Project Detail |
Protecting South American high-nature-value forests
Agricultural expansion has long driven the alarming loss of tropical forests, triggering biodiversity decline and carbon emissions, and posing threats to forest-dependent communities. With the support of the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions programme, the FOREST-CHAINS project tackles critical knowledge gaps hindering deforestation prevention. In the uncharted realm of South American Chaco, an overlooked deforestation hotspot, the project will use cutting-edge remote sensing, impact evaluation and supply-chain analyses to identify high-nature-value forests. It will also evaluate conservation tools’ effectiveness and assess the environmental impact of domestic versus traded forest-risk commodities. By bridging these gaps, the project’s lead researcher will gain valuable skills and insights, benefiting sustainability science.
Agricultural expansion continues to drive the loss of tropical forests, resulting in huge social-ecological trade-offs, including biodiversity loss, carbon emissions, and the erosion of the resource base of forest-dependent communities. Halting deforestation has thus become a global policy goal but is currently hindered by four main knowledge gaps, all of which this action will address. First, not all tropical forests are equal, and many are degraded, but where remaining high-nature-value (HNV) forests are is often unknown. Second, many forest conservation tools are available, but their effectiveness in protecting HNV forests is unclear. Third, supply-chain interventions are potentially powerful, but missing supply-chain data limits their application. Finally, the relative importance of domestic vs. foreign consumption is often unknown. Focussing on the South American Chaco, an understudied global deforestation hotspot, this action will use state-of-the-art remote sensing, impact evaluation, and supply-chain analyses to provide the first assessments of the distribution of HNV forests in the Chaco, which policy options effectively protect them, and what the environmental footprints of domestically used vs. traded forest-risk commodities produced are. Through the action, the ER will broaden his research scope, acquire new technical and transferable skills, and train leadership ability. Together, this will make him a very competitive candidate for independent positions in sustainability science. The outcomes of the action include high-impact publications as well as policy-relevant information delivered to key stakeholders in South America and Europe through various dissemination pathways. Overall, this action will impact our understanding of the status and governance of HNV forests in the neglected dry tropics, which is critical for the EU’s due diligence initiatives seeking clean supply chains, and for maintaining social-ecological integrity in the Global South. |