Researchers find economic policies hold key to forest survival

The Amazon rainforest, one of Earth’s most vital environmental systems, is losing ground.

As vast stretches of tropical forest turn to dry, fire-prone savanna, the question evolves from how to stop deforestation to how to make forest protection a sustainable livelihood for the people who depend on it.

A new study led by Kelly Cobourn, associate professor in the Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation in the College of Natural Resources and Environment, reveals that the answer may not simply be to plant more trees. Instead, it will rely on strengthening property rights and creating economic incentives that make forest conservation a better deal than clearing land.

The research, published recently in Environment and Development Economics, introduces the first economic model that links human behavior, land-use decisions, and ecological tipping points in tropical forests.

Cobourn and her collaborators Greg Amacher, also of the Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation; Philippe Delacote of AgroParisTech-INRAE in France; and Hayou Wang, a Virginia Tech Ph.D. graduate, found that replanting forests offers only limited protection against ecosystem collapse. The most effective safeguard comes from policies that make it more profitable to preserve and manage standing forests than to exploit them.

“We’ve been trying to stop deforestation for decades, and it’s proven incredibly hard,” Cobourn said. “People started to look at reforestation as an alternative. If we can’t stop people from harvesting old forests, what if we encourage them to plant new ones? What we found is that while that helps a little, it’s not nearly enough to prevent ecosystem collapse.”

Modeling the economics of collapse

The team built a dynamic model to simulate how landowners in the Amazon might respond to different policies. The model integrates both economic and ecological variables — from the price of timber and agricultural crops to the costs of protecting land rights and the value of ecosystem services like carbon storage and rainfall regulation.

The findings show that economic drivers, not ecological ones, determine when a forest system crosses a tipping point. If harvesting old-growth forests remains cheaper and more profitable than maintaining them, the system inevitably trends toward collapse.

But when governments and international partners reduce the costs of securing land tenure, for example, by helping communities or small landholders gain enforceable rights to their land or raise the costs of clearing primary forests, the economics flip. Deforestation slows, and new income opportunities emerge from managing forests sustainably.

“We need to understand the human piece of the puzzle,” Cobourn said. “Deforestation isn’t just a biological process. It’s driven by people trying to make a living. If we design policies that make it easier for them to do that without cutting trees, we can protect both their livelihoods and the forest.”

A better investment in the long run

The study found that programs focused only on planting new trees yield small gains, delaying ecosystem collapse by just a few decades. By contrast, investments in tenure security and sustainable land-use enforcement could extend the lifespan of forest ecosystems by centuries while maintaining economic productivity.

“In purely economic terms, securing land rights is a higher return on investment than planting new forests,” Cobourn said. “It’s a strong economic development strategy for countries seeking sustainable growth.”

These findings challenge a long-standing assumption in global environmental policy: that reforestation can counteract the loss of ecological and economic functions when old-growth forests are cut. The approach assumes that secondary forests, even when replanted, rarely provide the same biodiversity, moisture retention, or resilience as native forests. Because these ecological differences limit the ability of replanted areas to function like intact forests, the study shows that afforestation cannot fully counteract the effects of deforestation.

That difference has real economic consequences. As forests degrade, regional agriculture suffers from reduced rainfall, soil fertility declines, and long-term land value drops. The loss of these ecosystem services, the study shows, could far outweigh the short-term profits from logging or clearing land for crops.

Building international solutions

Cobourn developed the research during a research leave in France, working with Delacote at AgroParisTech-INRAE, part of a collaboration linking Virginia Tech’s expertise in forest economics with international partners focused on climate and sustainable development.

“This publication is part of a long-standing collaboration between researchers from Virginia Tech and INRAE,” Delacote said. “The use of economic modeling of forest dynamics provides a valuable complement to empirical work and impact analyses to guide global forest policy, particularly for highlighting underlying economic mechanisms, addressing situations where data are difficult to obtain, or when the analysis involves a strong prospective component.

From research to real-world impact

While the model was built for the Amazon, its lessons apply globally, wherever people face the trade-offs between economic growth and environmental stability.

Cobourn sees the work as a starting point for a new wave of research that connects economics, policy, and ecology.

“This is the first step in understanding how economic forces drive ecological tipping points,” she said. “But it’s also a step toward designing solutions that let people prosper because they’re protecting the forest, not in spite of it.”

Original study: DOI 10.1017/S1355770X25100089