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Zero deforestation and low emissions development: Public and private institutional arrangements under jurisdictional approaches

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Zero deforestation and low emissions development: Public and private institutional arrangements under jurisdictional approaches

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Zero deforestation
and low emissions
development
Public and private
institutional arrangements
under jurisdictional
approaches
Pablo Pacheco1, Otto Hospes2 and Ahmad
Dermawan1
1 Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)
2 Wageningen University & Research (WUR)
Setting the stage:
Initiatives to achieve global
sustainabilitygoals
Debates on the challenges and opportunities for
sustainable agricultural production and natural
resources management - mainly of land, water,
and forests - have intensied in recent years. This
is due not only to a more prominent climate
change agenda, aimed at mitigating greenhouse
gas (GHG) emissions to limitglobal warmingto
less than1.5oC [1]; it is also due to the recent
Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) agenda
[2]. The role that forests play in climate change
mitigation is at the heart of climate change
and sustainability debates; as such, reducing
the pressure that ‘forest-risk’ commodity crops
(e.g. palm oil, cocoa, soy, beef, timber) place on
forests is key [3]. Forest conversion contributes
to soil erosion, reduces water quality and supply,
leads to biodiversity loss and increases carbon
emissions [3]. An issue of increasing concern is
how to support the meaningful integration of
smallholders in these commodity supply chains, as
well as improve their capacity to capture greater
market benets [4].
For zero deforestation and low emissions
development (LED) strategies to succeed, they
should contribute to broader objectives of
food and energy security, ensure agriculture is
sustainable and natural resources are conserved,
28 November 2017
Paper for discussion
Zero deforestation and low emissions development
2
in tropical countries, such as Brazil and Indonesia, a
major proportion of investment was still directed to the
most protable land uses, such as pulp and paper, soy
and oil palm plantations, and processing facilities [6].
This called for increased attention on nding ways to
disrupt the economic forces shaping land use change
and forest landscapes transformations, through both
demand- and supply-side interventions [7].
In the context of the Paris Climate Agreement,
national governments have committed to reduce
their emissions under their National Determined
Contributions (NDC), but often politics tends to
constrain more aggressive implementation that shifts
away from business-as-usual pathways. An increasing
number of sub-national level governments, grouped
into the ‘Governors Climate and Forests Task Force,
have started to develop some jurisdictional approaches
to REDD+, and are now actively embracing strategies
to transition to low emission development goals [8].
In the private sector, major corporate groups have
been making commitments to sustainability in their
operations, aiming to reduce their environmental
footprint. Notably, the Consumer Goods Forum (CGF),
followed by New York Declaration on Forests (NYDF) [9],
have triggered commitments from global corporations
and traders to delink their supply chains from
deforestation. Major palm oil groups in Indonesia have
additionally committed to ‘No Deforestation, No Peat,
and No Exploitation’ (NDPE) policies [10].
Private sector initiatives aimed at deforestation-free
supply tend to rely on voluntary private standards
and certication, and supply chain self-regulations
(e.g. sustainability policies and codes of conduct)
that enhance their environmental performance.
Governments, in turn, base their actions on formulating
and implementing ‘stick and carrot’ policies at
national to sub-national levels [11]. Building on initial
proposals aimed at jurisdictional approaches to REDD+
implementation at multiple levels [12], and linking
with growing debates on how to ensure sustainability
in specic landscapes, ideas of landscape governance
have become more prominent [13, 14]. Increasingly,
ideas of landscape governance are intercepting with
ideas of value chain governance, under the label of
‘jurisdictional approaches’.
These jurisdictional approaches are becoming the
new mantra for achieving zero deforestation, and
making progress towards LED at a sub-national level
(either in states, provinces, districts or municipalities).
Jurisdictional approaches lie at the intersection of three
approaches, specically: landscape approaches for
managing the trade-os between conservation and
development; jurisdictional approaches for addressing
competing land uses under REDD+ implementation;
and voluntary corporate sustainability eorts to
whilst also improving local wellbeing and greater social
inclusion. Thus, along with reducing deforestation
rates, there is also a need to increase the productivity
of already-cleared forestlands, and ensure that
smallholders and local populations can benet from
markets opportunities, while maintaining their values
and sustaining their livelihoods. This is an enormous
challenge, yet increasingly embraced by public and
private actors from global to sub-national levels. This
paper examines the scope for synergies between value
chains and landscape perspectives under a jurisdictional
approach, and their potential for addressing some key
social and environmental challenges when moving
towards zero deforestation and LED strategies.
