Abstract
Analysing the drivers of deforestation and forest degradation in conservation landscapes can provide crucial information for conservation management. While rates of forest loss can be measured through remote sensing, on the ground information is needed to confirm the commodities and actors behind deforestation. We administered a questionnaire to Wildlife Conservation Society’s landscape managers to assess the deforestation drivers in 28 tropical conservation landscapes. Commercial and subsistence agriculture were the main drivers of deforestation, followed by settlement expansion and infrastructure development. Rice, rubber, cassava and maize were the crops most frequently cited as drivers of deforestation in these emblematic conservation landscapes. Landscape managers expected deforestation trends to continue at similar or greater magnitude in the future, calling for urgent measures to mitigate these trends.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Ahrends, A., P.M. Hollingsworth, A.D. Ziegler, J.M. Fox, H. Chen, Y. Su, and J. Xu. 2015. Current trends of rubber plantation expansion may threaten biodiversity and livelihoods. Global Environmental Change 34: 48–58. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2015.06.002.
Armenteras, D., J.M. Espelta, N. Rodríguez, and J. Retana. 2017. Deforestation dynamics and drivers in different forest types in Latin America: Three decades of studies (1980–2010). Global Environmental Change 46: 139–147. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2017.09.002.
Austin, K.G., A. Mosnier, J. Pirker, I. McCallum, S. Fritz, and P.S. Kasibhatla. 2017. Shifting patterns of oil palm driven deforestation in Indonesia and implications for zero-deforestation commitments. Land Use Policy 69: 41–48. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2017.08.036.
Barber, C.P., M.A. Cochrane, C.M. Souza, and W.F. Laurance. 2014. Roads, deforestation, and the mitigating effect of protected areas in the Amazon. Biological Conservation 177: 203–209. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2014.07.004.
Barbier, E.B., J.C. Burgess, and A. Grainger. 2010. The forest transition: Towards a more comprehensive theoretical framework. Land Use Policy 27: 98–107. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2009.02.001.
Barlow, J., G.D. Lennox, J. Ferreira, E. Berenguer, A.C. Lees, R. Mac Nally, J.R. Thomson, S.F.D.B. Ferraz, et al. 2016. Anthropogenic disturbance in tropical forests can double biodiversity loss from deforestation. Nature 535: 144–147. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature18326.
Bennett-Curry, A., Y. Malhi, and M. Menton. 2013. Leakage effects in natural resource supply chains: A case study from the Peruvian commercial charcoal market. International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology 20: 336–348. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504509.2013.804892.
Carrasco, L.R., E.L. Webb, W.S. Symes, L.P. Koh, and N.S. Sodhi. 2017. Global economic trade-offs between wild nature and tropical agriculture. PLoS Biology 15: 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2001657.
Carter, S., M. Herold, V. Avitabile, S. De Bruin, V. De Sy, L. Kooistra, and M.C. Rufino. 2018. Agriculture-driven deforestation in the tropics from 1990-2015: Emissions, trends and uncertainties. Environmental Research Letters 13: 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aa9ea4.
Dang, D.K.D., A.C. Patterson, and L.R. Carrasco. 2019. An analysis of the spatial association between deforestation and agricultural field sizes in the tropics and subtropics. PLoS ONE 14: 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0209918.
De Alban, J.D.T., G.M. Connette, P. Oswald, and E.L. Webb. 2018. Combined Landsat and L-band SAR data improves land cover classification and change detection in dynamic tropical landscapes. Remote Sensing 10: 306. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10020306.
De Sy, V., M. Herold, F. Achard, R. Beuchle, J.G.P.W. Clevers, E.L. And, and L. Verchot. 2015. Land use patterns and related carbon losses following deforestation in South America. Environmental Research Letters 10: 124004. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/10/12/124004.
FAO. 2015. Global forest resources assessment 2015 desk reference. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
Finer, M., and S. Novoa. 2015. MAAP Synthesis # 1: Patterns and Drivers of Deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon We present a preliminary analysis of current patterns and drivers of deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon. This analysis is.
Folke, C., H. Österblom, J. Jouffray, E.F. Lambin, W.N. Adger, M. Scheffer, B.I. Crona, M. Nyström, et al. 2019. Transnational corporations and the challenge of biosphere stewardship. Nature Ecology and Evolution. 3: 1396–1403. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-019-0978-z.
Geist, H.J., and E.F. Lambin. 2002. Proximate causes and underlying driving forces of tropical deforestation. BioScience 52: 143–150. https://doi.org/10.1641/0006-3568(2002)052%5b0143:pcaudf%5d2.0.co;2.
