SCIENCE ADVANCES | RESEARCH ARTICLE APPLIED ECOLOGY Copyright © 2019 The Authors, some rights reserved; Global restoration opportunities in tropical exclusive licensee American Association rainforest landscapes for the Advancement Pedro H. S. Brancalion1*, Aidin Niamir2, Eben Broadbent3, Renato Crouzeilles4,5,6, of Science. No claim to 7 8 9 10 original U.S. Government Felipe S. M. Barros , Angelica M. Almeyda Zambrano , Alessandro Baccini , James Aronson , Works. Distributed 11 10 4,5,6 12 1,4,13,14,15 Scott Goetz , J. Leighton Reid , Bernardo B. N. Strassburg , Sarah Wilson , Robin L. Chazdon under a Creative Commons Attribution Over 140 Mha of restoration commitments have been pledged across the global tropics, yet guidance is needed NonCommercial to identify those landscapes where implementation is likely to provide the greatest potential benefits and License 4.0 (CC BY-NC). cost-effective outcomes. By overlaying seven recent, peer- reviewed spatial datasets as proxies for socioenviron- mental benefits and feasibility of restoration, we identified restoration opportunities (areas with higher potential return of benefits and feasibility) in lowland tropical rainforest landscapes. We found restoration opportunities throughout the tropics. Areas scoring in the top 10% (i.e., restoration hotspots) are located largely within conservation hotspots (88%) and in countries committed to the Bonn Challenge (73%), a global effort to restore 350 Mha by 2030. However, restoration hotspots represented only a small portion (19.1%) of the Key Biodiversity Area network. Concentrating restoration investments in landscapes with high benefits and feasibility would maximize Downloaded from the potential to mitigate anthropogenic impacts and improve human well-being. INTRODUCTION to conserving biodiversity has shifted from narrowly focused restoration Less than 50% of the world’s tropical forests remain standing today, and species protection within ecosystems, to a broader approach in- http://advances.sciencemag.org/ with much of the remaining forest cover seriously affected by logging, corporating landscape-scale restoration to achieve multiple objectives fires, fragmentation, mining, and hunting (1, 2). Loss and degrada- (8), including reducing species extinctions (9, 10), mitigating injuri- tion of tropical forests bring strong negative consequences for bio- ous climate change (11), and promoting sustainable livelihoods (12). diversity, climate regulation, and well-being of rural and urban Global conservation and sustainable development commitments, populations (3, 4). Both conservation and restoration are urgently such as the Aichi Targets of the Convention on Biological Diversity, needed to mitigate anthropogenic impacts on tropical forests and United Nations Sustainable Development Goals—particularly Goals their contributions to people in terms of ecosystem services of im- 14.2, 15.1, and 15.3—the intended Nationally Determined Contri- portance for human well-being (5, 6). The biodiversity hotspots for butions to the Paris Climate Agreement, and the New York Declaration conservation priorities (hereafter conservation hotspots) approach on Forests, rely heavily on restoration to achieve their objectives (7) was a turning point for global-scale conservation policies, re- (13–15). Restoration at a landscape scale is challenging, as restoration search, and actions over the past 18 years by identifying priority efforts occur in the context of intense competition for land, where on July 3, 2019 regions for conservation efforts as those with at least 0.5% or 1500 agriculture already occupies 37.3% of the global ice-free land sur- species of vascular plants as endemics and less than 30% of their face (16) and is still increasing in extent (17). Guidance is urgently primary native vegetation remaining. Since then, the primary approach needed to direct effort toward the most cost-efficient restoration outcomes—largest gain per investment of time, money, and effort— 1 and to identify landscapes where levels of multiple restoration bene- Department of Forest Sciences, “Luiz de Queiroz” College of Agriculture, University of São Paulo, Piracicaba, SP 13418-900, Brazil. 2Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate fits can be maximized. Identifying restoration opportunities—areas that Research Institute, Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung, Senckenbergan- combine high potential for socioenvironmental benefits with high 3 lage 25, 60325 Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Spatial Ecology and Conservation restoration feasibility—can be an essential tool for achieving the am- Lab, School of Forest Resources and Conservation, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-0100, USA. 4International Institute for Sustainability, 22460-320 Rio de bitious restoration commitments planned for the immediate future. Janeiro, Brazil. 