Coordinated governance redirects agricultural expansion away from native vegetation in Brazil

Abstract

Tropical agricultural frontiers continue to drive native vegetation loss while supplying global commodity demand; yet it remains unclear how alternative governance pathways reshape where expansion occurs across interconnected biomes. Here, we use a spatially explicit land-use model to evaluate how contrasting governance regimes, with and without moderate livestock intensification, affect land-use futures across the Brazilian Amazon, Cerrado, and Pantanal through 2030. We compare Governance Inertia, Collaborative Governance, and Integrated Governance to assess their effects on native vegetation conversion, the land-use origins of soybean expansion, and landscape structure. Under scenarios in which conversion from native vegetation is explicitly constrained, projected soybean expansion remains nearly constant ([~]6.2 Mha) but is redirected away from native vegetation and toward already converted lands. Relative to Governance Inertia, constrained-governance scenarios avoid approximately 13.5 Mha of native vegetation loss and require an estimated 13.9% increase in livestock occupation rate to maintain production with a smaller pasture footprint. These shifts are also associated with modest but consistent improvements in vegetation continuity and reduced fragmentation. Our findings show that the effectiveness of zero-deforestation trajectories depends not only on limiting expansion, but on governing where land-use demand is absorbed across tropical frontier systems.