Land Cover Change under Future Scenarios of Zero-deforestation Commitment Implementation in South America

Abstract

Public alarm over deforestation from tropical commodity crop expansion has led many corporations that handle such commodities to adopt zero-deforestation commitments (ZDCs), which are pledges to stop sourcing products produced on recently deforested or currently forested lands. Most ZDCs have yet to be implemented and vary in their implementation details including forest clearance cut-off date and off-limit land covers. Moreover, region- or supply-chain specific ZDCs may simply displace deforestation to areas not covered by commitments through market or activity leakage. My research aims to investigate the effect of ZDCs on tropical land cover by addressing the following questions: 1) How might ZDC implementation affect geospatial patterns of soy expansion? 2) How do changes in soy expansion patterns alter locations and patterns of non-soy land cover change? 3) How does ZDC implementation date affect these outcomes? To answer these questions, I built a land cover change model that simulates corporate ZDC implementation in soy producing regions in South America from 20142030. I evaluated land cover outcomes under several future scenarios, including no ZDC implementation, fulfillment of currently pledged ZDCs, earlier implementation of these current pledges, and a moratorium on soy expansion into natural land covers the Cerrado and Gran Chaco ecoregions. In contrast to a future with no ZDCs, the 2025 ZDC scenario reduced natural land cover conversion by 3.2% while maintaining projected soy area growth, despite some displacement of natural land conversion from the Cerrado and Chaco to the Brazilian Amazon and Argentinian Pampas. Compared to the 2025 ZDC scenario, early implementation of ZDC pledges (by 2020) resulted in conservation of an additional 357,000 ha (6.7%) of natural land cover in BBAP by 2030, while the Cerrado and Gran Chaco moratorium generated just 35,000 ha (0.6%) of additional conservation. These findings suggest that ZDCs may generate net preservation of natural land cover despite intra-country displacement. Earlier ZDC implementation appears to be far more effective at conserving natural land cover than increasing ZDC market share in later years.