Overestimating outsourced biodiversity loss may misguide policy | Nature
Subjects
- Conservation biology
- Sustainability
Matters Arising to this article was published on 29 April 2026
The Original Article was published on 12 February 2025
Access through your institution
Buy or subscribe
arising from: R. A. Wiebe & D. S. Wilcove. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-08569-5 (2025).
Wiebe and Wilcove1 provide an important and timely analysis on how outsourced deforestation causes biodiversity loss. Yet, we are concerned that their analysis wrongly attributes forest loss through shifting cultivation to international commodity trade, leading to erroneous conclusions on where developed countries inflict harm on vertebrates in distant countries. We illustrate this using their own key example, vanilla exports from Madagascar, which we show is not responsible for species’ range losses, building on substantial evidence on shifting cultivation and commodity cropping in Madagascar. We further argue that a closer engagement with place-based research and local scientists could have avoided overestimating and mislocating the outsourced share of biodiversity loss, reducing the risk of misguided policies.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Access through your institution
Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals
Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription
$32.99 / 30 days
cancel any time
Learn more
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 51 print issues and online access
$199.00 per year
only $3.90 per issue
Learn more
Buy this article
- Purchase on SpringerLink
- Instant access to the full article PDF.
USD 39.95
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Fig. 1: Maps illustrating the overestimation of the outsourced share of biodiversity loss in eastern Madagascar.The alternative text for this image may have been generated using AI.
References
- Wiebe, R. A. & Wilcove, D. S. Global biodiversity loss from outsourced deforestation. Nature 639, 389–394 (2025).
Article
ADS
CAS
PubMed
Google Scholar
- Zaehringer, J. G., Eckert, S. & Messerli, P. Revealing regional deforestation dynamics in north-eastern Madagascar—insights from multi-temporal land cover change analysis. Land 4, 454–474 (2015).
Article
Google Scholar
- Martin, D. A. et al. Land-use trajectories for sustainable land system transformations: Identifying leverage points in a global biodiversity hotspot. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 119, e2107747119 (2022).
Article
CAS
PubMed
PubMed Central
Google Scholar
- Llopis, J. C. et al. Effects of protected area establishment and cash crop price dynamics on land use transitions 1990–2017 in north-eastern Madagascar. J. Land Use Sci. 14, 52–80 (2019).
Article
Google Scholar
- Sims, M. J. et al. Global drivers of forest loss at 1 km resolution. Environ. Res. Lett. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/add606 (2025).
- Andriatsitohaina, R. N. N., Laby, P., Llopis, J. C. & Martin, D. A. Agroforestry in Madagascar: past, present, and future. Agrofor. Syst. 98, 1659–1680 (2024).
Article
PubMed
PubMed Central
Google Scholar
- Hoang, N. T. & Kanemoto, K. Mapping the deforestation footprint of nations reveals growing threat to tropical forests. Nat. Ecol. Evol. 5, 845–853 (2021).
Article
PubMed
Google Scholar
- Wurz, A. et al. Win-win opportunities combining high yields with high multi-taxa biodiversity in tropical agroforestry. Nat. Commun. 13, 4127 (2022).
Article
ADS
CAS
PubMed
PubMed Central
Google Scholar
- Martin, D. A. et al. Shade-tree rehabilitation in vanilla agroforests is yield neutral and may translate into landscape-scale canopy cover gains. Ecosystems 24, 1253–1267 (2021).
Article
Google Scholar
- Martin, D. A. et al. Land-use history determines ecosystem services and conservation value in tropical agroforestry. Conserv. Lett. 13, e12740 (2020).
Article
Google Scholar
- Vieilledent, G. et al. Combining global tree cover loss data with historical national forest cover maps to look at six decades of deforestation and forest fragmentation in Madagascar. Biol. Conserv. 222, 189–197 (2018).
Article
Google Scholar
- Curtis, P. G., Slay, C. M., Harris, N. L., Tyukavina, A. & Hansen, M. C. Classifying drivers of global forest loss. Science 361, 1108–1111 (2018).
Article
ADS
CAS
PubMed
Google Scholar
- Renier, C. et al. Direct and indirect deforestation for cocoa in the tropical moist forests of Ghana. Environ. Res. Food Syst. 2, 025006 (2025).
Article
Google Scholar
- Nath, A. J., Reang, D. & Sileshi, G. W. The Shifting Cultivation Juggernaut: An Attribution Problem. Glob. Chall. 6, 2200051 (2022).
Article
PubMed
PubMed Central
Google Scholar
- Rakotonarivo, O. S. & Andriamihaja, O. R. Global North–Global South research partnerships are still inequitable. Nat. Hum. Behav. 7, 2042–2043 (2023).
Article
PubMed
Google Scholar
Download references
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
- Department of Environmen