Amazon Soy Moratorium

node · earth · Amazon biome, Brazil

A voluntary agreement among the major soy traders, signed in 2006, not to purchase soy grown on land in the Amazon biome cleared after a stated cutoff date. It is the most studied private supply-chain governance instrument in the world, because it is one of the very few for which a before-and-after measurement exists: Gibbs and colleagues reported in 2015 that the share of soy expansion coming from newly deforested land in the Amazon biome fell from a substantial fraction before the agreement to a very small one after it. Two caveats matter as much as the result. The moratorium covers the Amazon biome only, and soy expansion moved to the Cerrado, where no equivalent agreement applies - so an instrument that demonstrably worked within its boundary also demonstrated how much of the problem a boundary can relocate. And it is voluntary and privately enforced, which makes it durable only for as long as the signatories and the domestic political and legal environment allow.