About

Susanna Hecht is a professor associated with UCLA Luskin, with a focus on public policy, social welfare, urban planning, and real estate development. The provided page text does not include specific details about her research focus, background, or key contributions. Therefore, a detailed biography cannot be generated from the available information.

Research topics

• Geography
• Ecology
• Environmental science
• Agroforestry
• Archaeology
• Geology
• Biology
• Cartography
• Paleontology
• Physical geography
• Earth science
• Environmental resource management

Selected publications

• What factors protected forests in the Brazilian Amazon and Indonesia? A Delphi study

  2025-01-22

  preprintOpen access

  What factors have been most important for protecting the two-thirds of tropical forests that remain standing? Qualitative factors like politics and governance are challenging to assess using existing statistical methods. To address this gap, we conducted a Delphi study with 36 experts to identify factors that contributed to forest protection in the Brazilian Amazon and Indonesia. Our results unpacked the complex dynamics affecting forest protection in both regions and highlighted the importance of political will, advocacy by civil society, and intergovernmental diplomacy, as well as shifts in factors' importance over time. Our analysis in Brazil emphasised the central importance of the state, while our findings in Indonesia revealed a complex and evolving mix of public, private and civil society factors. These results shed new light on the critical intersections of international advocacy and local policy contexts to generate enabling conditions for conservation.

  PublisherDOI

• Saving a Rainforest and Losing the World: Conservation and Displacement in the Global Tropics

  The AAG Review of Books · 2025-10-07 · 1 citations

  article1st author
  PublisherDOI

• What factors protected forests in the Brazilian Amazon and Indonesia? A Delphi study

  2025-01-22

  preprintOpen access

  What factors have been most important for protecting the two-thirds of tropical forests that remain standing? Qualitative factors like politics and governance are challenging to assess using existing statistical methods. To address this gap, we conducted a Delphi study with 36 experts to identify factors that contributed to forest protection in the Brazilian Amazon and Indonesia. Our results unpacked the complex dynamics affecting forest protection in both regions and highlighted the importance of political will, advocacy by civil society, and intergovernmental diplomacy, as well as shifts in factors' importance over time. Our analysis in Brazil emphasised the central importance of the state, while our findings in Indonesia revealed a complex and evolving mix of public, private and civil society factors. These results shed new light on the critical intersections of international advocacy and local policy contexts to generate enabling conditions for conservation.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Behind the Myth: Land Sparing and Deforestation in Brazil

  Journal of Agrarian Change · 2025-09-25

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  ABSTRACT The land sparing model, that is, the idea that agricultural intensification fosters environmental protection, lacks empirical validation. In Brazil, sustainable intensification through the conversion of degraded pastures into agricultural areas became a promising and widespread solution to deforestation. We investigate the mismatch between the land sparing discourse and the reality of productive and territorial strategies of large soybean producers in Brazil. We combined documental, fieldwork and secondary data from old (Mato Grosso), intermediate (Pará) and recent agricultural frontiers (Roraima). We argue that the land sparing narrative relies on a conceptual separation between modern agriculture and a land extensive ‘backward agriculture’ (on deforestation fronts). We show that many agroindustrial enterprises expand their activities from consolidated areas to agricultural frontiers, maintaining farms in both regions. For the agribusiness sector, maintaining the myth of sustainable ecological intensification is crucial to conceal its role in opening up new deforestation fronts across South America.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Fomentando a conectividade em paisagens de produção: Apoio a sistemas multifuncionais para a biodiversidade e o bem-estar

