The Road to Food Security and Climate Resilience Runs Through Forest Restoration

Countries have pledged more than 1 billion hectares for restoration, but the harder question is whether damaged landscapes are actually recovering. FAO’s The State of the World’s Forests 2026 shows that the next test is not bigger promises, but better finance, stronger governance and credible evidence that restoration delivers lasting ecological and economic gains.

Forests are increasingly being treated as infrastructure for climate stability, food systems, water security and rural livelihoods rather than as an isolated conservation concern. The State of the World's Forests 2026 report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) exposes a growing tension: global restoration commitments are expanding faster than the world's ability to demonstrate durable ecological recovery.

Forests cover about 4.14 billion hectares, roughly 32 percent of the Earth's land surface, and store vast amounts of carbon while supporting livelihoods and food security for a significant share of the global population. However, land degradation remains widespread, including hundreds of millions of hectares of forest land, while deforestation, fires, pests, disease and severe weather continue to erode ecological gains.

Restoration is unfolding on a moving baseline. Governments are not simply repairing past damage; they are attempting to recover landscapes while new pressures continue to emerge from agriculture, infrastructure, urbanization, energy demand and expanding consumption of forest products. The policy challenge is whether restoration can become strong enough to outpace ongoing degradation.

Global ambition has grown faster than evidence of lasting recovery

Over the past two decades, countries and international initiatives have committed more than 1 billion hectares of land to restoration. FAO also reports substantial areas already under restoration through national forest reporting and global biodiversity frameworks, showing that restoration has moved well beyond the margins of environmental policy.

FAO estimates that hundreds of millions of additional hectares still need to be restored to meet global targets. Progress also remains uneven between countries and regions, with implementation shaped by differences in finance, technical capacity, institutional strength and monitoring systems. The next phase of the restoration agenda will therefore depend less on announcing new hectares and more on demonstrating what has actually changed on the ground.

Past experience helps explain why this shift is necessary. Large-scale planting can expand tree cover without necessarily restoring ecological function, while poorly designed afforestation can produce limited biodiversity gains and create pressure on water systems or increase fire risks. Restoration quality increasingly depends on whether interventions fit the landscape, use appropriate species, support ecosystem function and remain viable long after initial funding ends.

Forest restoration is becoming an economic policy problem

Healthy forests and landscapes support agriculture, water regulation, climate resilience, employment, value chains and rural incomes, making land degradation a broader development risk rather than a problem confined to conservation agencies.

FAO estimates that under favourable conditions, restoration can generate substantial economic returns, although the benefits vary widely depending on the intervention, location and time horizon. Such estimates strengthen the case for investment, but they also reveal a structural problem: many of the benefits are long-term, dispersed across society and difficult to capture through conventional commercial models.

The financing challenge is thus significant. Restoration requires sustained capital over long periods, while many programmes still depend heavily on public funding. Private finance has potential through mechanisms such as blended finance, impact investment, carbon markets, biodiversity-related instruments and regenerative value chains, but commercial viability is far from automatic.

Investors may seek measurable returns within defined periods, while ecological recovery can take decades. Governments may prioritize climate and biodiversity commitments, while farmers and local communities may be more concerned with land productivity, water security, income and access to resources. Those different time horizons and expectations make restoration as much a governance problem as a financial one.

Who pays, who benefits and who controls the land will shape outcomes

Restoration changes the way landscapes are used, which means its costs and benefits are rarely distributed evenly. A programme that improves carbon storage or biodiversity at national level may still create restrictions, transition costs or new responsibilities for people living within the restoration area.

Local communities, land users and Indigenous Peoples are therefore central to whether restoration survives beyond the project cycle. Secure tenure, meaningful participation, recognition of rights and equitable benefit-sharing can determine whether people see restoration as a long-term opportunity or as an externally imposed land-use agenda.

The same tension applies to productive landscapes. Forest and landscape restoration often operates across areas where agriculture, grazing, forestry, settlements and water systems overlap. Returning every degraded area to dense forest is neither realistic nor necessarily desirable. In many places, the more relevant task is improving ecological function while maintaining livelihoods and production.

Agroforestry and other integrated land-use approaches are important in this context because they can combine soil recovery, tree cover, biodiversity and agricultural output. Their value lies in treating restoration as a landscape process rather than a single intervention, allowing different land uses to support one another instead of competing for space.

The credibility gap now lies in measurement

One of the biggest weaknesses in the global restoration system is the difficulty of comparing progress. Countries report through different frameworks, using different definitions, indicators and methodologies. Some systems track forest area, others ecosystem restoration, biodiversity targets, climate commitments or land degradation, making aggregation difficult.

The problem is not merely technical. If success is measured mainly in hectares, governments can show activity without demonstrating whether ecological health has improved. Long-term indicators such as species recovery, habitat connectivity, forest resilience, soil condition and socioeconomic outcomes remain less consistently measured.

FAO's approach points towards a broader model built around four connected areas: people, land, finance and business, and policy coherence and law. The underlying logic is straightforward. Restoration is unlikely to last if communities are excluded, if finance ends too early, if land-use planning is fragmented or if policies across agriculture, forestry, infrastructure and conservation work against one another.

The 2030 deadline will make those weaknesses harder to ignore. Countries may continue to expand the number of hectares entering restoration programmes, but credibility will increasingly depend on whether those hectares produce functioning landscapes capable of sustaining biodiversity, livelihoods and climate resilience over time.

The global restoration agenda has already moved beyond the stage of proving that degraded land deserves attention. Its next test is more demanding: proving that restoration can be financed, governed and measured well enough to convert political ambition into lasting ecological recovery.