Global land use change, economic globalization, and the looming land scarcity are critical challenges for sustainability. This article explores how economic globalization accelerates land conversion through mechanisms like displacement, rebound, cascade, and remittance effects. Developing countries have managed to increase both forest cover and agricultural production by using strategies such as agricultural intensification, land use zoning, forest protection, and reliance on imported food and wood products. These successes suggest that sound policies and innovations can reconcile forest preservation with food production. Globalization can be harnessed to increase land use efficiency rather than leading to uncontrolled land use expansion. Land systems should be understood and modeled as open systems with large flows of goods, people, and capital that connect local land use with global-scale factors. Land changes are a major driver of global environmental change, with agricultural expansion in natural ecosystems being the most significant form of land conversion. Strategies to control this expansion include land use zoning and agricultural intensification. However, economic globalization and the scarcity of productive land may render these strategies less effective. Globalization increases the interconnectedness of places and people through markets, information, and capital flows, human migrations, and social and political institutions. The cross-border trade in food commodities has increased significantly, and the trade in raw wood products has also increased. Agricultural intensification or land use zoning in a country may trigger compensating changes in trade flows, affecting land use in other countries. Economic globalization also increases the influence of large agribusiness enterprises and international financial flows on local land use decisions. However, trade can increase global land use efficiency by allowing regional specialization in land use and productivity increases in response to a global shortage of productive land. The article analyzes the challenges and opportunities for preserving natural forest ecosystems while enhancing food production in tropical developing countries under conditions of scarcity of unused productive cropland and economic globalization. It draws on examples from a few developing countries that have succeeded in increasing both forest cover and agricultural production. These successes suggest that designing policies to reconcile development with nature conservation requires understanding land change as part of global-scale, open systems. The article also discusses the concept of land change, the global food equation, and the impact of land use changes on the environment. It highlights the increasing scarcity of land as a global resource and the need for efficient land use allocation and innovation in agriculture. The article also discusses the influence of globalization on land use change, including the displacement, rebound, cascade, and remittance effects. It concludes that economic globalization combined with the looming global land scarcity increases the complexity of future pathways of land use change. However, some developing countries have managed to navigate a transition toward more efficient land use through various strategies. The article emphasizes the importance of understanding land use as part of open and complex human-environment systems dominated by long-distance flows of commodities, capital, and people. The possibility of a global land use transition with a concomitant increase in agricultural production and forest area remains to be investigated.Global land use change, economic globalization, and the looming land scarcity are critical challenges for sustainability. This article explores how economic globalization accelerates land conversion through mechanisms like displacement, rebound, cascade, and remittance effects. Developing countries have managed to increase both forest cover and agricultural production by using strategies such as agricultural intensification, land use zoning, forest protection, and reliance on imported food and wood products. These successes suggest that sound policies and innovations can reconcile forest preservation with food production. Globalization can be harnessed to increase land use efficiency rather than leading to uncontrolled land use expansion. Land systems should be understood and modeled as open systems with large flows of goods, people, and capital that connect local land use with global-scale factors. Land changes are a major driver of global environmental change, with agricultural expansion in natural ecosystems being the most significant form of land conversion. Strategies to control this expansion include land use zoning and agricultural intensification. However, economic globalization and the scarcity of productive land may render these strategies less effective. Globalization increases the interconnectedness of places and people through markets, information, and capital flows, human migrations, and social and political institutions. The cross-border trade in food commodities has increased significantly, and the trade in raw wood products has also increased. Agricultural intensification or land use zoning in a country may trigger compensating changes in trade flows, affecting land use in other countries. Economic globalization also increases the influence of large agribusiness enterprises and international financial flows on local land use decisions. However, trade can increase global land use efficiency by allowing regional specialization in land use and productivity increases in response to a global shortage of productive land. The article analyzes the challenges and opportunities for preserving natural forest ecosystems while enhancing food production in tropical developing countries under conditions of scarcity of unused productive cropland and economic globalization. It draws on examples from a few developing countries that have succeeded in increasing both forest cover and agricultural production. These successes suggest that designing policies to reconcile development with nature conservation requires understanding land change as part of global-scale, open systems. The article also discusses the concept of land change, the global food equation, and the impact of land use changes on the environment. It highlights the increasing scarcity of land as a global resource and the need for efficient land use allocation and innovation in agriculture. The article also discusses the influence of globalization on land use change, including the displacement, rebound, cascade, and remittance effects. It concludes that economic globalization combined with the looming global land scarcity increases the complexity of future pathways of land use change. However, some developing countries have managed to navigate a transition toward more efficient land use through various strategies. The article emphasizes the importance of understanding land use as part of open and complex human-environment systems dominated by long-distance flows of commodities, capital, and people. The possibility of a global land use transition with a concomitant increase in agricultural production and forest area remains to be investigated.