances, but policy and governance have not kept pace.

Tropical deforestation remains high, and there is a pressing need to understand what institutional innovations can help realize pledges.

This project will help understand why so little progress has been achieved and identify the innovations needed to drive change by combining expertise on sustainability transitions with detailed datasets on commodity production, trade and capital flows.

Focusing on the Amazon – the largest expanse of tropical forest left on the planet – as a flagship case, it will: (1) identify leverage points in the Amazon’s current land-use regime; (2) analyze promising institutional innovations, particularly on soy and beef supply chains, that can help provide seeds for sustainability transitions; and (3) examine barriers and opportunities for scaling up such innovations.

By deploying an innovative mixed-method approach, the results will inform on concrete pathways to help avert a tipping point of irreversible ecosystem change in the Amazon and provide lessons for promoting sustainable land-use transitions elsewhere.