View article

Land-use competition between forest conservation and agricultural food production poses major threats to climate change mitigation and food security. Land sparing policies aim at reconciling this conundrum by intensifying agriculture while conserving forests, but scientific debates prevail about their effectiveness. To contribute to this debate, we analyze the discursive dimension of land sparing efforts and their biophysical implications for Lao PDR. Applying an interdisciplinary mixed-methods approach, we examine how Lao land-use policies legitimize land sparing at the cost of shifting cultivation and how land use changed between 2000 and 2019. We quantify ecosystem carbon fluxes and agricultural emissions and investigate trends in agricultural production and food security. We find that policy documents use both socio-economic and environmental arguments to substantiate land sparing at the expense of …