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Land areas around the world totalling more than the size of Canada have been identified as having potential to be restored to good quality, healthy forests, a new study has found.

As the global effort to help tackle climate change by reversing the Earth’s alarming loss of forests steps up, scientists using sophisticated satellite mapping have produced a world map identifying areas in which more than a billion hectares of former forest land and degraded forest land has restoration potential.

That’s about six per cent of the planet’s total land area, and restoring forests to some of these lands could be achieved without prejudicing other vital land uses, such as food production. The Global Partnership on Forest Restoration (GPFLR) also says that the needs and rights of indigenous peoples and others who depend on forests must be respected when considering restoration projects. GPFLR will now work with individual countries and local communities to deliver restoration where communities benefit.

"With a global population already approaching seven billion, and forecast to increase to more than eight billion by 2025, the pressure on all of our natural resources is immense," says Tim Rollinson, chairman of the GPFLR and Director-General of the British Forestry Commission. "At the same time, the Earth’s forests continue to shrink, and what’s left is increasingly being degraded. We know how to restore forests and make them sustainable. We now also know where we should do it, so we should be getting on with it."

The findings were announced today in London, England, at an international meeting of the GPFLR, of which the IUCN and the British Forestry Commission are founding members.

The assessment has revealed that the potential to restore the world’s lost forests is much greater than the previous estimate of 850 million hectares. The GPFLR partners say that forest restoration can have a significant impact on climate change as well as improving lives, and that urgent action on restoration should be taken hand in hand with efforts to stop the continuing global loss and degradation of forests.

Preliminary analysis indicates that by 2030 the restoration of degraded forest lands could make the same contribution to the reduction of greenhouse gases as that which could be expected from avoided deforestation (70 Gt of COČ emissions), and perhaps as much as twice that amount. The GPFLR will work with countries over the next year to clarify and refine these figures on a country-by-country basis.

"Forest restoration experiences around the world provide evidence that, although it is impossible to replace a pristine forest once it’s gone, many of the functions it originally provided can be restored," says Stewart Maginnis, Director of the IUCN’s Environment and Development Group. "Forests provide such vital services, such as clean water and fresh air, that we can win on all fronts by bringing them back to life. We need to protect the forests we have left, and restore what we’ve lost."

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