Saving a Rainforest and Losing the World: Conservation and Displacement in the Global Tropics

An unflinching investigation of the false promises of land sparing, exposing how its illusory successes mask the failures of green capitalism

For two decades, the concept of land sparing, the claim that agricultural intensification can spare land by preventing forest clearing for agricultural expansion, has dominated tropical forest conservation. Land sparing policies transform landscapes and livelihoods with the promise of reconciling agricultural development with environmental conservati...