Committed to restoring tropical forests: an overview of Brazil's and Indonesia's restoration targets and policies

Committed to restoring tropical forests: an overview of Brazil's and Indonesia's restoration targets and policies

Background

Tropical forest restoration initiatives present a valuable opportunity to address global challenges such as climate change mitigation, biodiversity loss, and the improvement of local livelihoods. However, weak forest governance, competition for agricultural land, and financial constraints hinder the scaling of these initiatives. Brazil and Indonesia hold over a third of the world’s tropical forests but also lead in tree cover loss and carbon emissions from agriculture, forestry, and other land uses. In both nations, the agricultural industry drives commodity-driven deforestation, making it the primary cause of forest loss. To address this, Brazil and Indonesia are actively reducing deforestation rates and pursuing ambitious international restoration targets to balance agricultural production with forest conservation.

Goals and Methods

The authors aim to identify the key restoration commitments made by Brazil and Indonesia, analyze the primary policy instruments supporting their implementation, and discuss the major challenges both countries face in fulfilling these commitments. To achieve these objectives, they review scientific and peer-reviewed literature alongside grey literature and institutional reports.

Conclusions and Takeaways

Both Brazil and Indonesia actively demonstrate strong commitments to restoring tropical forests through ambitious targets, but they take significantly different approaches. Brazil has developed a dedicated national restoration plan, while Indonesia has not created a similarly comprehensive framework and instead focuses primarily on peatland and mangrove restoration. Both countries encounter shared challenges, such as misaligned targets, unclear implementation strategies, inadequate mapping, persistent land tenure conflicts, over-politicized environmental governance, difficulties in measuring restoration progress, and significant financial and opportunity costs. To overcome these obstacles, the authors urge policymakers to enhance policy alignment and coordination, invest in better mapping and monitoring systems, establish sustainable financing mechanisms, develop robust metrics for progress assessment, and adopt a more participatory approach to restoration efforts.

Reference: 

Dockendorff C, Fuss S, Agra R, Guye V, Herrera D, Kraxner F. Committed to restoring tropical forests: an overview of Brazil’s and Indonesia’s restoration targets and policies. Environmental Research Letters. 2022;17(9):093002. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/ac8ab2.