About

Robert Heilmayr is an interdisciplinary land system scientist who integrates approaches from economics, geography, and ecology to investigate how society uses and governs natural resources. He holds the position of Associate Professor in the Environmental Studies Program and the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). Additionally, he serves as the Land and Freshwater Program Director at the Environmental Markets Lab. Robert earned his Ph.D. from the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program for Environment and Resources at Stanford University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Carlson Lab at the University of Hawaii. His work reflects a commitment to understanding complex environmental systems through a multidisciplinary lens, combining social and natural science perspectives to address pressing conservation and resource management challenges.

Research topics

• Environmental science
• Geography
• Ecology
• Biology
• Economics
• Agroforestry
• Environmental protection
• Environmental resource management
• Business
• Natural resource economics
• Forestry
• Agricultural economics

Selected publications

• Causal Inference for Biodiversity Conservation

  Review of Environmental Economics and Policy · 2026-01-01

  articleSenior author

  Rigorous evidence detailing the myriad interconnections between humans and ecosystems will be critical to slow the loss of biodiversity. Effective conservation interventions will depend upon a detailed understanding of the benefits that biodiversity provides to people, the ways that human activities drive biodiversity decline, and the potential for conservation policies to stem this decline. Although hundreds of papers explore these relationships, a careful review of this literature shows that the overwhelming majority of studies fall short of documenting causal relationships with biodiversity per se. However, a combination of data and methodological advances has led to rapid growth of quasi-experimental analyses that are advancing our understanding of human interactions with biodiversity in three domains. First, economists have provided valuable insights into the causes of biodiversity loss, which complement traditional ecological experiments by better reflecting real-world conditions. Second, quasi-experimental studies have begun to identify which policy interventions, in what contexts, have slowed biodiversity loss. Finally, recent quasi-experimental studies have shown that the loss of species can impose extremely large costs on humanity but that these costs vary widely depending upon the species and opportunities for human adaptation.

  PublisherDOI

• Author response for "A Causal Inference Framework for Climate Change Attribution in Ecology"

  2025-05-19

  peer-review
  PublisherDOI

• Triangulating habitat suitability for the locally extirpated California grizzly bear

  Biological Conservation · 2025-02-07 · 1 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Uneven participation of independent and contract smallholders in certified palm oil mill markets in Indonesia

  Communications Earth & Environment · 2025-08-30 · 7 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Sustainability requirements imposed on agricultural producers by downstream supply chain actors risk excluding smallholder farmers from upgraded markets. Here we investigated smallholder participation in sustainably certified palm oil mill markets in Indonesia. We developed and applied a conceptual model to estimate the importance of structural market access, smallholder capacity, and buyer/seller behavior in shaping mill smallholder sourcing. Smallholders who hold exclusive contracts with specific mills were overrepresented at certified mills. Independent smallholders unaffiliated with mills contributed one-third of regional oil palm production but 7% of certified mill supply. We found no evidence that independent smallholders exited markets after mill certification (“active” exclusion). Instead, only 36% of certified mills ever purchased from independent smallholders, and independent smallholder lands were less common around certified (29–38% of palm area) versus noncertified (41–42%) mills. To address such “passive” exclusion, supply chain governance programs should encourage participation of actors well-positioned to source from small-scale producers.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Improving Smallholder Representation in Crop Maps

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• A Causal Inference Framework for Climate Change Attribution in Ecology

  Ecology Letters · 2025-08-01 · 6 citations

  articleOpen access

  As climate change increasingly affects biodiversity and ecosystem services, a key challenge in ecology is accurate attribution of these impacts. Though experimental studies have greatly advanced our understanding of climate change effects, experimental results are difficult to generalise to real-world scenarios. To better capture realised impacts, ecologists can use observational data. Disentangling cause and effect using observational data, however, requires careful research design. Here we describe advances in causal inference that can improve climate change attribution in observational settings. Our framework includes five steps: (1) describe the theoretical foundation, (2) choose appropriate observational datasets, (3) estimate the causal relationships of interest, (4) simulate a counterfactual scenario and (5) evaluate results and assumptions using robustness checks. We demonstrate this framework using a pinyon pine case study in North America, and we conclude with a discussion of frontiers in climate change attribution. Our aim is to provide an accessible foundation for applying observational causal inference to estimate climate change effects on ecological systems.