We argue that three options are likely to emerge when
linking corporate eorts to sustainability and public
regulations in specic landscapes: 1) co-existence
between private interventions and government actions
in sub-national jurisdictions, 2) alignment of voluntary
sustainability interventions, including NGOs initiatives
and government actions, and 3) orchestration to fully
integrate public and private interventions across diverse
dimensions. Identifying these options enables us to ask
questions on their likely feasibility, eectiveness, and
limitations in addressing key social and environmental
sustainability challenges, while managing associated
development and conservation trade-os.
The following four sections rst explore the dierent
governance approaches and their interactions
in terms of working towards commitments to
zero deforestation and LED. The main social and
environmental sustainability challenges to overcome
are then examined. Building on previous assessment of
challenges, we then discuss the potential and limitations
of dierent jurisdictional-based approaches to address
such challenges, before the last section provides some
concluding remarks.
What is new? Jurisdictional
approaches to zero
deforestation and LED
Initial eorts to support reduced carbon emissions,
and transition to low emissions development,
were undertaken under ‘reducing emissions from
deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) initiatives.
Key actions were aimed at adjusting national regulatory
frameworks to reduce forest conversion, and thus to
generate carbon credits under the expectations of
a global carbon agreement. These eorts, however,
showed their limitations when competing with business-
as-usual incentives [5]. While some resources were
invested in readiness actions for REDD+ implementation
Pablo Pacheco, Otto Hospes and Ahmad Dermawan 3
Supply chain interventions aim to reduce the social
and environmental externalities of production,
processing and trade, while sustaining economic
prots. Landscape-related interventions aim to sustain
the provisioning of ecosystem services in the landscape,
while supporting local livelihood and development
options. Supply chain interventions increasingly focus
on achieving deforestation-free supply through the
adoption of production standards and traceability,
but often neglect power and political economy
dimensions [4, 18]. Landscape-related interventions
often embrace multiple actors and value chains, and
privilege multi-stakeholder processes for territorial
planning; they set up incentives and mechanisms
for harmonizing conservation and development and
managing their trade-os, but tend to over-emphasize
public interventions, and neglect connections with
downstream markets and investments [19].
Main challenges in achieving
sustainable supply and
landscape management
Indonesia is at a crossroads in its attempts to continue
to develop the national economy; the country is
trying to lift people out of poverty without increasing
the threat to environmental integrity or aecting the
livelihoods of traditional rural people. This has proven
a dicult task, due to the inherent trade-os between
economic growth and environmental impacts. In
addition, Indonesia made strong commitments towards
climate change mitigation, notably its commitment to
reducing emissions by 2020 by 26% below business-
as-usual (BAU) projections, or by 41%, with foreign
assistance [20]. However, carbon emissions continue to
grow, particularly due to emissions in energy and land
use sectors, as well as forest res. In spite of poverty
reduction gains, rural poverty is still widespread [21]. In
this context, there are some key social and economic
challenges when it comes to achieving landscape
sustainability.
Agricultural expansion has major impacts
on environmental integrity
Agricultural expansion occurs at the expense of
forest conservation, aecting the integrity of natural
ecosystems. The expansion of plantations, particularly
pulp, paper and oil palm, have led to major forests
and peatland conversion [22]. At present, most forest
conversion is due to oil palm expansion, associated
not only to the development of large-scale plantations
but also the expansion of smallholder plots [23]. The
main environmental impact arising from plantation
expansion is the associated carbon emissions; oil
eliminate deforestation from their supply chains [15].
These perspectives are converging in dierent ways in
diverse contexts, and still may have dierent meanings
for dierent landscape stakeholders [16]. Underlying
motivations are varied: certication bodies are looking
for ways to scale up the uptake of sustainability
standards; companies are looking to trace their supply
from smallholders in more cost-eective ways; investors
are looking for production zones with comparatively
lower risks; and governments are trying to improve
the performance of public investments, while at the
same time attract foreign investments and international
cooperation.
