Dynamics of deforestation worldwide: A structural decomposition analysis of agricultural land use in South America

Abstract

Deforestation, mainly caused by the conversion of forest land to agriculture, threatens the achievement of multiple goals across the 2030 Agenda. This environmental issue is particularly marked in the area formed by Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay (ABP region), where a net forest loss of more than 5,5 million hectares per year and a simultaneous net gain in agricultural land of almost 3 million hectares were registered during 2000–2015. To identify the main contributors to the growth in agricultural land use driving regional deforestation, a Structural Decomposition Analysis (SDA) is applied on multiregional input-output tables. Results suggest that changes detected within ABP were mainly influenced by shifts in domestic demand and exacerbated by the influence of Brazil within the Mercosur trade agreement. Outside ABP, results show that consumption per capita and population expansion in developed and developing economies (the EU28, the US, and China) are major drivers of regional deforestation. Although globalization led to a surge in the ABP’s land displaced to other countries, our results indicate that outsourced agricultural activities did not affect the growth in ABP’s agricultural land use. There is thus a need of designing mitigation measures with a global sense that also addresses co-responsibility mechanisms among countries in the region.