Transforming land use governance: Global targets without equity miss the mark

Abstract

A confluence of concerns about tropical forest loss, global warming, and social inequality drive calls to transform land use governance. Yet there is widespread debate about what must be transformed, by whom, and how. The increasing equation of transformation with ambitious, quantitative global targets, such as "net zero emissions" or "zero deforestation" has gained widespread appeal as a means to inspire action and hold powerful actors to account. However presenting targets themselves as the end goals of transformation, obscures both the means of achieving them and the social and environmental values that legitimate them. The escalation of targets for land use, in particular, is disconnected from targeted geographies, lacks accountability to socially diverse knowledge and priorities, and is readily appropriated by powerful actors at multiple scales. This paper argues instead, for an equity-based approach to transformation that reveals how unequal power distorts both the ends and the means of global governance. We illustrate this argument with five case-study "vignettes" in Indonesia, Ghana, Peru, and Brazil that reveal how de-contextualized, target-based thinking has reinforced state and corporate control over resources at the expense of local access, while largely failing to deliver the promised environmental outcomes. We conclude that equity-focused, case study research is critical not only to unpack the local consequences of pursuing global targets, but also to make visible alternative efforts to achieve deeper socio-environmental transformations.

How well does the implementation of corporate zero-deforestation commitments in Indonesia align with aims to halt deforestation and include smallholders?

“…Yet, only 65% of firms have good policies and support for inclusion of independent smallholders. This challenge is consistent with previous research that highlights the difficulties companies encounter when synchronizing their commitments with their operations and when managing suppliers, particularly smallholders [16,17,62]. Improving smallholders' capacity to comply with stringent ZDCs may also prevent the risk of deforestation driven by more informal actors [16].…”

Projecting global oil palm expansion under zero-deforestation commitments: Direct and indirect land use change impacts

“…For example, smallholder farmers may be unable to comply with deforestation-free certification schemes such as the Roundtable of Sustainable Palm Oil by virtue of the high costs involved in certification audits, lack of awareness of ZDCs, or unclear land tenure. 31 , 32 , 33 Such concerns of distributive equity could be mitigated if ZDCs are accompanied by differentiated and locally targeted capacity-building measures. These could include financial support schemes, knowledge dissemination activities, and coordination efforts with other policy-making actors (private and public) to enhance the inclusivity of policies and to exploit synergies between ZDCs and equity.…”

From hegemony-reinforcing to hegemony-transcending transformations: horizons of possibility and strategies of escape

“…Whilst there is a diversity of approaches associated with eco-modernism, market-based and socio-technical solutions, a substantial body of literature asserts that such proposals based on ecomodernism perpetuate the same old hegemonic approaches to global governance with minor, incremental, or aesthetic changes (Feola 2015;Holmgren et al 2022;Vogelphl 2023). The current fixation on numerical targets such as net zero deforestation and net zero emissions reveals their level of embracement in international environmental governance spheres (McDermott et al 2022) and landscape restoration (Schultz et al 2022). Dominant political logics embedded within these approaches are those of efficiency, competition, innovations, economic growth, and market superiority.…”