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View all search resultsWe know how to bring degraded land back to life
Restoring our degraded lands is no longer optional: It is a proven, high-return investment in our climate, economies and survival.
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A guide leads a boat tour on Sept. 19, 2024, through Bali’s Ngurah Rai Forest Park, a mangrove conservation park spanning 1,373.5 hectares in Denpasar. (Kompas.com/Wahyu Adityo Prodjo)
F
orests are living ecosystems that thrive on balance. When that balance breaks down, forests suffer, losing their capacity to deliver the vital services on which communities and economies depend.
This crisis is unfolding across the globe, and restoring damaged forests and degraded landscapes can no longer be treated as optional. It represents our most viable path toward securing food supplies, achieving climate and biodiversity targets, sustaining livelihoods and building a resilient, sustainable economy.
First, we must grasp the scale of the loss.
Between 1990 and 2025, an estimated 489 million hectares of forests were lost to outright deforestation, cleared permanently for other uses. Yet an almost equal area of over 460 million ha stands degraded worldwide. These forests remain upright but they are depleted, structurally damaged and incapable of functioning as healthy ecosystems.
This degradation stems from unsustainable land use, including overgrazing and overharvesting, as well as rapid urbanization, destructive wildfires, pest outbreaks, invasive species and climate-induced drought. Consequently, the capacity of forests to regulate the global climate, shelter biodiversity, stabilize soils and yield clean water is severely compromised even as global demand for food, timber, energy, and land-based resources escalates.
The crisis extends far beyond forest canopies. Across the planet, 1.56 billion ha of land are currently degraded, spanning woodlands, croplands, pastures, drylands and wetlands.
In short, the gap between what nature can provide and what humanity demands continues to widen. The fallout is profound: fragile agricultural supply chains, accelerating biodiversity loss, heightened climate vulnerability and squandered economic potential.
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