The Emerging Soybean Production Frontier in Southern Africa: Conservation Challenges and the Role of South-South Telecouplings: The emerging of soybean frontier in Southern Africa
Open accessAbstract
Soybean expansion has been a strong driver of deforestation and biodiversity loss in South America (SAM). Here, we highlight strong similarities in environmental, institutional, and other contextual conditions among SAM and Southern African (SAFR) dry forest and savanna regions, and compile evidence for an emerging soybean production frontier in SAFR. Knowledge transfer, cooperation, and direct investment between SAM and SAFR countries constitute crucial elements of soybean expansion in Africa. Comparing maps of soybean suitability, biodiversity, and carbon revealed substantial and spatially diverse trade-offs, suggesting that the emerging soybean frontier in SAFR may poses major challenges for conservation. An increased focus of conservation science on agricultural expansion and intensification in SAFR, as well as strong environmental policies for balancing agricultural production and conservation goals, are needed to mitigate potentially large trade-offs. The coupling of production frontiers should be a vehicle for the transfer not only of agricultural technology and production models, but also of experiences in environmental governance on emerging agricultural frontiers.
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Recent studies evoked the emergence of a new soybean frontier in Southern Africa, where Brazil is reinforcing its economic presence.
“Recent studies also evoked the emergence of a new soybean frontier in Southern Africa, where Brazil is reinforcing its economic presence ( Gasparri et al., 2015, Clements and Fernandes, 2013, Seibert, 2011, Oliveira, 2015and Shankland and Gonalves, 2016).”
From Transition in environmental governance in the Brazilian Amazon: emergence of a new pattern of socio-economic development and deforestation (2016) · cites this paper as Gasparri et al., 2015
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- Authors
- Gasparri, N. I., Kuemmerle, T., Meyfroidt, P., le Polain de Waroux, Y., & Kreft, H.
- Affiliations
- CONICET, Instituto de Ecología Regional; Universidad Nacional de Tucumán; Tucumán Argentina
- Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (DE)
- Fund for Scientific Research (BE)
- Environmental Earth System Science & Woods Institute for the Environment; Stanford University; 385 Serra Mall Stanford CA 94107 USA
- University of Göttingen (DE)
- Venue
- Conservation Letters
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2015-05-12
- Volume
- 9
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 21-31
- ISSN
- 1755-263X (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2046145751
- Cited by
- 141
- References
- 5
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 12 · 2020: 14 · 2019: 20 · 2018: 17 · 2017: 19 · 2016: 14 · 2015: 5 · 2014: 1
- FWCI
- 13.73
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Conservation Letters (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Americanae (AECID Library) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Digital Access to Libraries (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- eScholarship@McGill (McGill) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- GoeScholar The Publication Server of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- GRO (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- LA Referencia (Red Federada de Repositorios Institucionales de Publicaciones Científicas) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- Argentine Fondo Nacional de Ciencia y Técnología (PICTO 2011 N° 0098)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › General Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecology › Oil Palm Production and Sustainability
- Keywords
- soybean expansion, agricultural frontier, Southern Africa, South America, deforestation, biodiversity loss, conservation trade-offs, agricultural intensification, environmental governance, knowledge transfer, agricultural investment, environmental policy
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