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How the Collapse of the Beef Sector in Post-Soviet Russia Displaced Competition for Ecosystem Services to the Brazilian Amazon

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Land Use Competition

Part of the book series: Human-Environment Interactions ((HUEN,volume 6))

Abstract

The collapse of the Russian livestock sector triggered widespread agricultural land abandonment in post-Soviet Russia. The beef industry declined in particular, and consequently, Russia became heavily dependent on beef imports, from Europe in the 1990s and from Brazil after 2002. Therefore, Russian demand substantially contributed to the growth of the Brazilian beef sector and fostered widespread agricultural land expansion and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. The beef trade from Brazil to Russia was associated with substantial environmental costs in terms of carbon emissions and loss of biodiversity. While the abandoned agricultural land in Russia has become an important terrestrial carbon sink that would be largely diminished by re-cultivation, we argue that increasing agricultural output through re-cultivation or the expansion of grazing within Russia may be desirable from a global perspective, if the high environmental costs of production elsewhere are taken into account.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO), Halle, Germany

    Florian Schierhorn & Daniel Müller

  2. Fulbright Research Scholarship, International Institute of Education, New York, USA

    Alex Kramer Gittelson

  3. Department of Geography, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Daniel Müller

Authors
  1. Florian Schierhorn
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  2. Alex Kramer Gittelson
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  3. Daniel Müller
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Correspondence to Florian Schierhorn .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Inst. of European Ethnology & Integrativ, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Jörg Niewöhner

  2. Governance and Sustainability Lab, Trier University, Berlin, Germany

    Antje Bruns

  3. Dept. of Geography & IRI THESys, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Patrick Hostert

  4. Dept. of Geography & IRI THESys, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Tobias Krueger

  5. Dept. of Geography & IRI THESys, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Jonas Ø. Nielsen

  6. Institute of Social Ecology, Alpen-Adria University, Vienna, Austria

    Helmut Haberl

  7. Institute of Social Ecology, Alpen-Adria University, Vienna, Austria

    Christian Lauk

  8. Institute of Social Ecology, Alpen-Adria University, Vienna, Austria

    Juliana Lutz

  9. Halle (Saale) & IRI THESys, Leibniz Ins. for Agri. Devel. Trans. Eco, Berlin, Germany

    Daniel Müller

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Schierhorn, F., Gittelson, A.K., Müller, D. (2016). How the Collapse of the Beef Sector in Post-Soviet Russia Displaced Competition for Ecosystem Services to the Brazilian Amazon. In: Niewöhner, J., et al. Land Use Competition. Human-Environment Interactions, vol 6. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33628-2_10

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