Various initiatives and projects aimed at implementing
REDD+, promoting integrated development and
sustainable landscapes, are now claiming to adopt
jurisdictional approaches. This is driven by certain sub-
national jurisdictions having regulations to incentivize
lower carbon emissions, sustainable agriculture and
conservation, coupled with company policies aimed
at deforestation-free sourcing and traceability. Some
suggest the most notable commonality in jurisdictional
approaches is their dierence, since each initiative
is uniquely tailored to the particular government,
commodities, communities, and challenges of the
jurisdiction, with the most important feature being
to drive dialogue and unite goals across business,
government, and community stakeholders [15].
A recent study suggests that there are multiple
jurisdictional initiatives underway around the world. In
spite of their dierences, the main commonalities of
these initiatives are 1) seeking to align governments,
businesses, NGOs, local communities, and other
stakeholders around common interests in conservation,
supply chain sustainability, and green development,
2) focusing on the political level at which land use
decisions are made and enforced, and 3) advancing
land use planning of production and protection areas
with geographically tailored policy interventions,
market incentives, and climate nance [17]. These
jurisdictional initiatives can be grouped into three
categories. First, demand-side initiatives that aim to
source from jurisdictions that demonstrate improve
sustainability. Second, supply-side models that aim to
show the market that sustainability is being pursued,
mainly linked to wider uptake of sustainability systems.
Third, place-based initiatives that bring together
supply and demand-side stakeholders to agree on
sustainability goals and implementation strategies [17].
This is however a very simplistic classication, which
fails to unpack the approaches being adopted under
each developing model.
At the core of jurisdictional approaches are supply
chain and landscape-related interventions. The two
have potentials on their own, but also face limitations.
Zero deforestation and low emissions development
4
palm expansion into forest and peatlands results in
signicant carbon debt. Carbon debts are especially
high on converted peatlands, due to peat oxidation
and land subsidence [24]. Agricultural commodity
expansion equally results in the expansion of roads
and processing facilities, which in turn attracts large
numbers of immigrant farmers, leading to further
deforestation, and often to soil degradation and
water pollution [25]. In contrast, eective actions to
reduce deforestation constrain road expansion, create
protected areas, insulate forest frontiers, enforce laws,
and grant local tenure rights [26]. A way out of this
dilemma is to put in place measures that prevent the
expansion of agricultural production into forests and
peatlands, while stimulating yield growth in already-
cleared land [25].
Smallholder farmers are under pressure
to sustain biodiverse systems
The impact of large-scale commercial activity
on the ecosystem tends to be dierent from the
impact of mixed cash and subsistence smallholder
farming systems, due to the intensity of resources
used in each system. Commercial agriculture tends
to homogenize local practices and involve supply
chain smallholders under not always favorable
benet-sharing agreements. In contrast, less integrated
subsistence farmers tend to preserve production
practices that value ecosystem diversity [27]. Diversied
farms contribute to more diverse farming landscapes,
increasing biodiversity and stimulating interactions
between dierent species; this increases the resilience
of livelihood strategies and helps to protect natural
systems and preserve biodiversity. The expansion
of commercial agriculture tends to homogenize
landscapes, with high inputs and capital intensive
systems that rely on chemical fertilizers and pesticides
[28]. Industrial agricultural expansion enables fewer
actors to capture much of the agricultural value
generated, reinforcing their economic and political
power, and thus their ability to inuence land
allocation, and the governance of land and landscapes
by establishing, in some cases, very extended
patronage systems [29].
Farmer performance is aecting more
equitable benefit sharing
When farmers get involved in commercial agriculture,
they tend to underperform compared to industrial
producers, which translates into lower yields.
Smallholder yields from oil palm fresh fruit bunches
(FFB) are in practice between 6% and 40% lower
than best practice reference yields, with commercial
operations typically exceeding smallholder yields
by 46-116% [30]. The lower yields obtained by
smallholders leads to a reduction in the capture of
benets from FFB production, which also decreases
the land and labor returns generated by small-
scale growers. This situation is often due to the
underperformance of smallholders, who often have
planted low quality seedlings yielding lower FFB
production [31]. Farmers may also lack the resources
to purchase fertilizers and other inputs required to
properly manage the plantations, yet they also may
not be willing to invest in low productive plantations,
instead nding their prots reasonable. Increasing
smallholder yields is expected not only to help
improve the competitiveness of the overall sector,
but also to reduce land pressure and enhance rural
incomes [32].
