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Forest Governance and Global Development: The Land Sparing Fallacy in Brazil and Indonesia

dc.contributor.authorThaler, Gregory Massey
dc.contributor.chairHerring, Ronald J.
dc.contributor.committeeMemberWolford, Wendy W.
dc.contributor.committeeMemberPepinsky, Thomas
dc.date.accessioned2018-04-26T14:15:55Z
dc.date.available2019-09-11T06:01:48Z
dc.date.issued2017-08-30
dc.description.abstractTropical deforestation in Brazil and Indonesia is central to global trends of climate change, biodiversity loss, and agro-industrial expansion. Since 2004, new governance measures in Brazil have helped reduce deforestation in the Amazon by nearly 80 percent. Similar governance measures in Indonesia have failed to slow forest clearing, however. I explain this divergence through a comparative and ethnographic study focused on the programs of The Nature Conservancy (TNC), an international environmental organization. I conducted six municipal-level case studies of TNC projects and an organizational ethnography of TNC’s tropical forest programs, including 181 key-informant interviews and analysis of socio-economic and environmental datasets. I find that forest governance strategies in Brazil and Indonesia are strongly influenced by the ‘land sparing hypothesis,’ which holds that increasing agricultural productivity can spare land for conservation. In Brazil, government, corporate, and non-governmental actors have reduced deforestation through a land sparing model that links forest conservation to agricultural intensification, state-building, and socio-economic development. In Indonesia, by contrast, land sparing efforts have been stymied by government and corporate actors who extract resources for private gain. Overall, I show that deforestation reductions in Brazil favor agro-industry over small farmers, however, and are mostly canceled out by displacement of deforestation to extractive zones like Indonesia. I therefore argue that the land sparing model is a fallacy: it supports industrial expansion and state-building but displaces social and environmental degradation, producing negative global outcomes.
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.7298/X4HD7ST0
dc.identifier.otherThaler_cornellgrad_0058F_10394
dc.identifier.otherhttp://dissertations.umi.com/cornellgrad:10394
dc.identifier.otherbibid: 10361428
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1813/56751
dc.language.isoen_US
dc.subjectenvironmental governance
dc.subjectland sparing
dc.subjectGeography
dc.subjectPolitical science
dc.subjectEnvironmental studies
dc.subjectagricultural intensification
dc.subjectAmazon
dc.subjectBorneo
dc.subjectdeforestation
dc.titleForest Governance and Global Development: The Land Sparing Fallacy in Brazil and Indonesia
dc.typedissertation or thesis
dcterms.licensehttps://hdl.handle.net/1813/59810
thesis.degree.disciplineGovernment
thesis.degree.grantorCornell University
thesis.degree.levelDoctor of Philosophy
thesis.degree.namePh. D., Government

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