Patrick Meyfroidt
Biographic Data
| ID | 72027 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Patrick Meyfroidt |
| GIVEN NAMES | Patrick |
| FAMILY NAME | Meyfroidt |
| SIGNATURE | MEYFROIDT P |
| AFFILIATIONS | Fund for Scientific Research |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1047-9794 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 83 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1024 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 83 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 14 |
National-scale field delineation in Mozambique refines our understanding of cropland distribution, field size, and deforestation actors
The design of science-based policies to improve the sustainability of smallholder agriculture is challenged by a limited understanding of fundamental system properties, such as the spatial distribution of active cropland and field size. We integrate 1.5 m resolution satellite imagery, satellite embeddings, and deep learning to map individual fields in complex smallholder systems at policy-relevant scale. We identify 17 million fields across Mozam…
The Need for Improved Public Transparency in the Era of Due Diligence Regulations
To address environmental and human rights issues in global commodity supply chains, governments increasingly require information from companies on their sourcing, as part of due‐diligence regulations (DDRs). This shift towards accountability to the regulator rather than to the public calls into question the role left for public transparency. In this perspective piece, we argue that public transparency is actually complementary to DDRs—addressing …
Sustainable forest transitions
Restoring forests is key to addressing the climate and biodiversity crises and can benefit forest-dependent communities.However, frequent social and ecological trade-offs between these goals pose significant challenges for forest restoration efforts.Our understanding of how to maximize positive social and ecological restoration outcomes is hindered by the absence of a social-ecological theory of forest restoration.We present a new analytical ''su…
Considering land use complexity and overlap is critical for sustainability planning
Publisher of over 50 scientific journals across the life, physical, earth, and health sciences, both independently and in partnership with scientific societies including Cell, Neuron, Immunity, Current Biology, AJHG, and the Trends Journals
Anticipatory governance for responsible investment in energy transition minerals in the Western Congo Basin
Energy transition minerals could transform the Western Congo Basin. • Supporting anticipatory governance can guide responsible investment. • Learning from past and emerging initiatives can help to develop capabilities. • Just and sustainable futures require strengthening institutional capability. Demand for Energy Transition Minerals and Metals (ETMs) for clean energy technologies is driving a new wave of investment in mining. Many African countr…
Equity in unilateral value chain policies
Links between deforestation, conservation areas and conservation funding in major deforestation regions of South America
Land‐use change is a major driver of biodiversity loss, affecting tropical forests and savannas at an unprecedented rate. To protect these ecosystems and their biodiversity, national conservation areas and international conservation funding have increased considerably in these regions. Understanding of how conservation funding allocation relates to dynamics in deforestation and conservation areas is crucial to identifying what mobilizes and distr…
Deforestation and climate risk hotspots in the global cocoa value chain
In this study, we produced a spatially explicit diagnosis of the deforestation hotspots and future climate risk (2050) of cocoa producing areas, zooming into the top 8 cocoa exporting countries and the main global cocoa traders. Cocoa-driven deforestation often co-occurs with deforestation driven by other agri-commodities, and thus needs to be tackled jointly. Climate risk will be substantially increased in Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana, the two most i…
An actor-centered, scalable land system typology for addressing biodiversity loss in the world’s tropical dry woodlands
Land use is a key driver of the ongoing biodiversity crisis and therefore also a major opportunity for its mitigation. However, appropriately considering the diversity of land-use actors and activities in conservation assessments and planning is challenging. As a result, top-down conservation policy and planning are often criticized for a lack of contextual nuance widely acknowledged to be required for effective and just conservation action. To a…
Impacts of large-scale forestry investments on neighboring small-scale agriculture in northern Mozambique
Forestry plantations can potentially foster rural development and mitigate environmental threats, but their impacts on neighboring peoples’ livelihood strategies are ambiguous. Forestry plantations are particularly important in Mozambique, where a national strategy aims to establish one million hectares of forests by 2030, focusing on Miombo ecoregions in the provinces of Niassa, Cabo Delgado, Nampula and Zambezia. This paper evaluates the causal…
How Social Considerations Improve the Equity and Effectiveness of Ecosystem Restoration
Ecosystem restoration is an important means to address global sustainability challenges. However, scientific and policy discourse often overlooks the social processes that influence the equity and effectiveness of restoration interventions. In the present article, we outline how social processes that are critical to restoration equity and effectiveness can be better incorporated in restoration science and policy. Drawing from existing case studie…