Finance and investment face higher
risks due to weak governance
Finance still tends to ow to economic activities
yielding higher short-term benets, including
more specialized commercial agriculture, as well
as infrastructure that enables private investments.
While climate nance has gone to support some
conservation-based initiatives, the amount
disbursed is minimal when considering the total
nancial ows invested in Indonesian landscapes.
Yet increasingly, government attempts to regulate
agricultural expansion (particularly oil palm
plantation in peatlands), as well as market changes,
are increasing the regulatory and nancial risks of
loans to agriculture, particularly for banks exposed to
upstream production risks [33]. This is exacerbated by
land conicts between companies and indigenous,
often local marginalized, populations who typically
lack secure tenure rights [34, 35]. Paradoxically, many
companies have preferred to establish their oil palm
plantations in peatlands and forests due to the
reduced likelihood of experiencing land conicts,
and the opportunity to recuperate plantation
establishment costs through timber extraction [36].
Potential and limits of dierent
jurisdictional approaches
Corporate sustainability initiatives and government
actions interact in dierent ways when trying to
address zero deforestation and LED strategies. We
argue that three types of interactions are likely to
occur in landscapes: 1) co-existence between
private sustainability interventions and government
actions in sub-national jurisdictions, with relative
independence from one another; 2) alignment
between voluntary sustainability initiatives, including
NGOs interventions and government actions, in order
to achieve shared social, economic and environmental
Pablo Pacheco, Otto Hospes and Ahmad Dermawan 5
goals; and 3)orchestration of hybrid public and
private mechanisms and incentives, to accelerate
the transition to more sustainable landscapes and
manage trade-os, to achieve social, economic and
environmental objectives. These three options do not
necessarily represent clear-cut situations, and there
can be overlaps among them.
Below we describe in more detail each of these
options, and then explore their likely eectiveness
in terms of addressing the social and environmental
sustainability challenges identied in the previous
section. We then look at the potential and limitations
of these three jurisdictional-based approaches.
Co-existence between private sustainability
standards and government action: this is the most
likely basic model in jurisdictional initiatives, which
consists of company initiatives co-existing with sub-
national government actions, but with little interaction
between the two, despite the fact that both may
be working towards the same objectives. In several
sub-national jurisdictions, companies are putting in
place systems to trace their sourcing, and monitor
supplier performance, but they are disconnected
from any government actions. In turn, sub-national
governments continue their own strategies to
develop plantations, protect peatlands, support
conservation forests, but do so in relative isolation
from private sector commitments in their jurisdictions.
This means that both government and private actors
each progress at their own pace; the actions of each
not necessarily aecting performance of the other.
Equally, the primary decision-making authority may
not be at sub-national level; targets tend to be set up
independently, either by a company manager or by
government ocials, with a lack of multi-stakeholder
dialogue platforms at jurisdictional level.
Alignment between voluntary sustainability
initiatives and government action: this often takes
place when companies, at the time of implementing
their commitments, recognize the limitations of their
own actions, and realize the need for coordination.
The need to reduce encroachment or the incidence
of forest res in company concessions, for example,
calls for government action on land planning and
tenure registration. Equally, when companies face the
need to upgrade smallholder production practices,
this calls for government action on more eective
agricultural extension services. Governments may
equally need companies to assist by not purchasing
produce originating from illegally encroached public
lands, or other additional measures to help in law
enforcement that could reduce external investor
risks. In such cases, coordination works through
more formalized channels, built into sub-national
government decision-making systems, with some
authority held by companies’ local managers. In several
cases, NGO projects tend to bridge the gap between
company managers, public ocials, and civil society
organizations, as well as help to operationalize their
commitments.
