Leakage: protecting one biome or commodity displaces clearing to less-protected savannas and dry forests

The problem

When pressure is applied to one biome or one commodity, the clearing does not necessarily stop — it moves. The clearest documented case is the Amazon Soy Moratorium, which banned soy grown on newly cleared Amazon land but left the neighbouring Cerrado savanna unprotected. Soy and pasture expansion then concentrated in the Cerrado, which has in several recent years been the hardest-hit biome in Brazil, accounting for more than half of national native-vegetation loss. The Cerrado is one of the world's most biodiverse savannas and a critical recharge zone for major river basins, yet it has weaker legal protection than rainforest.

Why it is hard

• Savannas and dry forests are politically and culturally undervalued relative to iconic rainforest, so they attract less protection, funding and media attention.
• Commodity-specific or biome-specific rules create a clean "legal" frontier just outside their boundary.
• Leakage can also cross borders (to other countries' forests) and commodities (from soy to cattle, or to a non-covered crop).

What a solution needs to address

Extending monitoring, supply-chain commitments and legal protection to all native vegetation and all commodities at once, rather than biome- or commodity-by-commodity; and jurisdictional (territory-wide) approaches that reward a whole region for reducing total clearing, closing the displacement gap.