Results from On-The-Ground Efforts to Promote Sustainable Cattle Ranching in the Brazilian Amazon

Agriculture in Brazil is booming. Brazil has the world’s second largest cattle herd and is the second largest producer of soybeans, with the production of beef, soybeans, and bioethanol forecast to increase further. Questions remain, however, about how Brazil can reconcile increases in agricultural production with protection of its remaining natural vegetation. While high hopes have been placed on the potential for intensification of low-productivity cattle ranching to spare land for other agricultural uses, cattle productivity in the Amazon biome (29% of the Brazilian cattle herd) remains stubbornly low, and it is not clear how to realize theoretical productivity gains in practice. We provide results from six initiatives in the Brazilian Amazon, which are successfully improving cattle productivity in beef and dairy production on more than 500,000 hectares of pastureland, while supporting compliance with the Brazilian Forest Code. Spread across diverse geographies, and using a wide range of technologies, participating farms have improved productivity by 30–490%. High-productivity cattle ranching requires some initial investment (R$1300–6900/ha or US$410–2180/ha), with average pay-back times of 2.5–8.5 years. We conclude by reflecting on the challenges that must be overcome to scale up these young initiatives, avoid rebound increases in deforestation, and mainstream sustainable cattle ranching in the Amazon

Ten facts about land systems for sustainability

Land use is central to addressing sustainability issues, including biodiversity conservation, climate change, food security, poverty alleviation, and sustainable energy. In this paper, we synthesize knowledge accumulated in land system science, the integrated study of terrestrial social-ecological systems, into 10 hard truths that have strong, general, empirical support. These facts help to explain the challenges of achieving sustainability in land use and thus also point toward solutions. The 10 facts are as follows: 1) Meanings and values of land are socially constructed and contested; 2) land systems exhibit complex behaviors with abrupt, hard-to-predict changes; 3) irreversible changes and path dependence are common features of land systems; 4) some land uses have a small footprint but very large impacts; 5) drivers and impacts of land-use change are globally interconnected and spill over to distant locations; 6) humanity lives on a used planet where all land provides benefits to societies; 7) land-use change usually entails trade-offs between different benefits—"win–wins" are thus rare; 8) land tenure and land-use claims are often unclear, overlapping, and contested; 9) the benefits and burdens from land are unequally distributed; and 10) land users have multiple, sometimes conflicting, ideas of what social and environmental justice entails. The facts have implications for governance, but do not provide fixed answers. Instead they constitute a set of core principles which can guide scientists, policy makers, and practitioners toward meeting sustainability challenges in land use.The European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program; the Marie Skłodowska-Curie (MSCA) Innovative Training Network actions under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme; the “María de Maeztu” Programme for Units of Excellence of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation; the NASA Land-Cover Land-Use Change Program; the Swiss Academy of Sciences; the National Research Foundation’s Rated Researcher’s Award; the UK Natural Environment Research Council Landscape Decisions Fellowship; and the “Nature4SDGs” project funded by NERC-Formas-DBT [UK Natural Environment Research Council-Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development-Indian Department of Biotechnology (from the Ministry of Science & Technology, Government of India)].https://www.pnas.orghj2022BiochemistryForestry and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute (FABI)GeneticsMicrobiology and Plant Patholog

3. Bird conservation

Expert assessors Tatsuya Amano, University of Cambridge, UK Andy Brown, Natural England, UK Fiona Burns, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, UK Yohay Carmel, Israel Institute of Technology Mick Clout, University of Auckland, New Zealand Geoff Hilton, Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust, UK Nancy Ockendon, University of Cambridge, UK James Pearce-Higgins, British Trust for Ornithology, UK Sugoto Roy, Food and ..

Inclusion, Transparency, and Enforcement: How the EU-Mercosur Trade Agreement Fails the Sustainability Test

Trade agreements could help to protect human rights, critical ecosystems, and the climate-but only if sustainability becomes a cornerstone of international trade. The EU-Mercosur trade agreement fails to meet our three tenets of sustainable trade agreements: (1) inclusion of local communities, (2) transparency mechanisms to trace commodities and provide open-access information, and (3) enforcement to legally uphold sustainability commitments

What Works in Conservation 2020

Is reduced tillage in arable fields beneficial for farmland biodiversity? Is prescribed burning in grasslands beneficial for bird conservation? Does livestock exclusion from degraded peatlands benefit peatland conservation? Is the provision of artificial shelters effective for subtidal benthic invertebrate conservation? Do wind turbine modifications reduce bat fatalities? Does adding topsoil increase the abundance of heathland plants? Are interventions to reduce road impacts on amphibians effective? Do herbicides control invasive parrot's feather? What Works in Conservation has been created to provide practitioners with answers to these and many other questions about practical conservation.This book provides an assessment of the effectiveness of 1614 conservation interventions based on summarized scientific evidence. The 2020 edition contains new material on bat conservation and our first marine chapter, on Subtidal benthic invertebrate conservation. Other chapters cover practical global conservation of primates, peatlands, shrublands and heathlands, management of captive animals as well as an extended chapter on control of freshwater invasive species, the global conservation of amphibians, bats, birds and forests, conservation of European farmland biodiversity and some aspects of enhancing natural pest control, enhancing soil fertility and control of freshwater invasive species. It contains key results from the summarized evidence for each conservation intervention and an assessment of the effectiveness of each by international expert panels. The accompanying website www.conservationevidence.com describes each of the studies individually, and provides full references. This is the fourth edition of What Works in Conservation, which is revised on an annual basis