How feasible are global forest restoration commitments?
Open accessAbstract
Numerous countries have made voluntary commitments to conduct forest landscape restoration over millions of hectares of degraded land in the coming decade. We consider the relative likelihood these countries will achieve their restoration commitments. Across countries, the area committed to restoration increased with existing forest and plantation area, but was inversely related to development status, with less developed countries pledging more area. Restoration commitments are generally large (median: 2 million hectares) and will be challenging to meet without the wholesale transformation of food production systems. Indeed, one third of countries committed >10% of their land area to restoration (maximum: 81%). Furthermore, high rates of land cover change may reverse gains: a quarter of countries experienced recent deforestation and agricultural expansion that exceeded their restoration commitment area. The limited progress reported by countries, and the sheer scale of commitments, raises serious questions about long‐term success, especially absent necessary monitoring and management plans.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Commitments under the Bonn Challenge and other voluntary restoration targets in 2019 resulted in the aim of restoring a total of 230 million hectares of forest.
“Commitments under the Bonn Challenge and other voluntary restoration targets in 2019 resulted in the aim of restoring a total of 230 million hectares of forest (137).”
From Restoring Degraded Lands (2021) · cites this paper as [137]
Section 2.1 (Source data; page unavailable) says the authors compiled Bonn Challenge pledges and other voluntary national restoration targets, supporting that part of the claim. Neither that section nor the retrieved passages give a combined target of 230 million hectares for 2019; the specific total is therefore unsupported by our copy. (LLM, conf=0.83)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredThe commitments of approximately a quarter of countries are larger than the existing forest or agricultural areas in those countries, which implies the need for enormous transformation in current land-use practices and agricultural and forest economies.
“However, the commitments of approximately a quarter of countries are larger than the existing forest or agricultural areas in those countries, which implies the need for enormous transformation in current land-use practices and agricultural and forest economies (137; see also Section 4.2).”
From Restoring Degraded Lands (2021) · cites this paper as [137]
Split into 2 atoms — 1 confirmed, 1 partially supported, 0 disputed, 0 misattributed, 0 unverifiable. Expand the claim to see per-atom verdicts.
Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Cites
Dynamics of global forest area: Results from the FAO Global Forest Resources Assessment 2015
Keenan, R. J., Reams, G. A., Achard, F., de Freitas, J. V., Grainger, A., & Lindquist, E. (2015) · Forest Ecology and Management · doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2015.06.014 · Cited by 1,656 · see citing works
Global restoration opportunities in tropical rainforest landscapes
Brancalion, P. H. S., Niamir, A., Broadbent, E., Crouzeilles, R., Barros, F. S. M., Almeyda Zambrano, A. M., Baccini, A., Aronson, J., Goetz, S., Reid, J. L., et al. (2019) · Science Advances · doi:10.1126/sciadv.aav3223 · Cited by 493 · see citing works
Self-citationMeeting global land restoration and protection targets: What would the world look like in 2050?
Wolff, S., Schrammeijer, E. A., Schulp, C. J. E., & Verburg, P. H. (2018) · Global Environmental Change · doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2018.08.002 · Cited by 130 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Research works printed but not linked: 12
- Bastin, J. F., Finegold, Y., Garcia, C., Mollicone, D., Rezende, M., Routh, D., … Crowther, T. W. (2019). The global tree restoration potential. Science, 365(80), 76-79.
- Bernal, B., Murray, L. T., & Pearson, T. R. H. (2018). Global carbon dioxide removal rates from forest landscape restoration activities. Carbon Balance and Management, 13, 22. https://doi.org/10.1186/ s13021-018-0110-8. · DOI
- Chazdon, R. L., Brancalion, P. H. S., Lamb, D., Laestadius, L., Cal- mon, M., & Kumar, C. (2017). A policy-driven knowledge agenda for global forest and landscape restoration. Conservation Letters, 10, 125-132.
- Crouzeilles, R., Santiami, E., Rosa, M., Pugliese, L., Brancalion, P. H. S., Rodrigues, R. R., … Matsumoto, M. H. (2019). There is hope for achieving ambitious Atlantic Forest restoration commitments. Per- spectives in Ecology and Conservation, 17(2), 80-83.
- Dave, R., Saint-Laurent, C., Murray, L., Antunes Daldegan, G., Brouwer, R., de Mattos Scaramuzza, C. A., … Pearson, T., (2019). Second Bonn challenge Progress report. Application of the barometer in 201, Gland, Switzerland.
- DeFries, R. S., Rudel, T., Uriarte, M., & Hansen, M. (2010). Defor- estation driven by urban population growth and agricultural trade in the twenty-first century. Nature Geoscience, 3(3), 178-181. https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo756 FAO. (2015). Global Forest Resources Assessment 2015. Rome, Italy: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. 56 pages. · DOI · Paper page
- Fairhead, J., Leach, M., & Scoones, I. (2012). Green grabbing: A new appropriation of nature? Journal of Peasant Studies, 39, 237- 261.
- Griscom, B. W., Adams, J., Ellis, P. W., Houghton, R. A., Lomax, G., Miteva, D. A., … Fargione, J. (2017). Natural climate solu- tions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114, 11645- 11650.
- IPCC. (2014). Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Core Writing Team, R.K. Pachauri and L.A. Meyer (eds.)], Geneva, Switzerland.
- Reid, J. L., Fagan, M. E., Lucas, J., Slaughter, J., & Zahawi, R. A. (2019). The ephemerality of secondary forests in southern Costa Rica. Con- servation Letters, 12, e12607.
- Reid, J. L., Wilson, S. J., Bloomfield, G. S., Cattau, M. E., Fagan, M. E., Holl, K. D., & Zahawi, R. A. (2017). How long do restored ecosystems persist? Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden, 102, 258-265.
- Stanturf, J. A., Kleine, M., Mansourian, S., Parrotta, J., Madsen, P., Kant, P., … Bolte, A. (2019). Implementing forest landscape restoration under the Bonn Challenge: a systematic approach. Annals of Forest Science, 76(2). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13595-019-0833-z · DOI
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Arneth, A., Olsson, L., Cowie, A., Erb, K.-H., Hurlbert, M., Kurz, W. A., Mirzabaev, A., & Rounsevell, M. D. A. (2021) · Annual Review of Environment and Resources · doi:10.1146/annurev-environ-012320-054809 · Cited by 106 · see citing works
- Authors
- Fagan, M. E., Reid, J. L., Holland, M. B., Drew, J. G., & Zahawi, R. A.
- Affiliations
- University of Maryland, Baltimore County (US)
- Virginia Tech (US)
- University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (US)
- Corresponding author
- Fagan, Matthew E.
- Venue
- Conservation Letters
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2020-01-16
- Volume
- 13
- Issue
- 3
- ISSN
- 1755-263X (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3000609249
- Cited by
- 170
- References
- 3
- Citations by year
- 2026: 12 · 2025: 31 · 2024: 27 · 2023: 25 · 2022: 31 · 2021: 24 · 2020: 20
- FWCI
- 9.31
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Conservation Letters (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Maryland Shared Open Access Repository (USMAI Consortium) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- VTechWorks (Virginia Tech) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Digital Repository at the University of Maryland (University of Maryland College Park) (cc-by)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Forest Management and Policy
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Land Use and Ecosystem Services
- Keywords
- forest landscape restoration, deforestation, agricultural expansion, land cover change, food production systems, development status, plantation land
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