Orchestration of hybrid public and private
mechanisms and incentives: this may imply a
dierent range of actions, including: agreeing on
planning processes and common targets (e.g.
through participatory planning); deciding on shared
mechanisms to ensure sustainable produce (e.g.
joint or complementary production standards);
providing private incentives for protection of
environmental public goods (e.g. traceability systems
with compensation for good performance); providing
nance under mechanisms that share costs and risks
(e.g. blended funds); and joint monitoring frameworks
to measure progress at jurisdictional level. Many
of these incentives and instruments, however, are
designed by authorities above the jurisdictions. In
these cases, orchestration at sub-national jurisdictional
level is needed for eective implementation,
enforcement and monitoring, in ways that satisfy
the interests of dierent stakeholders, and not only
those of the most powerful players. This may also
involve mechanisms for expanding social investments
that compensate more marginalized groups when
conserving natural infrastructure, while at the same
time extending their access to energy, and other social
infrastructure (health and education), initiatives which
private investments are often not interested in.
How eective are the dierent systems in addressing
sustainability challenges? This question likely requires
empirical evidence if it is to be answered well. Yet,
achieving the objectives of zero deforestation and
LED strategies will no doubt depend on how far
government commitments go in embracing low
emission development goals that entail social inclusion
targets, as much as it will also depend on private
initiatives moving beyond the connes of their own
plantations, supply chains and suppliers.
The option of co-existence is likely to be most
ecient for companies interested in cleaning their
supply chains (e.g. palm oil), as they can move
ahead in implementing their traceability and the
risk management systems of their main second and
third-party suppliers. However, this option may not
necessarily help to improve the sustainability of
smallholder farming systems in the long run, nor to
reduce conicts with local populations or diminish
territorial risk linked to poor law compliance. That is,
unless companies make investments to upgrade their
supply chain through more meaningful involvement
of smallholders, however this may be costly if
sub-national governments do not invest in service
Zero deforestation and low emissions development
6
provision. The attraction of this option, however, is
that it involves lower transaction costs, makes impact
accounting simpler, and reduces dependence on
government and NGO actions.
The option of alignment may help to design and
implement mechanisms that better share the costs
involved in halting deforestation, through supporting
uptake of better management practices in protable
crops (e.g. palm oil), providing incentives for good
environmental performance linked to the use of agreed
sustainability standards (e.g. RSPO, ISPO), and reducing
the social impacts of agricultural expansion by
protecting local people’s rights. Yet, alignment will likely
have a limited impact on moving towards sustainability
beyond a few commodity crops that generate higher
economic value in the landscape. In a few cases where
companies are interested in building local alternative
livelihoods, alignment could lead to exploring new
business opportunities.
The option of orchestration may oer larger potential
to accelerate impacts in some specic value chains,
but it also entails higher short-term transaction costs.
It does, however, have the potential to trigger public
and private action in specic jurisdictions - and
beyond - towards more integrated approaches that cut
across diverse supply chains. As such, it may allow for a
move beyond supply chains yielding higher short-term
economic benets, to instead look for more integrated
ways to support diversied farming systems. It may
also facilitate implementation of nancial schemes
supporting nature-based business options that are
not triggered by demand-driven value chains, but that
are instead based on the capabilities of smallholders
or indigenous people. The latter, however, implies the
risk of additional institutional confusion and further
transaction costs that public and private actors will
likely not be willingto pay for.
The main limitations of the jurisdictional approach are
operational. When examining the integrated landscape
approach experiences on which the jurisdictional
approach built, there is reluctance among individuals,
companies and other organizations to operate outside
of their regular realms of operation and expertise,
and thus undertake collaborative action to achieve
common goals. Equally, connecting dierent economic
sectors and diverse societal demands has proven
dicult [19]. Improvements in one landscape can lead
to leakage from well-performing jurisdictions to poor
ones which face less pressure to uptake sustainability
practices [11]. In spite of such limitations, jurisdictional
approaches have considerable potential to meet
social and environmental objectives at sub-national
level, while aiding national government eorts, and
transnational corporate initiatives to address ongoing
global challenges.
Concluding remarks
When it comes to harnessing the benets of both supply
chain governance and landscape governance in order
to meet zero deforestation and LED challenges, the
potential and limitations of a jurisdictional approach
are still open questions in need of empirical answers.