  PublisherDOI

• Environmental Impacts of Indigenous Land Restitution in Chile

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Smallholder participation in zero-deforestation supply chain initiatives in the Indonesian palm oil sector: Challenges, opportunities, and limitations

  Elementa Science of the Anthropocene · 2024-01-01 · 16 citations

  articleOpen access

  As actors in tropical agricultural commodity supply chains implement commitments to end deforestation, they risk exacerbating social inequities by excluding smallholder farmers, who are important producers of many tropical commodity crops. Here, we explore the potential for independent oil palm smallholders in Indonesia to participate in zero-deforestation supply chains. We find that these smallholders are underrepresented in the share of zero-deforestation compliant oil palm production. We then synthesize perspectives from key actors in the oil palm industry including smallholders and their representatives, palm oil producing and consulting companies, nongovernmental organizations, and academic researchers. Based on these perspectives, we find that challenges to smallholder supply chain participation include limitations in knowledge (e.g., smallholders may not know the location of protected forests), institutional issues (e.g., absence of trust between oil palm growing companies and smallholder farmers), and financial constraints (e.g., the opportunity cost of not clearing forest). To address these shortcomings, we encourage oil palm growing and milling companies to take the lead on incentivizing, supporting, and facilitating smallholder participation in zero-deforestation initiatives. Specifically, these companies could build and use their technical and political resources to identify and map all forests in their entire supply shed and ensure small producers have land rights that enable participation in zero-deforestation supply chains. These policy levers would need to be combined with economic incentives such as access to improved inputs or price premia for their products. However, we caution that smallholder integration into existing zero-deforestation supply chains alone is unlikely to result in significant additional forest conservation at scale in Indonesia due to selection bias, leakage, and existing land tenure norms. Community-led and jurisdictional or landscape-scale supply chain initiatives that acknowledge multi-commodity production are more likely to provide equitable and just avenues for Indonesian smallholder farmers to steward forest resources.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• How well does the implementation of corporate zero-deforestation commitments in Indonesia align with aims to halt deforestation and include smallholders?

  Environmental Research Letters · 2024-03-28 · 5 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract In response to growing scrutiny surrounding commodity-driven deforestation, companies have introduced zero-deforestation commitments (ZDCs) with ambitious environmental and social targets. However, such initiatives may not effectively reduce deforestation if they are not aligned with the spatial extent of remaining forests at risk. They may also fail to avert socio-economic risks if ZDCs do not consider smallholder farmers’ needs. We assess the spatial and functional fit of ZDCs by mapping commodity-driven deforestation and socio-economic risks, and comparing them to the spatial coverage and implementation of ZDCs in the Indonesian palm oil sector. Our study finds that companies’ ZDCs often underperform in four areas: traceability, compliance support for high-risk palm oil mills, transparency, and smallholder inclusion. In 2020, only one-third of companies sourcing from their own mills, and just 6% of those sourcing from external suppliers, achieved full traceability to plantations. Comparing the reach of ZDCs adopted by downstream buyers with those adopted by mill owners located further upstream, we find that high-quality ZDCs from buyers covered 62% of forests at risk, while mill owners’ ZDCs only covered 23% of forests at risk within the mill supply base. In Kalimantan and Papua, the current and future deforestation frontiers, the forests most at risk of conversion were predominantly covered by weak ZDCs lacking in policy comprehensiveness and implementation. Additionally, we find that only 46% of independent smallholder oil palm plots are in mill supply sheds whose owners offer programs and support for independent smallholders, indicating that smallholder inclusion is a significant challenge for ZDC companies. These results highlight the lack of spatial and functional alignment between supply chain policies and their local context as a significant gap in ZDC implementation and a challenge that the EU Deforestation Regulation will face.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A causal inference framework for climate change attribution in ecology

  2024-12-06 · 2 citations

  preprintOpen access

  As climate change increasingly affects biodiversity and ecosystem services, a key challenge in ecology is accurate attribution of these impacts. Though experimental studies have greatly advanced our understanding of climate change impacts on ecological systems, experimental results are difficult to generalize to real-world scenarios. To better capture realized impacts, ecologists can use observational data. Disentangling cause and effect using observational data, however, requires careful research design. Here we describe advances in causal inference that can improve climate change attribution in observational settings. Our framework includes five steps: 1) describe the theoretical foundation, 2) choose appropriate observational data sets, 3) design a causal inference analysis, 4) estimate a counterfactual scenario, and 5) evaluate assumptions and results using robustness checks. We then demonstrate this framework using a case study focused on detecting climate change impacts on whitebark pine growth in California’s Sierra Nevada. We conclude with a discussion of challenges and frontiers in ecological climate change attribution. Our aim is to provide an accessible foundation for applying observational causal inference to climate change attribution in ecology.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Kimberly M. Carlson

  University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

  19 shared

• Éric F. Lambin

  Stanford University

  18 shared

• Rachael Garrett

  University of Cambridge

  12 shared

• Praveen Noojipady

  Science Systems and Applications (United States)

  9 shared

• Cristián Echeverría

  8 shared

• Barbara Haya

  University of California, Berkeley

  8 shared

• Gary D. Paoli

  University of Hawaii System

  7 shared

• Patrick Meyfroidt

  UCLouvain

  7 shared

Labs

• Conservation economics labPI

Education

• Ph.D., Emmett Interdisciplinary Program for Environment and Resources

  Stanford University

  2016

• B.A.

  Claremont McKenna College

  2006