An Alibi for Ecocide

An apparent "success story" of Amazonian forest conservation motivates a 6-years investigation of the land sparing hypothesis. Dr. Gregory Thaler's new book, Saving a Rainforest and Losing the World, reveals a tragic belief that agricultural intensification will solve our problems of enduring extraction of the world's biodiversity.

Episode Links

• Saving a Rainforest and Losing the World: Conservation and Displacement in the Global Tropics. Yale University Press
• Roser, Max. 2024. Why Is Improving Agricultural Productivity Crucial to Ending Global Hunger and Protecting the World’s Wildlife? Our World in Data.
• Phalan BT. 2018 What Have We Learned from the Land Sparing-sharing Model? Sustainability. 10(6):1760.
• Scientists calling the apparent Brazilian halting of deforestation "one of the great conservation successes of the twenty-first century," in Nature Food
• For an excellent review of the Land Sparing / Land Sharing debate see: Claire Kremen, Ilke Geladi (2024). Land-Sparing and Sharing: Identifying Areas of Consensus, Remaining Debate and Alternatives, Editor(s): Samuel M. Scheiner, Encyclopedia of Biodiversity (Third Edition), Academic Press, 435-451, ISBN 9780323984348. OR
• Land Spares Feel Their Oats, Land Food nexus
• Ritchie, Hannah. 2021. Palm Oil. Our World in Data.
• An example of the "active land sparing argument."
• The green revolution: Patel, R. (2013). The long green revolution. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 40(1), 1-63.
• An argument for the "forest transition model" as it applies to Brazilian forests.

Landscapes is produced by Adam Calo. A complete written transcript of the episode can be found on Adam’s newsletter: Land Food Nexus.

Send feedback or questions to [email protected] or https://bsky.app/profile/adamcalo.bsky.social

Music by Blue Dot Sessions: “Kilkerrin” by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue).