Evidence on scaling forest restoration from the Atlantic Forest Restoration Pact in Brazil

Forest restoration is a vital strategy to combat climate change, preserve biodiversity, and maintain ecosystem services. Yet scarce evidence exists evaluating the impact of forest recovery interventions at scale. This study estimates the impact of the Atlantic Forest Restoration Pact on forest restoration in Brazil. We compare forest change on lands supported by the Pact to change on similar lands, before and after the program started, thereby isolating the causal impact of restoration support. Here we show that the intervention increased restored forest cover by 10-20 percentage points, likely because it helped to overcome key financial and informational barriers faced by private landowners. Larger effects are associated with greater distance to cities and more state-level environmental enforcement. These findings demonstrate that large-scale forest restoration on private land is possible, but that low returns from competing land uses and complementary institutional environments play key roles in supporting these efforts.