5Rio Conservation and Sustainability Science Centre, Department of Identification of restoration opportunities and particularly those areas Geography and the Environment, Pontifícia Universidade Católica, 22453-900 Rio where restoration opportunities achieve their highest level—restoration de Janeiro, Brazil. 6Programa de Pós Graduação em Ecologia, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, 68020 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. 7Centro de Referencia en Tec- hotspots—can be further combined with other decision-making nologías de la Información para la Gestión con Software Libre (CeRTIG+SoL), Uni- factors to define priorities for implementation and financing of the versidad Nacional de Misiones, 3300 Ruta 12 Km 7 y 1/2 - Miguel Lanús Posadas, 8 global restoration agenda. Misiones, Argentina. Department of Tourism, Recreation and Sport Management, Here, we identify global restoration opportunities in lowland University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA. 9Woods Hole Research Center, 149 Woods Hole Road, Falmouth, MA 04523, USA. 10Center for Conservation and Sus- tropical rainforest landscapes by overlaying recent, peer-reviewed tainable Development, Missouri Botanical Garden, 4344 Shaw Boulevard, St. Louis, global-scale spatial datasets that serve as proxies for socioenviron- 11 Missouri 63110, USA. School of Informatics, Computing and Cyber Systems; mental benefits and feasibility of restoration, with direct and indirect Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ 86011-5693 USA. 12People and Reforesta- tion in the Tropics Research Coordination Network (PARTNERS), Department of Ecol- consequences for nature, economies, and human well-being. Our ogy and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269-3043, analysis supports the implementation of forest and landscape resto- USA. 13Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut, ration, which relies on a balance of different restorative strategies to Storrs, CT 06269-3043, USA. 14Tropical Forests and People Research Centre, University 15 regain ecological functionality and enhance human well-being in of the Sunshine Coast, Maroochydore, Queensland 4558, Australia. Global Resto- ration Initiative, World Resources Institute, Washington, DC 20002, USA. degraded and deforested landscapes (15, 18). For restoration bene- *Corresponding author. Email: [email protected] fits, we include four variables (see details in Methods): biodiversity Brancalion et al., Sci. Adv. 2019; 5 : eaav3223 3 July 2019 1 of 11 SCIENCE ADVANCES | RESEARCH ARTICLE conservation (habitat provision for vulnerable species, determined tion according to different contexts for decision-making [country, as the number of threatened and range-restricted vertebrate species), ecoregion, Key Biodiversity Areas (hereafter KBAs), and conserva- climate change mitigation (contribution to reduce CO2 concentra- tion hotspots; (22, 24, 26)]. We did not define a priori what restor- tion in the atmosphere, determined as the carbon sequestration in ative actions should be used within each landscape nor the extent or aboveground tree biomass), climate change adaptation (restoration precise location of interventions. These decisions need to be made as adaptation measure in regions where climate will change faster), by restoration practitioners based on the local socioecological con- and human water security (potential for reduction of water security text and negotiation among multiple stakeholders (27). risks). For restoration feasibility (see details in Methods), we include three variables: land opportunity costs (the costs associated with land-use change from agriculture to restoration), landscape variation RESULTS in forest restoration success (the variability associated with biodiver- The combined analysis of benefits (Fig. 1A) and feasibility of resto- sity recovery in restored forests, a proxy for investment risks, and ration (Fig. 1B) identified landscapes with different ROS distributed implementation costs of restoration), and restoration persistence across the global tropics (Fig. 1C). Global ROS were normally dis- chance (i.e., the relative rate of recent tree cover loss, which represent tributed (fig. S1), and only 11.8% of the area had a ROS ≥ 0.6 (here- the chances that restored forests persist over time without reconversion after referred as restoration hotspots). The top six countries with to alternative land uses and also serve as a proxy of investment risks). the highest mean ROS were found in Africa: Rwanda, Uganda, We applied this approach to regions with available carbon density Burundi, Togo, South Sudan, and Madagascar (table S1). The top maps for old-growth forests (19), which were needed to