Transparency, traceability and deforestation in the Ivorian cocoa supply chain
Cocoa production has been identified as a major global driver of deforestation, but its precise contribution to deforestation dynamics in West Africa remains unclear. It is also unknown to what degree companies and international markets are able to trace their cocoa imports, and satisfy their sustainable sourcing commitments. Here, we use publicly-available remote-sensing and supply chain data for Côte d’Ivoire, the world’s largest cocoa producer…
Driving forces of forest cover rehabilitation and implications for forest transition, environmental management and upland sustainable development in Vietnam
Agricultural intensification, Indigenous stewardship and land sparing in tropical dry forests
Large gaps in voluntary sustainability commitments covering the global cocoa trade
The production and trade of agricultural commodities, such as cocoa, have important impacts on farmer livelihoods and the environment, prompting a growing number of companies to adopt public commitments to address sustainability issues in their value chains. Though trading companies, who handle the procurement and export of these commodities, are key actors in corporate sustainability efforts, cross-country data on their identity, market share, a…
Not all supply chains are created equal
Global agricultural trade is a key driver of socioenvironmental transformations in rural areas, including development dynamics. By creating revenue and wealth opportunities, it influences the economic and social relations in a landscape. However, not all landscapes shaped by a given agricultural sector are the same: one variable is how supply chain actors and their embedded networks (including commodity traders, farmers, and input suppliers) deve…
Balancing the trade-offs between land productivity, labor productivity and labor intensity
Agricultural intensification, through increased yields, and raising incomes, through enhanced labor productivity, are two dimensions prioritized for sustainable agricultural development. Prioritizing these two outcomes leaves labor intensity as a hidden adjustment variable. Yet, when agriculture is mainstay and the prospects of labor absorption in other sectors are scarce, the density of agricultural employment is central for livelihoods. We revi…
Toward spatial fit in the governance of global commodity flows
Global commodity flows between distally connected social-ecological systems pose important challenges to sustainability governance. These challenges are partly due to difficulties in designing and implementing governance institutions that fit or match the scale of the environmental and social problems generated in such telecoupled systems. We focus on the spatial dimension of governance fit in relation to global commodity flows and telecoupled sy…
Disentangling the numbers behind agriculture-driven tropical deforestation
Tropical deforestation continues at alarming rates with profound impacts on ecosystems, climate, and livelihoods, prompting renewed commitments to halt its continuation. Although it is well established that agriculture is a dominant driver of deforestation, rates and mechanisms remain disputed and often lack a clear evidence base. We synthesize the best available pantropical evidence to provide clarity on how agriculture drives deforestation. Alt…
Ten facts about land systems for sustainability
Land use is central to addressing sustainability issues, including biodiversity conservation, climate change, food security, poverty alleviation, and sustainable energy. In this paper, we synthesize knowledge accumulated in land system science, the integrated study of terrestrial social-ecological systems, into 10 hard truths that have strong, general, empirical support. These facts help to explain the challenges of achieving sustainability in la…
Frontier metrics for a process-based understanding of deforestation dynamics
Agricultural expansion into tropical and subtropical forests often leads to major social-ecological trade-offs. Yet, despite ever-more detailed information on where deforestation occurs, how agriculture expands into forests remains unclear, which is hampered by a lack of spatially and temporally detailed reconstruction of agricultural expansion. Here, we developed and mapped a novel set of metrics that quantify agricultural frontier processes at …
Uncovering major types of deforestation frontiers across the world’s tropical dry woodlands
Why care about theories? Innovative ways of theorizing in sustainability science
The complex nature of sustainability problems and the aim of sustainability science to support emergent processes of transformation require rethinking how we build and make use of theories. We highlight the diversity of ways in which theories, as assemblages of different elements that can serve a variety of purposes, can emerge within inter-disciplinary and trans-disciplinary processes. Such emerging theories are (i) contextualized, constantly ch…
Explaining the stickiness of supply chain relations in the Brazilian soybean trade
The global trade of agricultural commodities has profound social-ecological impacts, from potentially increasing food availability and agricultural efficiency, to displacing local communities, and to incentivizing environmental destruction. Supply chain stickiness, understood as the stability in trading relationships between supply chain actors, moderates the impacts of agricultural commodity production and the possibilities for supply-chain inte…
