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Land use and deforestation: from cocoa landscapes to global sustainability targets by Cécile RENIER -
Lundi 17 novembre 2025 à 16h15 - Auditoire SUD01 - Croix du Sud - 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve -
To address the climate and ecological breakdown, multiple forms of interventions are being deployed, such as ‘zero-deforestation’ commitments for commodity supply chains, renewable energy, or nature-based solutions. Leveraging Earth Observation data and spatial analyses, this thesis aims at bringing an improved understanding of the land use outcomes and the limitations of these sustainability interventions, and at exploring how to improve approaches to sustainability.
Focussing first on the two major cocoa producing countries, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, the thesis assesses the supply chain’s traceability and transparency and the direct and indirect deforestation induced by cocoa. It shows that narrow sustainability interventions limited to a single crop and specific segments of the supply chain face leakages and are insufficient to stop deforestation.
Moving to the global level, the thesis assesses major land demands foreseen by 2050, showing that, together, land-based sustainability targets and pledges for conservation, restoration, renewable energy and bioenergy, and major land demands for food, fiber and timber amount to an area larger than the ice-free land surface and have important overlaps.
The thesis concludes with an analysis of the underlying causes of the climate and ecological breakdown. To mitigate the global land ‘squeeze’, it calls for breaking silos and for a systemic approach to sustainability – ultimately seeking sufficiency to reduce production and overconsumption.
Jury members :
Prof. Patrick Meyfroidt (Supervisor), UCLouvain
Prof. Goedele Van den Broeck (Supervisor), UCLouvain
Prof. Kristof Van Oost (Chairperson), UCLouvain
Prof. Erasmus zu Ermgassen (Secretary), UCLouvain
Prof. Rachael Garrett, Cambridge University
Dr. Eric Mensah Kumeh, University of Oxford
Dr. Perrine Laroche, Independent researcher
Pay attention : the public defense of Cécile RENIER will also take place in the form of a videoconference