We believe their potential depends on the specic
interactions established between voluntary private
initiatives and government actions. Currently, building a
jurisdictional approach that combines vertical value chain
interventions with horizontal landscape governance
is an aspirational target, loaded with expectations on
likely eectiveness. We suggest that a situation of simple
co-existence between public and private actions may
lead to achieving zero deforestation, but it may not
necessarily lead to achieving LED, and is even less likely
to achieve more ambitious sustainability goals. The
latter may require greater alignment and orchestration
eorts, in order to complement more actively public
and private interventions. This could add negotiation
and transactions costs, with long-term benets that may
not compensate for short-term costs, although dierent
actors may balance costs and benets in dierent
ways. Therefore, it is important that processes aiming
to build jurisdictional initiatives on zero deforestation
and LED consider closely the aspirations of all
stakeholdersinvolved.
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Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)
CIFOR advances human well-being, equity and environmental integrity by conducting innovative research, developing
partners’ capacity, and actively engaging in dialogue with all stakeholders to inform policies and practices that aect forests
and people. CIFOR is a CGIAR Research Center, and leads the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry
(FTA). Our headquarters are in Bogor, Indonesia, with oces in Nairobi, Kenya, Yaounde, Cameroon, and Lima, Peru.
The CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA) is the world’s largest research
for development program to enhance the role of forests, trees and agroforestry in sustainable
development and food security and to address climate change. CIFOR leads FTA in partnership
with Bioversity International, CATIE, CIRAD, ICRAF, INBAR and TBI.
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... Deforestation of humid forests is associated with commodity crops -including highvalue tree crops such as cocoa, oil palm and rubber (Rice and Greenberg 2010; Pacheco et al. 2017;Austin et al. 2017;Grogan et al. 2019;Warren-Thomas et al. 2018) -and pasture expansion for beef production, which led to extensive deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon The processes through which land-use change and deforestation occur are specific to each landscape where commercial agriculture is expanding, although some patterns can be identified. ...
... Initial emphasis was placed at the production level -such as High Carbon Stock (HCS) and High Conservation Value (HCV) standardsfollowed by efforts to constrain expansion in a specific biome -e.g. soy moratorium in Brazil (Gibbs et al, 2015) -and the peatland moratorium in Indonesia (Pacheco et al. 2017b). Recent pledges on zero deforestation have become prominent and have been followed by frameworks providing guidance to companies on implementation, notably the Accountability Framework developed on the basis of extensive consultations and involving ...
... The growing complexity in the governance of commodity supplies, due to the emergence of transnational regimes shaped by national and sub-national policy regulations, has raised concerns about the effectiveness versus legitimacy of the institutional arrangements being put in place (Pacheco et al. 2017b). ...
... Interactions between private and public sector in the context of a frontier landscape can be framed as co-existence, alignment and orchestration (Pacheco et al., 2017a). The latter refers to hybrid mechanisms that involve both private and public sectors to trigger landscape transitions that aim at minimizing trade-offs between conservation and production (Pacheco et al., 2017a). ...
... Interactions between private and public sector in the context of a frontier landscape can be framed as co-existence, alignment and orchestration (Pacheco et al., 2017a). The latter refers to hybrid mechanisms that involve both private and public sectors to trigger landscape transitions that aim at minimizing trade-offs between conservation and production (Pacheco et al., 2017a). In Paragominas, important steps towards co-existence and alignment were taken during the Green Municipality initiative and therefore, next steps towards orchestration should be investigated, aiming at preserving the region's natural capital. ...
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Forest conservation on privately owned lands is a cornerstone of the Brazilian environmental policy framework. Brazilian legislation requires that all farms in the country maintain and protect forest areas known as Legal Reserves. Since Legal Reserves have major implications for forest conservation and agricultural production, it is key that we understand landholders' perceptions towards Legal Reserves. We applied Q methodology to identify different perspectives of medium and large landholders on Legal Reserves and their relation to agricultural intensification in the municipality of Paragominas, eastern Amazon. We conducted 31 interviews in which landholders sorted 36 statements in a quasi-normal distribution array. Three groups of landholders were identified: 1) Land use planning enthusiasts (n = 16) were interested in zoning initiatives to explore alternative landscape designs and legislation that may deliver better conservation and production outcomes; 2) Agrochemical-based agriculture supporters (n = 7) held the most critical views against Legal Reserves and perceived their costs as higher than the potential environmental and life quality benefits; 3) Policy complacent-market responders (n = 4) showed no interest in Legal Reserves reforms and were the most market driven group.. While Paragominas has achieved notable successes in halting large-scale deforestation through a social “Green Municipality” pact, addressing persisting forest degradation and fragmentation in the region remains a key priority. Local governance initiatives that account for multi-stakeholder perceptions on forest conservation can foster dialogue and mutual understanding to effectively conserve and restore Legal Reserves. Insights on large landholders' perceptions on Legal Reserves can inform such governance processes to reconcile forest conservation and sustainable agricultural intensification in Paragominas.