Gibbs, H.K. 2010. Gesundheitliche beeinträchtigung durch häusliche schimmelpilzbelastungen. PNAS 107: 16732–16737. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0910275107.
Gibson, L., T.M. Lee, L.P. Koh, B.W. Brook, T.A. Gardner, J. Barlow, C.A. Peres, C.J.A. Bradshaw, et al. 2011. Primary forests are irreplaceable for sustaining tropical biodiversity. Nature 478: 378–381. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10425.
Global Canopy. 2018. Retrieved 20 September, 2018 from https://www.globalcanopy.org/what-we-do/supply-chains/trase.
Godar, J., T.A. Gardner, E.J. Tizado, and P. Pacheco. 2015. Correction for Godar et al., Actor-specific contributions to the deforestation slowdown in the Brazilian Amazon. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112: E3089–E3089. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1508418112.
Gunarso, P., F. Agus, B. H. Sahardjo, N. Harris, M. Van Noordwijk, and T. J. Killeen. 2013. Historical Co2 emissions from land use and land use change from the oil palm industry in Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea. Reports from the Technical Panels of the 2 nd Greenhouse Gas Working Group of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), 65–88 pp. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijpo.12051.
Hansen, M.C., P.V. Potapov, R. Moore, M. Hancher, S.A. Turubanova, A. Tyukavina, D. Thau, S.V. Stehman, et al. 2013. High-resolution global maps of 21st-century forest cover change. Science 342: 850–853. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1244693.
Henders, S., M. Ostwald, V. Verendel, and P. Ibisch. 2018. Do national strategies under the UN biodiversity and climate conventions address agricultural commodity consumption as deforestation driver? Land Use Policy 70: 580–590. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2017.10.043.
Houghton, R.A. 2012. Carbon emissions and the drivers of deforestation and forest degradation in the tropics. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 4: 597–603. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2012.06.006.
Jones, K.R., O. Venter, R.A. Fuller, J.R. Allan, S.L. Maxwell, P.J. Negret, and J.E.M. Watson. 2018. One-third of global protected land is under intense human pressure. Science 360: 788–791. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aap9565.
Kissinger, G., M. Herold, and V. De Sy. 2012. Drivers of Deforestation and Forest Degradation. A synthesis report for REDD + Policymakers. 48. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2010.01.001.
Laurance, W.F. 2012. Condición física, adiposidad y autoconcepto en adolescentes. Estudio piloto. Revista de Psicologia del Deporte 22: 453–461. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature11318.
Laurance, W.F., A. Peletier-Jellema, B. Geenen, H. Koster, P. Verweij, P. Van Dijck, T.E. Lovejoy, J. Schleicher, et al. 2015. Reducing the global environmental impacts of rapid infrastructure expansion. Current Biology 25: R259–R262. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2015.02.050.
Laurance, W.F., J. Sayer, and K.G. Cassman. 2014. Agricultural expansion and its impacts on tropical nature. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 29: 107–116. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2013.12.001.
Lawrence, D., and K. Vandecar. 2015. Effects of tropical deforestation on climate and agriculture. Nature Climate Change 5: 27–36. https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2430.
Lee, J.S.H., S. Abood, J. Ghazoul, B. Barus, K. Obidzinski, and L.P. Koh. 2014. Environmental impacts of large-scale oil palm enterprises exceed that of smallholdings in Indonesia. Conservation Letters 7: 25–33. https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12039.
Lewis, S.L., D.P. Edwards, and D. Galbraith. 2015. Increasing human dominance of tropical forests. Science 349: 827–832. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaa9932.
MacUra, B., L. Secco, and A.S. Pullin. 2015. What evidence exists on the impact of governance type on the conservation effectiveness of forest protected areas? Knowledge base and evidence gaps. Environmental Evidence 4: 24. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13750-015-0051-6.
Margono, B.A., P.V. Potapov, S. Turubanova, F. Stolle, and M.C. Hansen. 2014. Primary forest cover loss in indonesia over 2000–2012. Nature Climate Change 4: 730–735. https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2277.
Miettinen, J., D.L.A. Gaveau, and S.C. Liew. 2018. Comparison of visual and automated oil palm mapping in Borneo. International Journal of Remote Sensing 40: 8174–8185. https://doi.org/10.1080/01431161.2018.1479799.
