CASAS’ member Amit John Kurien has published this paper with Catherine M. Hepp, Xiaoye Tong & Thilde Bech Bruun in One Earth.

Abstract:

Shifting cultivation is often stigmatized as destructive, blamed for deforestation, and as a contributor to climate change. Many remote sensing studies have attempted to map its extent and estimate its role in deforestation, but misunderstandings about the practice and methodological flaws in mapping have led to misleading conclusions and misguided policies. A recent highly cited paper found shifting cultivation to be a major driver of global forest loss. We not only critique these estimations, highlighting conceptual and empirical flaws, but also showcase how they proliferate in citing literature. We propose a conceptual framework that corrects these flaws by distinguishing the various land covers found within a shifting cultivation landscape and forcing attention to the dynamics therein. We urge scientists to refine mapping methodologies and develop spatiotemporal data tailored to such dynamic landscapes. Mischaracterizing shifting cultivation risks unjustly blaming a system that supports millions of marginalized communities in the Global South.

You can read their paper here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2026.101706

CASAS

The Collective of Agrarian Scholar-Activists from the Global South (CASAS) is a community of Scholar-Activists working in critical agrarian studies.