  2025-11-11

  report

  Os sistemas de produção multifuncionais são administrados há muito tempo pelos Povos Indígenas (PIs) e pelas Comunidades Locais (CLs) na Amazônia. Esses sistemas fornecem alimentos juntamente com outros itens essenciais para uma boa qualidade de vida - como medicamentos, materiais artesanais e de construção - ao mesmo tempo em que sustentam a biodiversidade, as funções do ecossistema, o patrimônio cultural e as economias locais. Em contrapartida, os modelos de desenvolvimento dominantes promoveram monoculturas e pastagens extensivas, que agora ocupam a maior parte das áreas desmatadas na região. Apesar dessas mudanças, os sistemas de produção multifuncionais persistem ao longo do tempo, evoluem e formam a espinha dorsal das economias amazônicas que se baseiam na sociobiodiversidade. No entanto, eles enfrentam ameaças convergentes: invisibilidade estatística, erosão do conhecimento indígena e local, fragilidade econômica, declínio da produtividade, infraestrutura fraca, restrições de mão de obra e riscos climáticos crescentes. Este capítulo aborda a configuração atual dos sistemas de produção na Amazônia e suas principais implicações sociais, econômicas e ambientais, ao mesmo tempo em que considera suas contribuições para a conectividade da paisagem. Ele mostra como os sistemas de produção multifuncionais oferecem caminhos viáveis para a restauração de áreas degradadas e a adoção de usos da terra na Amazônia mais ecologicamente resilientes, climaticamente adaptáveis, economicamente viáveis, inclusivos e sustentáveis. Este capítulo também destaca as compensações socioeconômicas e ambientais inerentes às diferentes configurações de uso da terra, mostrando que os sistemas multifuncionais podem melhorar a integridade ecológica e, ao mesmo tempo, gerar empregos, fornecer produtos e apoiar o patrimônio cultural. Apresentamos caminhos e mecanismos que podem apoiar paisagens multifuncionais complexas. Esses caminhos e mecanismos incluem a transformação dos paradigmas de construção de conhecimento, dos sistemas de financiamento e da posse da terra, bem como a adaptação dos mecanismos de crédito existentes. Nossa abordagem também envolve a capacitação das comunidades para liderar empreendimentos comerciais e desenvolver cadeias de suprimentos de valor agregado, além de reformular as políticas públicas e a opinião pública em apoio aos sistemas de produção multifuncionais. Continuar a reconhecer e fortalecer os sistemas de produção multifuncionais desenvolvidos por comunidades indígenas e rurais é vital para moldar uma Amazônia futura que seja socialmente justa, social e ecologicamente conectada, adaptável e economicamente viável.

  PublisherDOI

• Political Will Has Been Critical for Protecting Forests in the Brazilian Amazon and Indonesia

  Conservation Letters · 2025-07-01 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  ABSTRACT Deforestation remains a prominent contributor to climate change and biodiversity loss. Yet while 76 million hectares of primary tropical forest have been lost since 2000, two thirds of tropical forests remain. What factors have been most important for protecting these forests? Unlike policies, which often have clearly defined spatial and temporal boundaries, the roles played by dynamic underlying political and economic structures, and their interactions with policies and emergent factors, can be challenging to identify. Expert knowledge can bridge this gap by revealing the full range of factors needed to achieve forest protection. Here, we conducted a Delphi study with 36 experts, focusing on the Brazilian Amazon and Indonesia. Our results highlight the importance of political will, civil society advocacy, and intergovernmental diplomacy, and shifts in the importance of different factors over time. These findings illuminate the interactions between international and national structures and policies in generating the conditions for forest protection.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• EPILOGUE: THE INTERIOR AND THE SCALE OF HISTORY

  University of Texas Press eBooks · 2024-12-31

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Complex, diverse and changing agribusiness and livelihood systems in the Amazon

