The Rainforest Alliance is an international non-governmental organization (NGO) with staff in more than 20 countries and operations in more than 70 countries. It was founded in 1987 by Daniel Katz, an American environmental activist, who serves as the chair of the board of directors. The NGO states that its mission is “to create a more sustainable world by using social and market forces to protect nature and improve the lives of farmers and forest communities.” Its work includes the provision of an environmental certification for sustainability in agriculture. In parallel to its certification program, the Rainforest Alliance develops and implements long-term conservation and community development programs in a number of critically important tropical landscapes where commodity production threatens ecosystem health and the well-being of rural communities.The Rainforest Alliance is a product-oriented multistakeholder governance group combining the interests of companies, farmers, foresters, communities, and consumers to produce sustainable and harmonious goods.
Natural ecosystems are increasingly threatened by global agricultural supply chains, and a narrow policy focus on forests has fueled agricultural expansion into ecologically significant but severely overlooked non-forest ecosystems, including grasslands and open wetlands. While a few emerging policies attempt to protect non-forest ecosystems, a globally consistent assessment of their conversion extent and drivers, especially related to livestock production and commodity-specific supply chain demand, remains lacking. Here, we conducted a spatially explicit analysis to identify pasture and cropland expansion into non-forest ecosystems between 2005 and 2020, as well as conversion-linked primary agricultural commodities and their underlying demand drivers (end uses and final market destinations). We found that the conversion rate of natural non-forest ecosystems was nearly four times that of lands with tree cover exceeding 5 m (a common forest height threshold), with Brazil contributing 13% of the global total and Russia, India, China, and the United States each contributing about 6%. While drivers varied greatly across regions, globally 50% of the conversion was linked to pasture, and 27, 17, and 6% to cropland for food, feed, and other uses (mainly bioenergy), respectively. Among conversion-linked commodities, most livestock-associated products served domestic demand, while 32% of feed crops and 20% of all crops were exported, with export shares reaching 70 to 80% in Brazil and Argentina. These findings reveal important areas for non-forest ecosystem conservation and highlight the need for integrated policies to prevent leakage across different ecosystems and different sustainable development goals while also aligning local actions with global supply chain governance.
The role of policy and research institutions in sub-Saharan Africa in shaping the region’s science and development agenda cannot be underestimated, and the role of externally funded initiatives designed to strengthen the efficiency of the institutions should also not be overlooked. However, persistent challenges remain in the form of gaps within capacities, structural organizations, and sociocultural dynamics of institutions that prevent the region from deploying its science, technology, and innovation systems as effective drivers for progress and development. This paper highlights these barriers and proposes integrated strategies that combine institutional reforms with cultural realities within institutions, aiming both to enhance research and technological impact and to develop institutions that meet recognized standards of excellence, promote inclusive participation, and strengthen the deployment of science, technology, and innovation for sustainable and equitable development across the region.
Promoting biological conservation requires expanding our understanding of species distributions, biodiversity, and their responses to anthropogenic impacts, including unexplored environments that could serve as biological refugia. In the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, forestry relies on selective logging practiced under sustainable communal management that is biologically interconnected with seasonally flooded forests. Despite being an important environment for specialized flora, fauna, and carbon storage, soil biodiversity remains insufficiently understood. This study aimed to evaluate and compare the diversity and community composition of bacterial and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) across contrasting environments within a vegetation gradient: selectively logged, (six years post-harvest), conserved, and seasonally flooded low-stature forests by integrating environmental DNA analyses (16S and 18S rRNA genes for bacteria and AMF, respectively) with morphological characterization of AMF glomerospores. AMF community composition (environmental DNA sequences) significantly differed between selective logging and low-flooded forests. Bacterial diversity was similar across sites, but richness was higher in the selective logging. Conserved forest had higher Actinobacteria abundance, while low-flooded forest had more Verrucomicrobia. Additionally, selective logging showed higher Chloroflexi diversity. Despite these differences, bacterial and glomerospores community structures were similar across sites. Redundancy analysis revealed no significant differences between soil chemistry and microbial community structure. Our findings suggest that selective logging maintains soil microbial diversity. Furthermore, seasonally flooded forests harbor distinct AMF assemblages, potentially including undescribed taxa, highlighting their value as unique reservoirs of belowground biodiversity. These microbial patterns may influence key soil functions, such as nutrient cycling and soil carbon dynamics.
Forest degradation causes large declines in carbon stocks, biodiversity, and ecosystem services, despite leaving some trees standing. Over the past two decades, numerous conservation policies to halt deforestation have been rolled out, but relatively little attention has been paid to tackling degradation. More information is needed to understand how deforestation and degradation are linked and how ongoing efforts to reduce deforestation are impacting degradation. With a focus on the case of the Brazilian Amazon, a place with highly dynamic deforestation, degradation, and policy conditions, we examine the effects of four types of deforestation policies on both deforestation and anthropogenic degradation. We find that with very few exceptions, both private supply chain policies and public deforestation policy mixes that successfully reduced deforestation failed to reduce anthropogenic forest degradation. This implies that deforestation control policies alone, which are the dominant approach to the conservation of forests, are insufficient to preserve biodiversity and carbon and safeguard forest-dependent livelihoods. Policy approaches that explicitly address fire, logging, fragmentation, and other degradation drivers are urgently needed to tackle these major gaps in current conservation policy approaches. Government and companies must also include forest degradation emissions in their evaluations of current policy effectiveness toward meeting emission reduction goals.
Ecologically important non-forest ecosystems, including grasslands, shrublands and wetlands, face substantial threats from agricultural expansion, yet their conversion dynamics remain poorly understood. This study identifies global hotspots of land conversion from non-forest (and forest) ecosystems to cultivated lands from 2000 to 2020, including conversion within Protected Areas and its impacts for biodiversity conservation. Using three state-of-the-art land cover datasets (GlobeLand30, GLCLUC and GLC_FCS30D), we find extensive and increasing non-forest conversion, often comparable to or exceeding forest conversion. Protected non-forest ecosystems cover substantially smaller area than protected forests while experiencing disproportionately high conversion rates. Non-forest and forest conversion together affected habitats of over 5,000 threatened species, over half of which depend critically on non-forest ecosystems. Our study provides important insights for improved land cover data development, while offering companies and policymakers science-based evidence to design sustainable land-use policies and integrated policy frameworks that avoid trade-offs and support broad sustainability goals.
