Understanding deforestation lock-in: Insights from Land Reform settlements in the Brazilian Amazon

Abstract

Cropland and pasture expansion continues to erase natural ecosystems at a staggering speed globally, notably in the tropics. Conventional policy approaches, usually focused on a particular land-use change driver (e.g., specific commodities) or individual regulations (e.g., the Amazon Soy Moratorium), have consistently failed to achieve sufficient or sustained results. The swift reversal of Brazil’s earlier success in reducing Amazon deforestation – now again accelerated – offers perhaps the most sobering illustration of that. Therefore, this article draws from scholarship on sustainability transitions to propose a more comprehensive systems view of unsustainable land-use patterns. We examine persistent tropical deforestation as a case of “lock-in,” using a transitions lens, and explore its constitutive elements. As a case study, we analyze the situation of Land Reform settlements in the Brazilian Amazon, where as much as one-third of that biome’s deforestation takes place. While subject to some specific factors, those places are also enmeshed in a broader setting that is common across the Brazilian Amazon’s deforestation frontier (e.g., infrastructure conditions, market demands, and sociocultural norms). Drawing from document analysis of Brazilian policies and fieldwork in three Land Reform settlements in Pará State, we expose multiple forms of techno-economic, institutional, and socio-cognitive lock-in that together drive deforestation systemically in those settlements. These drivers form a strongly consolidated socio-technical regime around large-scale agriculture that includes material and immaterial factors (e.g., cultural ones), a regime that not only resists change but also – like a vortex – pulls others into it. Escaping deforestation lock-in may thus require outside forces to help local actors destabilize and eventually replace this unsustainable land-use regime. International zero-deforestation efforts offer a starting point, but a transition requires moving beyond piecemeal, incremental change or end-of-pipe approaches and toward concerted, strategic action that addresses multiple of those regime elements in a coordinated way to replace it as a system. We argue that understanding deforestation lock-in is vital for tackling its worrisome persistence and that sustainability transitions theory offers an illuminating, but still underutilized, framework to analyze and eventually overcome unsustainable land use.

Herbal Medicine Promotion for a Restorative Bioeconomy in Tropical Forests: A Reality Check on the Brazilian Amazon

“…As things stand, deforestation and forest degradation also remain unchecked. Strengthening sustainable livelihoods as an alternative to deforestation-based economies is critical to complement command-andcontrol public regulations or sustainable supply chain policies (Londres et al, 2023;Russo Lopes and Bastos Lima, 2022;Trancoso, 2021). However, to play that role herbal medicine promotion has to consider much more seriously the needs related to value chain development in addition to the dimension of healthcare access.…”

“…Unsustainable practices such as poaching, illegal logging, and wildcat mining have been rampant in regions such as the Amazon (Pereira and Gebara, 2022;Siqueira-Gay and Sánchez, 2021). Many resort to such actions for lack of economic alternatives, which sometimes are limited to environmentally degrading practices (Russo Lopes and Bastos Lima, 2022).…”

“…Initiatives E, G and I have accomplished such an inclusion, yet their representatives highlighted the accessibility challenges across the Amazon's immense physical distances. Commuting on its rivers can take several days, while during the dry season some communities cannot be reached at all by boat and become practically isolated (Interviews 2 and 3; see also Russo Lopes and Bastos Lima, 2022). These difficulties add to issues observed in the literature about losses of collected plant material exposed to heat, humidity, or being transported under poor hygiene conditions (Simonetti and Pereira, 2021).…”

Brazilian social challenges analyzed from the perspective of the field of sustainability transitions research

“…Observando os desafios sociais brasileiros abordados sob a ótica das categorias apresentadas na Figura 2, percebe-se uma ênfase em desafios socioecológicos, definidos como desafios sociais que emergem em sistemas naturais. Especialmente, a Amazônia foi abordada em cinco documentos (LOPES; LIMA, 2022;LIMA, 2021;RODE et al, 2019;MEEK, 2016;MAKIYA;FRAISSE, 2015).…”

Rethinking Agricultural Policy in Ecuador (1960–2020): Analysis Based on the Water–Energy–Food Security Nexus

“…In many countries, the state creates policies to support agricultural producers and contribute to food security [10]. Some came into being through agrarian reforms [11][12][13],…”