... We analyze the landscape at the lower jurisdictional level (i.e., municipality), in order to integrate multi-scale demands and local governance to manage potential trade-offs between conservation and development. Jurisdictional approach is a term recently coined to indicate a landscape governance that seeks common goals among government, community stakeholders and businesses (Pacheco et al., 2017). In the Amazonian context, this approach refers specifically to greening commodity chains and complying with zero-deforestation policies. ...
... These could potentially counter the "artificialization" of the landscape in Paragominas and move toward more endogenous landscape systems that are better at fulfilling the demands for ecosystem services in a way that is both ecologically and economically sustainable. One of the main challenges in this regard is to make the jurisdictional approach operational to attain landscape governance given the diversity of scales, actors, and demands (Pacheco et al., 2017). What are the options within conventional, resource-intensive agriculture to introduce spatial changes oriented toward the transition of food systems? ...
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Sustainable food production requires approaches that reconcile agricultural production with the conservation and sustainable use of natural resources, biodiversity and associated ecosystem services. While the contribution of agriculture to the provision of individual ecosystem services has received considerable scientific attention, little is known about the extent to which tropical landscapes can meet societal expectations related to food production and environmental sustainability simultaneously. We assessed how the spatial configuration of pedo-morphology and land uses influences the provision of three soil-based ecosystem services in eastern Amazonia: carbon storage (CS), habitat for biodiversity (HB), and agricultural commodity production (CP). We use the Functional Land Management framework to assess the supply and demand of these ecosystem services in a spatially explicit manner to identify areas of (mis)matches and trade-offs in the municipality of Paragominas, Brazil. The supply of ecosystem services was informed by a literature review for the various combinations of pedo-morphological characteristics and land uses in the region. The demand for ecosystem services was mapped based on federal and state policy targets. Mapping the supply and demand of CS indicated that half of the carbon in the region is stored in remnants of undisturbed forest which cover only a third of the municipality. Demand for HB in terms of forested area is met but it does not guarantee safeguarding biodiversity. Roughly a third of the territory shows scarce quality of HB even when compliant with legislation. Concerning CP, we identified areas where both supply and the demand to increase production are relative high due to road access and lower intensification costs. The demand for agricultural production can eventually incentivize the expansion of agriculture on fertile soils, which could compromise environmental targets. Our results suggest that the simultaneous delivery of multiple ecosystem services may require land-use pathways that combine land sparing and sharing approaches. Our analysis can inform integrated land-use planning initiatives where, historically, the supply and demand for CP have been the single dominant driver for the current landscape configuration.
... The voluntary certification scheme developed under the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO)-a multistakeholder platform led by non-state actors-and corporate commitments to zero deforestation are examples of highly influential private regulations that aim to enhance the sector's sustainability in which public regulation plays virtually no role (Garrett, Levy, Carlson, Gardner, Godar, Clapp, & Villoria, 2019;Nesadurai, 2018). Moreover, consumer country initiatives such as the European Union Renewable Energy Directive (EU-RED) and public procurement policies have emerged as influential demand-side strategies, developed without significant producer government involvement or endorsement (Jopke & Schoneveld, 2018;Pacheco, Hospes, & Dermawan, 2017). ...