Environmental governance of a Belt and Road project in Montenegro – National agency and external influences
China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is an ambitious effort to increase trans-continental connectivity and cooperation mainly through infrastructure investments and trade. On the one hand, this globally unparalleled initiative is expected to foster economic growth, but on the other hand, it can have substantial environmental implications. The BRI creates new challenges and opportunities for environmental governance as new actor constellations e…
Land use transitions
Middle-range theories of land system change
Land system science and sustainable development of the earth system
Effectiveness and synergies of policy instruments for land use governance in tropical regions
Globalization of land use
Linking biodiversity, ecosystem services, and human well-being
Rents, Actors, and the Expansion of Commodity Frontiers in the Gran Chaco
Theories of frontier expansion in the last four decades have been mostly shaped by studies of state-driven smallholder colonization. Modern-day agricultural frontiers, however, are increasingly driven by capitalized corporate agriculture operating with little direct government intervention. The expansion of contemporary frontiers has been explained by the existence of spatially heterogeneous “abnormal” rents, which can be caused by cheap land and…
The causes of the reforestation in Vietnam
Estimating the world's potentially available cropland using a bottom-up approach
Closing global knowledge gaps
Concerns over rapid widespread changes in social-ecological systems and their consequences for biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, food security, and human livelihoods are driving demands for globally comprehensive knowledge to support decision-making and policy development. Claims of regional or global knowledge about the patterns, causes, and significance of changes in social-ecological systems, or ‘generalized knowledge claims’ (GKCs), are ge…
Environmental Cognitions, Land Change and Social-Ecological Feedbacks
Whither the forest transition? Climate change, policy responses, and redistributed forests in the twenty-first century
Drivers, constraints and trade-offs associated with recultivating abandoned cropland in Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan
The transboundary displacement of deforestation under Redd
Meta-studies in land use science
Land use science has traditionally used case-study approaches for in-depth investigation of land use change processes and impacts. Meta-studies synthesize findings across case-study evidence to identify general patterns. In this paper, we provide a review of meta-studies in land use science. Various meta-studies have been conducted, which synthesize deforestation and agricultural land use change processes, while other important changes, such as u…
Key knowledge gaps to achieve global sustainability goals
Trajectories of deforestation, coffee expansion and displacement of shifting cultivation in the Central Highlands of Vietnam
Governing flows in telecoupled land systems
Organizing anarchy
Toward a normative land systems science
Science should provide solutions for societal transformations towards sustainability in the face of global environmental change. Land system science, as a systemic science focused on complex socioecological interactions around land use and associated trade-offs and synergies, is well placed to contribute to this agenda. This goal requires a stronger engagement with the normative implications of scientific practice, research topics, questions and …
Drivers of deforestation and forest degradation in Vietnam
Archetype analysis in sustainability research
Oberlack, C., D. Sietz, E. Bürgi Bonanomi, A. De Bremond, J. Dell'Angelo, K. Eisenack, E. C. Ellis, G. Epstein, M. Giger, A. Heinimann, C. Kimmich, M. T. J. Kok, D. Manuel-Navarrete, P. Messerli, P. Meyfroidt, T. Václavík, and S. Villamayor-Tomas. 2019. Archetype analysis in sustainability research: meanings, motivations, and evidence-based policy making. Ecology and Society 24(2):26. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-10747-240226
Interactions between land systems and food systems
The forest transformation
Large gaps in voluntary sustainability commitments covering the global cocoa trade
The production and trade of agricultural commodities, such as cocoa, have important impacts on farmer livelihoods and the environment, prompting a growing number of companies to adopt public commitments to address sustainability issues in their value chains. Though trading companies, who handle the procurement and export of these commodities, are key actors in corporate sustainability efforts, cross-country data on their identity, market share, a…
Forest transition in Vietnam and its environmental impacts
This study assesses the presence of a forest transition – that is, a shift from net deforestation to net reforestation – in Vietnam during the 1990s, and describes its key attributes relevant for global environmental change issues. Using Fuzzy Kappa and other indicators, we compared forest cover estimates and spatial patterns from global and national land cover maps from the early and late 1990s, and compiled other available statistics for years …
The causes of the reforestation in Vietnam
Forest transition in Vietnam and displacement of deforestation abroad
