UCAM Conservation and Development Lab

A conservation research group based at the University of Cambridge under the direction of Principle Investigator Prof Rachael Garrett. Research combines four major innovations to overcome the methodological and geographical limitations of the existing literature on company supply chain policies: i) a coordinated pan-tropical data analysis of multiple forest risk commodities, ii) the simultaneous examination of conservation and livelihood outcomes, including newly accessible remotely sensed estimates of forest degradation, iii) assessing mechanisms of impact, not just measures of impact, and iv) a comparative study with triangulation across multiple scales and methods. We conduct coordinated fieldwork across the world’s largest tropical hotspots (focus sites in Brazil, West Africa and Indonesia) of commodity-driven deforestation and urgent areas of reforestation. We aim to generate comparative and generalisable insights on the conditions under which forest-focused supply chains might lead to both improved conservation and livelihood outcomes (e.g., effectiveness and equity). The aim of our group is to provide empirical evidence and theoretical knowledge on how to design effective and equitable private policies. We partner with a wide range of institutions and colleagues, including at EMBRAPA, IPB University, University of Queensland Australia, the University of Zürich, CGIAR/CIAT, UC Louvain, SEI, New York University, Basel University and UC Santa Barbara.