Invisible stakeholders in agricultural supply chain governance: What Amazonians ask of Europe

Agricultural supply chain governance has become the chief approach to address tropical deforestation. Agriculture is responsible for as much as 90-99% of all tropical deforestation, most of it caused by the expansion of a handful of internationally traded commodities such as soy, beef, palm oil and cocoa. As an important consumer market, Europe has taken the lead in creating mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence as well as laws prohibiting the importation of products grown on recently deforested land. However, such commodity-centric governance of landscape dynamics come with significant risks. Studies have already pointed to the risk of marginalizing smallholder suppliers, yet another – less seen – risk is that this crystallizes current patterns of land use, where sectors dominated by large traders and aimed at distant markets secure – even in environmental policy – their precedence over alternative and possibly more sustainable land use. This study uses the Brazilian Amazon as a case to explore the voices unheard, the stakeholders made invisible by such an approach. The Amazon is an emblematic case, as its continuous deforestation risks bringing the biome over a tipping-point whereby an ecological dieback process could turn it into a drier and much poorer ecosystem. Brazil holds 60% of that ecosystem and is a lead partner in the EU-Mercosur free trade agreement negotiations that could see economic relations with – and likely exports to – Europe reach a new level. Therefore, understanding how Europe relates to and addresses sustainable land use in the Brazilian Amazon is key. Using agenda-setting theory, this research examines what elements and sustainability concerns have received salience in Europe’s “deforestation free” agenda and, crucially, which ones have not. It contrasts the content of European due diligence and anti-deforestation legislations with the views of Amazonian actors that are currently not engaged with export commodities but are affected by their expansion. For that, this study draws from an analysis of European policies, a review of Brazilian civil society reports on the subject, and key-informant interviews with multiple stakeholders in Brazil, particularly those that have pursued alternative land use systems in the Amazon (e.g., agroecological value chains, forest-based extractivism, inclusive forms of bioeconomy development). Preliminary results indicate that many important voices – of stakeholders that have had their lives or livelihoods on the line – remain outside the “deforestation free” governance process, in part due to Europe’s emphasis on its supply chains. Such a commodity-centric agenda has made other their pathways invisible. Amazonian actors suggest that Europe could play a more helpful role if it addressed tropical deforestation more broadly, regarding other sustainability issues (e.g., social inclusiveness, pesticide contamination) and supporting alternative land-use systems instead. This study examines the considerations of these previously unheard voices and recommends how European actors concerned with deforestation can change the influence Europe has had on detrimental land-use change processes overseas.