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Abstract Private lands are important for conservation worldwide, but knowledge about their effectiveness is still insufficient. To help fill this important knowledge gap, we analyzed the impacts of a national policy for conservation on private lands in Brazil, a global biodiversity hotspot with high potential for nature-based climate solutions. Through the evaluation of over 4 million private rural properties from the Rural Environmental Cadastre, we found that the last policy review in 2012 mainly affected the Amazon Forest. The amnesty granted to 80% of landowners of small properties prevented the restoration of 14.6 million hectares of agricultural land with a carbon sequestration potential of 2.4 gigatonnes. We found that private lands exist within the limits of public conservation areas and that between 2003 and 2020 deforestation rates in these private lands were higher than those across all conservation areas. The Rural Environmental Cadastre can be an effective tool for managing forests within private lands, with potential to integrate governance approaches to control deforestation and mitigate climate change. 

Over the last few years, understanding of the effects of increasingly interconnected global flows of agricultural commodities on coupled human and natural systems has significantly improved. However, many important factors in environmental change that are influenced by these commodity flows are still not well understood. Here, we present an empirical spatial modelling approach to assess how changes in forest cover are influenced by trade destination. Using data for soybean-producing municipalities in the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil, between 2004 and 2017, we evaluated the relationships between forest cover change and the annual soybean trade destination. Results show that although most of the soybean produced in Mato Grosso during the study period (60%) was destined for international markets, municipalities with greater and more consistent soybean production not destined for international markets during the study period were more strongly associated with deforestation. In these municipalities, soybean production was also significantly correlated with cattle and pasture expansion. These results have important implications for the sustainable management of natural resources in the face of an increasingly interconnected world, while also helping to identify the most suitable locations for implementing policies to reduce deforestation risks.

 

The world has entered the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021–2030), yet many regions of the world still face environmental degradation. In this context a question arises: under what conditions may a given region shift from a trajectory of environmental degradation to environmental recovery? Answering this question constitutes an important endeavor for the scientific community, policymakers, and organizations leading the planning and implementation of restoration projects. This study examines some of the human-environment conditions underpinning the net gains in natural forest cover in a region that has experienced environmental degradation: the Atlantic Forest biome, Brazil. Using land-use/cover (LULC) data, we assessed the loss and successive gain in forest cover during the 1987–2001 and 2001–2015 periods. Municipality-level statistics on agriculture and economy, together with LULC and biophysical data, were used to develop models for assessing forest cover trajectories. Of the 1,972 municipalities experiencing net forest loss during the 1987–2001 period, 59% shifted their trajectory to a net gain during the 2001–2015 period. This shift, known as forest transition, followed a complex socio-economic pathway characterized by (i) the stagnation of traditional agricultural activities favoring the replacement of pasturelands by mechanized agriculture, and (ii) the emergence of non-agricultural rural activities together with multifunctional landscapes. Furthermore, a trend of decrease in precipitation seems to be associated with land abandonment, thus, favoring the return of natural vegetation. Our findings suggest that forest transition at the biome level is possible if environmental and land regulations take advantage of specific context-dependent situations that foster net forest gains. 

Numerous narrow marine passages around the world serve as essential gateways for the transportation of goods, the movement of people, and the migration of fish and wildlife. These global gateways facilitate human–nature interactions across distant regions. The socioeconomic and environmental interactions among distant coupled human and natural systems affect the sustainability of global gateways in complex ways. However, the assessment and analysis of global gateways are scattered and fragmented. To fill this knowledge gap, we frame global gateways as telecoupled human and natural systems using an emerging global gateway, the Bering Strait, as a demonstration. We examine how three telecoupling processes (tourism, vessel traffic, and natural resource development) impact and are impacted by the coupled human and natural system of the Bering Strait Region. Given that global gateways share many similarities, our analysis of the Bering Strait Region provides a foundation for the assessment of other telecoupled global gateways.

 

Human–environment interactions within and across borders are now more influential than ever, posing unprecedented sustainability challenges. The framework of metacoupling (interactions within and across adjacent and distant coupled human–environment systems) provides a useful tool to evaluate them at diverse temporal and spatial scales. While most metacoupling studies have so far addressed the impacts of distant interactions (telecouplings), few have addressed the complementary and interdependent effects of the interactions within coupled systems (intracouplings) and between adjacent systems (pericouplings). Using the production and trade of a major commodity (soybean) as a demonstration, this paper empirically evaluates the complex effects on deforestation and economic growth across a globally important soybean producing region (Mato Grosso in Brazil). Although this region is influenced by a strong telecoupling process (i.e., soybean trade with national and international markets), intracouplings pose significant effects on deforestation and economic growth within focal municipalities. Furthermore, it generates pericoupling effects (e.g., deforestation) on adjacent municipalities, which precede economic benefits on adjacent systems, and may occur during and after the soybean production takes place. These results show that while economic benefits of the production of agricultural commodities for global markets tend to be localized, their environmental costs tend to be spatially widespread. As deforestation also occurred in adjacent areas beyond focal areas with economic development, this study has significant implications for sustainability in an increasingly metacoupled world.