In some countries across the globe, tropical forest cover is increasing. The national-scale reforestation of Vietnam since 1992 is assumed to contribute to this recovery. It is achieved, however, by the displacement of forest extraction to other countries on the order of 49 (34–70) M m 3 , or ≈39% of the regrowth of Vietnam's forests from 1987 to 2006. Approximately half of wood imports to Vietnam during this period were illegal. Leakage due to p…
Land use transitions
Forest transitions, trade, and the global displacement of land use
Reducing tropical deforestation is an international priority, given its impacts on carbon emissions and biodiversity. We examined whether recent forest transitions—a shift from net deforestation to net reforestation—involved a geographic displacement of forest clearing across countries through trade in agricultural and forest products. In most of the seven developing countries that recently experienced a forest transition, displacement of land us…
Global Forest Transition
Although global rates of tropical deforestation remain alarmingly high, they have decreased over the period 2000–2010, and a handful of tropical developing countries have recently been through a forest transition—a shift from net deforestation to net reforestation. This review synthesizes existing knowledge on the occurrence, causes, and ecological impacts of forest transitions and examines the prospects and policy options for a global forest tra…
Global land use change, economic globalization, and the looming land scarcity
A central challenge for sustainability is how to preserve forest ecosystems and the services that they provide us while enhancing food production. This challenge for developing countries confronts the force of economic globalization, which seeks cropland that is shrinking in availability and triggers deforestation. Four mechanisms—the displacement, rebound, cascade, and remittance effects—that are amplified by economic globalization accelerate la…
Challenges and opportunities in mapping land use intensity globally
Future increases in land-based production will need to focus more on sustainably intensifying existing production systems. Unfortunately, our understanding of the global patterns of land use intensity is weak, partly because land use intensity is a complex, multidimensional term, and partly because we lack appropriate datasets to assess land use intensity across broad geographic extents. Here, we review the state of the art regarding approaches f…
Globalization of land use
Trajectories of deforestation, coffee expansion and displacement of shifting cultivation in the Central Highlands of Vietnam
Estimating the world's potentially available cropland using a bottom-up approach
Environmental Cognitions, Land Change and Social-Ecological Feedbacks
Multiple pathways of commodity crop expansion in tropical forest landscapes
Commodity crop expansion, for both global and domestic urban markets, follows multiple land change pathways entailing direct and indirect deforestation, and results in various social and environmental impacts. Here we compare six published case studies of rapid commodity crop expansion within forested tropical regions. Across cases, between 1.7% and 89.5% of new commodity cropland was sourced from forestlands. Four main factors controlled pathway…
Effectiveness and synergies of policy instruments for land use governance in tropical regions
Organizing anarchy
Towards more accurate and policy relevant footprint analyses
Linking biodiversity, ecosystem services, and human well-being
Production forests as a conservation tool
Land system science and sustainable development of the earth system
Approaches and terminology for causal analysis in land systems science
Research into land and social-ecological systems science could benefit from improved clarity in the terminology used for causal analysis and a structured way to make causal inferences. Here I identify two aspects of causality, i.e. causal effects and causal mechanisms, and discuss explanation in historical sciences. I then propose definitions for the major terms used for causal relations, including driver, (spatial) determinant, location and cont…
International trade, and land use intensification and spatial reorganization explain Costa Rica’s forest transition
While tropical deforestation remains widespread, some countries experienced a forest transition—a shift from net deforestation to net reforestation. Costa Rica had one of the highest deforestation rates in the 1980s and is now considered as a model of environmental sustainability, despite being a major producer of bananas and pineapples.Wetested three land use processes that are thought to facilitate forest transitions. First, forest transitions …
Drivers, constraints and trade-offs associated with recultivating abandoned cropland in Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan
Meta-studies in land use science
Land use science has traditionally used case-study approaches for in-depth investigation of land use change processes and impacts. Meta-studies synthesize findings across case-study evidence to identify general patterns. In this paper, we provide a review of meta-studies in land use science. Various meta-studies have been conducted, which synthesize deforestation and agricultural land use change processes, while other important changes, such as u…
Mapping farm size globally
Archetypical patterns and trajectories of land systems in Europe
Geography (57 works) · Economics (54 works) · Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management (53 works) · Business (44 works) · Environmental Science (38 works) · Ecology (37 works) · Agriculture (32 works) · Land Use and Ecosystem Services (32 works) · Natural resource economics (31 works) · Environmental resource management (30 works)