Improving knowledge on the links between commodity production, trade and deforestation

Expansion of agriculture land is the main driver of forest loss, especially in tropical and sub-tropical regions. Between 2000 and 2018, cropland extension and livestock grazing (around 8 477 600 ha/year) have explained almost 90% of deforestation globally. A significant and growing share of the commodities produced on these new agricultural lands feeds international trade.
While information on direct drivers of deforestation is increasingly available and robust at different scales from global to local, understanding the underlying factors of forest loss is still challenging. Coupling information on trade, notably of “forest-risk” commodities, with land use and land-use change in producing countries could help to unveil additional steps of the causal chain leading to deforestation. The proposed study builds on anterior works that resulted on the construction of an extended database, fed with FAOSTAT data, identifying trade flows for more than 600 commodities and associating the related land footprint of their production.