Publications by authors named "Rachael Garrett"

In this paper, survey evidence is used to examine the food security impacts of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. We focus on both residents of Ukraine and those fleeing to one of the wealthiest countries in Europe, Switzerland. Our questionnaire was sent to both Ukrainian residents and migrants to Switzerland between October 2022 and February 2023.

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Current social-technical and political conditions threaten the integrity of the Amazon biome. Overcoming these lock-ins requires structural transformations away from conventional economies towards 'socio-bioeconomies' (SBEs). SBEs are economies based on the sustainable use and restoration of Amazonian ecosystems, as well as Indigenous and rural livelihood systems in the region.

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In response to stakeholder pressure, companies increasingly make ambitious forward-looking sustainability commitments. They then draw on corporate policies with varying degrees of alignment to disseminate and enforce corresponding behavioral rules among their suppliers and business partners. This goal-based turn in private sustainability governance has important implications for its likely environmental and social outcomes.

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Article Synopsis
  • Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana produce two-thirds of the world's cocoa, relying on cocoa farming for the livelihoods of nearly two million farmers.
  • The absence of accurate maps of cocoa plantations complicates the assessment of environmental impacts, including significant forest loss, with cocoa cultivation linked to over 37% of forest loss in Côte d'Ivoire and 13% in Ghana.
  • Using satellite imagery and deep learning, researchers have created high-resolution maps that reveal higher-than-reported cocoa planting areas, which are essential for improving sustainability and conservation efforts in these regions.
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Increased private finance can accelerate forest and landscape restoration globally. Here we conduct semi-structured interviews with asset managers, corporations and restoration finance experts to examine incentives and barriers to private restoration finance. Next, we assess what type of restoration projects and regions appeal to different private funders and how current financial barriers can be overcome.

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Black families are significantly less likely to receive evidence-based trauma treatment services; however, little is known about factors impacting engagement, particularly at Children's Advocacy Centers (CACs). The goal of this study is to better understand barriers and facilitators of service utilization for Black caregivers of CAC referred youth. Participants ( = 15) were randomly selected Black maternal caregivers (ages 26-42) recruited from a pool of individuals who were referred to receive CAC services.

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  • Ecosystem restoration plays a critical role in tackling global sustainability issues, yet discussions often miss the social dynamics that impact the fairness and success of these efforts.
  • By analyzing case studies, the article reveals that restoration projects are more effective when they align with local communities’ needs and incorporate inclusive governance strategies.
  • The research highlights that around 1.4 billion people, primarily from lower Human Development Index backgrounds, reside in high-priority restoration areas, leading to five recommended actions for better integrating social equity into restoration science and policy.
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The global trade of agricultural commodities has profound social-ecological impacts, from potentially increasing food availability and agricultural efficiency, to displacing local communities, and to incentivizing environmental destruction. Supply chain stickiness, understood as the stability in trading relationships between supply chain actors, moderates the impacts of agricultural commodity production and the possibilities for supply-chain interventions. However, what factors determine stickiness, that is, how and why farmers, traders, food processors, and consumer countries, develop and maintain trading relationships with specific producing regions, remains unclear.

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Background: Forest conservation is a major global policy goal, due to the role forests play in climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation. It is well recognized that the introduction of policies, whether aimed at forest conservation or with other objectives, has the potential to trigger unintended outcomes, such as displacement or leakage, which can undermine policy objectives. However, a set of outcomes that has escaped detailed scrutiny are anticipatory forest use behaviours, emerging when forest stakeholders anticipate policy implementation, deploying for example pre-emptive forest clearing, resulting in detrimental environmental outcomes.

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Zero-deforestation supply chain policies that leverage the market power of commodity buyers to change agricultural producer behavior can reduce forest clearing in regions with rapid commodity expansion and weak forest governance. Yet leakage-when deforestation is pushed to other regions-may dilute the global effectiveness of regionally successful policies. Here we show that domestic leakage offsets 43-50% of the avoided deforestation induced by existing and proposed zero-deforestation supply chain policies in Brazil's soy sector.

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Tropical deforestation continues at alarming rates with profound impacts on ecosystems, climate, and livelihoods, prompting renewed commitments to halt its continuation. Although it is well established that agriculture is a dominant driver of deforestation, rates and mechanisms remain disputed and often lack a clear evidence base. We synthesize the best available pantropical evidence to provide clarity on how agriculture drives deforestation.

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Article Synopsis
  • Land use is crucial for sustainability, impacting areas like biodiversity, climate, and food security, with insights from land system science summarizing 10 key truths about these challenges.* ! -
  • The 10 truths highlight complexities in land systems, including social values, unpredictable changes, and unequal distributions of benefits, suggesting that "win-win" scenarios in land use are rare.* ! -
  • These facts inform governance strategies for sustainable land use, offering guiding principles rather than definitive solutions for scientists, policymakers, and practitioners.* !
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Conservation initiatives overwhelmingly focus on terrestrial biodiversity, and little is known about the freshwater cobenefits of terrestrial conservation actions. We sampled more than 1500 terrestrial and freshwater species in the Amazon and simulated conservation for species from both realms. Prioritizations based on terrestrial species yielded on average just 22% of the freshwater benefits achieved through freshwater-focused conservation.

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This review utilizes current national dietary guidelines and published databases to evaluate the impacts of reasonable shifts in the amount and type of protein intake in the United States on the intersection of human and environmental health. The established scientific basis and recommendations for protein intake as described in the US Dietary Reference Intakes are reviewed. Data on food availability from both the US Department of Agriculture and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and data on consumption from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey are used to examine estimates of current US protein consumption.

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Growing demand for agricultural commodities is causing the expansion of agricultural frontiers onto native vegetation worldwide. Agribusiness companies linking these frontiers to distant spaces of consumption through global commodity chains increasingly make zero-deforestation pledges. However, production and land conversion are often carried out by less-visible local and regional actors that are mobile and responsive to new agricultural expansion opportunities and legal constraints on land use.

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