Nelson, A., and K.M. Chomitz. 2011. Effectiveness of strict vs multiple use protected areas in reducing tropical forest fires: A global analysis using matching methods. PLoS ONE 6: e22722. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0022722.
Overbeck, G.E., E. Vélez-Martin, F.R. Scarano, T.M. Lewinsohn, C.R. Fonseca, S.T. Meyer, S.C. Müller, P. Ceotto, et al. 2015. Conservation in Brazil needs to include non-forest ecosystems. Diversity and Distributions 21: 1455–1460. https://doi.org/10.1111/ddi.12380.
Phumee, P., A. Pagdee, and J. Kawasaki. 2018. Energy crops, livelihoods, and legal deforestation: A case study at Phu Wiang National Park, Thailand. Journal of Sustainable Forestry 37: 120–138. https://doi.org/10.1080/10549811.2017.1318292.
R Core Team. 2017. R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. Retrieved from https://www.R-project.org/.
Ravikumar, A., R.R. Sears, P. Cronkleton, M. Menton, and M. Pérez-Ojeda del Arco. 2017. Is small-scale agriculture really the main driver of deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon? Moving beyond the prevailing narrative. Conservation Letters 10: 170–177. https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12264.
Robinson, B.E., Y.J. Masuda, A. Kelly, M.B. Holland, C. Bedford, M. Childress, D. Fletschner, E.T. Game, et al. 2018. Incorporating land tenure security into conservation. Conservation Letters 11: 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12383.
Ruf, F., G. Schroth, and K. Doffangui. 2015. Climate change, cocoa migrations and deforestation in West Africa: What does the past tell us about the future? Sustainability Science 10: 101–111. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-014-0282-4.
Spracklen, B.D., M. Kalamandeen, D. Galbraith, E. Gloor, and D.V. Spracklen. 2015. A global analysis of deforestation in moist tropical forest protected areas. PLoS ONE 10: 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0143886.
Stibig, H.J., F. Achard, S. Carboni, R. Raši, and J. Miettinen. 2014. Change in tropical forest cover of Southeast Asia from 1990 to 2010. Biogeosciences 11: 247–258. https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-11-247-2014.
Tegegne, Y.T., M. Lindner, K. Fobissie, and M. Kanninen. 2016. Evolution of drivers of deforestation and forest degradation in the Congo Basin forests: Exploring possible policy options to address forest loss. Land Use Policy 51: 312–324. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2015.11.024.
Tritsch, I., and F.M. Le Tourneau. 2016. Population densities and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon: New insights on the current human settlement patterns. Applied Geography 76: 163–172. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeog.2016.09.022.
UN Comtrade (United Nations) database, 2014–2017. 2018. Retrieved from https://comtrade.un.org/.
Vásquez-Grandón, A., P.J. Donoso, and V. Gerding. 2018. Forest degradation: When is a forest degraded? Forests 9: 1–13. https://doi.org/10.3390/f9110726.
Venter, O., E.W. Sanderson, A. Magrach, J.R. Allan, J. Beher, K.R. Jones, H.P. Possingham, W.F. Laurance, et al. 2016. Sixteen years of change in the global terrestrial human footprint and implications for biodiversity conservation. Nature Communications 7: 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms12558.
Warren-Thomas, E., P.M. Dolman, and D.P. Edwards. 2015. Increasing demand for natural rubber necessitates a robust sustainability initiative to mitigate impacts on tropical biodiversity. Conservation Letters 8: 230–241. https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12170.
Watson, J.E.M., N. Dudley, D.B. Segan, and M. Hockings. 2014. The performance and potential of protected areas. Nature 515: 67–73. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature13947.
Weiss, D.J., A. Nelson, H.S. Gibson, W. Temperley, S. Peedell, A. Lieber, M. Hancher, E. Poyart, et al. 2018. A global map of travel time to cities to assess inequalities in accessibility in 2015. Nature 553: 333–336. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature25181.
Woods, K. 2012. The political ecology of rubber production in Myanmar: An overview: 1–66.
World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA). 2018. Retrieved 20 June, 2018, from https://www.protectedplanet.net/c/world-database-on-protected-areas.
Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge the support received from the Wildlife Conservation Society for the surveys conducted. We would also like to thank the Department of Biological Sciences of the National University of Singapore and the Government of Singapore for providing the NUS-IRP scholarship.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Electronic supplementary material
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Jayathilake, H.M., Prescott, G.W., Carrasco, L.R. et al. Drivers of deforestation and degradation for 28 tropical conservation landscapes. Ambio 50, 215–228 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-020-01325-9
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-020-01325-9