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Due to its controversies, oil palm cultivation has been targeted by regulatory innovations. Among these, transnational efforts-such as the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and corporate commitments to zero deforestation have been highly influential but often tend to overvalue environmental over socioeconomic outcomes. This article discusses to what extent domestic governance models of palm oil producing countries can be better equipped to reconcile domestic demands such as economic development and poverty alleviation, and transnational concerns about forest conservation. We do so by looking into the Brazilian case, where the government intended to drive oil palm expansion in the Amazon through a program launched in 2010 that simultaneously only allowed expansion into already deforested areas and offered companies incentives to engage smallholder farmers in their supply chains. Our findings , drawn from primary research activities and existing literature, indicate that Brazil has managed to avoid deforestation typically associated with oil palm expansion elsewhere. Oil palm establishment involved the conversion of 0.8% and 1.3% of primary forests for corporate and smallholder plantations, respectively. However, the Brazilian government did not manage to optimally enhance smallholder participation in the sector, as significant differences in performance were observed between farmers, ranging from very successful (17%) to highly unsuccessful (12%); and failed to achieve sectoral development and competitiveness targets. While some failings can be attributed to external factors such as context, broader domestic governance frameworks and alignments, and private supply chain initiatives, the program itself did not manage to reconcile social, environmental and economic objectives into a single coherent sectoral governance model. Yet, this case study suggests that domestic governance strategies can enable commodity production in a way that is more coherent with national priorities, at the same time as preventing deforestation and minimizing social risks more effectively. Ó 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
... However, both the public and the private sectors are critical in enabling smallholders to access stable and competitive markets (Brown & Sander, 2007;Guariguata et al., 2017;Markelova et al., 2009;Pacheco et al., 2017). ...
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... Recently, work in the policy and academic literature suggests jurisdictional approaches might be an effective means of addressing environmental certification's shortcomings, particularly for transnationally traded deforestation-linked commodities (Boyd et al., 2018;Newton and Benzeev, 2018;Pacheco et al., 2017;Umunay et al., 2018). Table 1 Logistic regression models predicting Australian wineries' and vineyards' membership in Entwine. ...
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... HCVAs at landscape scales and facilitate cooperation between neighbouring RSPO member plantations. However, jurisdictional approaches including designation of HCVAs across districts or states (Pacheco, Hospes, & Dermawan, 2017) may be needed to fully realize the potential for linking HCVAs with forest outside the focal plantation. We conclude that improvements to the RSPO standard will likely improve the connectivity benefits of ...
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Poverty, food insecurity, climate change and biodiversity loss continue to persist as the primary environmental and social challenges faced by the global community. As such, there is a growing acknowledgement that conventional sectorial approaches to addressing often inter-connected social, environmental, economic, and political challenges are proving insufficient. An alternative is to focus on integrated solutions at landscape-scales, or "landscape approaches". The appeal of landscape approaches has resulted in the production of a significant body of literature in recent decades, yet confusion over terminology, application and utility persists. Focusing on the tropics, we systematically reviewed the literature to: 1) disentangle the historical development and theory behind the framework of the landscape approach and how it has progressed into its current iteration, 2) establish lessons learned from previous land management strategies, 3) determine the barriers that currently restrict implementation of the landscape approach and 4) provide recommendations for how the landscape approach can contribute towards the fulfilment of the goals of international policy processes. This review suggests that, despite some barriers to implementation, a landscape approach has considerable potential to meet social and environmental objectives at local scales while aiding national commitments to addressing ongoing global challenges. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
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Developing and institutionalizing cross-sectoral approaches to sustainable land use remains a crucial, yet politically contested, objective in global sustainability governance. There is a widely acknowledged need for more integrated approaches to sustainable land use that reconcile multiple landscape functions, sectors and stakeholders. However, this faces a number of challenges in practice, including the lack of policy coherence and institutional conflicts across agricultural and forest sectors. In this context, the global climate change mitigation mechanism of “reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation” (REDD+) has been flagged as a unique opportunity to stimulate the development and institutionalization of more integrated, “landscape” approaches to sustainable land use. In this article, we provide a reality check for the prospects of REDD+ to deliver on this promise, through analyzing three pioneer cases of REDD+ development and implementation in Brazil, Ecuador, and Mexico. We analyze how REDD+ has operated in each of these three contexts, based on field work, key-informant interviews, and analysis of primary and secondary documents. Our findings suggest that REDD+ has stimulated development of “niche” sustainable land-use investments in each case, which aim to integrate forest conservation and agricultural development goals, but has done so while competing with business-as-usual incentives. We conclude that national and international political commitment to more integrated and sustainable land-use approaches is a precondition for, rather than a result of, transformative REDD+ interventions.