  Acta Amazonica · 2024-01-01 · 9 citations

  articleOpen access

  ABSTRACT Finding pathways to more sustainable agriculture and resource use remains the most pressing challenge for Amazonian countries. Characterizing recent changes in the structure and types of agrarian production systems, this review identifies responses to deal with the challenges and opportunities to promote more sustainable production and extraction economies in the Amazon. While regional agriculture and resource economies rest on a rich diversity of producers, knowledge, and production systems, the expansion of agribusiness enterprises has come to dominate the distribution of subsidies, institutional support, and logistical infrastructure. These trends are associated with forest loss and degradation, pollution of waterways, pressures on and/or displacement of indigenous and rural communities, and increased greenhouse gas emissions, all of which undermine ecosystem services. We analyzed the diverse and complex impacts of socio-economic and hydro-climatic changes on livelihoods, environments and biodiversity in Amazonian countries, with a more in-depth focus on changes in key agrarian production systems in the Brazilian Amazon using agrarian census data from 1995, 2006, and 2017. The quantitative analysis is complemented by a qualitative and empirically grounded discussion that provides insights into the changes and impacts of different activities, how they are interlinked, and how they differ across Amazonian countries. Finally, we provide recommendations towards promoting adaptive, profitable, and more sustainable smallholder production and management systems that reduce deforestation and support local communities and economies in the context of increasing urbanization and climate change.

  PublisherDOI

• Critical transitions in the Amazon forest system

  Nature · 2024 · 494 citations

  • Environmental science
  • Agroforestry
  • Geography

  . Long existing feedbacks between the forest and environmental conditions are being replaced by novel feedbacks that modify ecosystem resilience, increasing the risk of critical transition. Here we analyse existing evidence for five major drivers of water stress on Amazonian forests, as well as potential critical thresholds of those drivers that, if crossed, could trigger local, regional or even biome-wide forest collapse. By combining spatial information on various disturbances, we estimate that by 2050, 10% to 47% of Amazonian forests will be exposed to compounding disturbances that may trigger unexpected ecosystem transitions and potentially exacerbate regional climate change. Using examples of disturbed forests across the Amazon, we identify the three most plausible ecosystem trajectories, involving different feedbacks and environmental conditions. We discuss how the inherent complexity of the Amazon adds uncertainty about future dynamics, but also reveals opportunities for action. Keeping the Amazon forest resilient in the Anthropocene will depend on a combination of local efforts to end deforestation and degradation and to expand restoration, with global efforts to stop greenhouse gas emissions.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Colonial Exiles: The Tambora Volcanic Explosion, Environmental History, and Swiss Immigration to Nova Friburgo, Brazil, 1815–1821

  Hispanic American Historical Review · 2024-06-26

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract The 1815 eruption of the Indonesian volcano Mount Tambora triggered a subsistence crisis in Europe, especially in Switzerland. This article retraces the founding of Nova Friburgo, a colony in the mountains near Rio de Janeiro composed of several hundred Swiss families, mostly from the rural canton of Fribourg. This study shows how the unusual central European settler migration to the Brazilian tropics was facilitated by a new class of entrepreneurial go-betweens, acting as dynamic mediators between the effects that the climatic catastrophe caused by Tambora had on Swiss agriculture and politics and the development requirements for building new settlements in a metamorphosing South American continent. By positioning Brazil in the broader environmental history of Tambora, as well as the fallout from the Napoleonic Wars, this article sheds light on how the study of climatic teleconnections requires multiple scales of analysis to understand better how the different politics and scopes of action, and sets of unlikely processes, move into play. These teleconnections were, in fact, socially mediated with eventually wide-reaching social and racial transformations that became foundational prototypes for Brazilian land colonization throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth century.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Rubial Antonio

  University at Albany, State University of New York

  36 shared

• Georgette Magassy Dorn

  Biblioteca del Congreso de la Nación

  36 shared

• Romin Teratol

  Academy of American Franciscan History

  36 shared

• Jiirgen Buchenau

  Academy of American Franciscan History

  36 shared

• Maya Stanfield‐Mazzi

  36 shared

• Judy Bieber

  Academy of American Franciscan History

  36 shared

• Antzelmo Peres

  Academy of American Franciscan History

  36 shared

• My By

  Academy of American Franciscan History

  36 shared

Labs

• Susanna Hecht LabPI

Education

• Ph.D., Environmental Science and Engineering

  University of California, Los Angeles

  1990

• M.S., Environmental Science and Engineering

  University of California, Los Angeles

  1986

• B.S., Environmental Science

  University of California, Los Angeles

  1983

Awards & honors

• David Livingstone Medal from the American Geographical Socie…
• Carl O. Sauer Award
• Best Book in Environmental History from the American Histori…