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World restores 124m ha of land, but falls short of global 2030 targets – IUCN – EnviroNews
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A new global assessment by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has revealed that more than 124.3 million hectares of land are currently under restoration, rehabilitation or improved management worldwide, highlighting growing momentum in ecosystem recovery but also exposing a major gap between international commitments and action on the ground.
The area undergoing restoration is approximately twice the size of France. However, despite the progress, the figure represents only 10.4 per cent of the 1.2 billion hectares that countries have collectively pledged to restore under major international environmental agreements.
The findings are contained in the Global Land Restoration Achievement Database: 2026 Report, launched during the 17th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD COP17) in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.
Countries have committed to restoring degraded landscapes through national targets linked to four major global frameworks: the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the UNCCD Land Degradation Neutrality targets, and Nationally Determined Contributions under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Although timelines differ across the various commitments, most of the restoration targets are expected to be achieved by 2030.
IUCN’s analysis, based on official government data and government-endorsed sources, however, shows that the current pace of implementation remains insufficient to deliver on these commitments within the remaining years of the decade.
IUCN Director General, Dr Grethel Aguilar, said restoring degraded ecosystems was not only essential for environmental protection but also represented a strategic investment in livelihoods, food security and economic resilience.
“Healthy ecosystems underpin our lives and economies. They provide the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, and the resources on which we all depend,” Aguilar said.
“Restoration isn’t just an environmental fix; it’s one of the smartest investments we can make. Revived grasslands and farmland bring degraded soil back to productivity, supporting food security and rural livelihoods.”
She added that ecosystem restoration could strengthen climate resilience, tackle biodiversity loss and generate significant economic and environmental returns.
“Restoration is already taking root across the globe, demonstrating what is possible. Now we have an opportunity to build on this momentum and scale up action, so we can meet the existing global commitments to restore over a billion hectares of degraded land by 2030 and deliver lasting benefits for people and nature,” Aguilar said.
The analysis was funded by the UNCCD through its G20 Global Land Initiative and represents what IUCN describes as the first structured and comparable global synthesis of restoration achievements.
UNCCD Executive Secretary, Dr Yasmin Fouad, said the findings demonstrated both encouraging progress and the enormous scale of work still required.
“This report shows both progress and the scale of the challenge ahead. Restoration is happening, but we are still far from the level of implementation required to match countries’ commitments,” she said.
Fouad stressed the need to identify barriers slowing implementation and strengthen national capacities, monitoring systems, financing mechanisms and partnerships.
“The next phase of the land agenda must be about implementation at scale. Ultimately, restoration will be judged not by hectares pledged, but by hectares restored and by the difference that makes to people, livelihoods and resilience,” she added.
The report draws on data compiled through IUCN’s Global Restoration Achievements Database, a platform designed to provide a transparent and standardised evidence base for tracking restoration commitments across countries and international reporting frameworks.
East Asia, South Asia and Africa Lead Restoration Efforts
The assessment shows that restoration progress is heavily concentrated in a small number of regions, with East Asia, South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa accounting for about 80 per cent of the total documented land area under restoration, rehabilitation and improved management.
East Asia leads globally, accounting for 31 per cent of the total restoration area, followed closely by South Asia with 30 per cent and Sub-Saharan Africa with 19 per cent.
Other regions contribute between six per cent and as little as 0.1 per cent, highlighting significant disparities in restoration implementation and reporting across the world.
East Asia reported approximately 38.8 million hectares under restoration, largely driven by forest restoration programmes and supported by long-established monitoring systems. The region has achieved about 35 per cent of its restoration commitments.
South Asia ranked second, with 37.8 million hectares under restoration, largely resulting from agricultural interventions and efforts to improve land productivity. The region has achieved 40 per cent of its commitments, the highest delivery rate recorded globally.
Sub-Saharan Africa ranked third, with 23.3 million hectares of land reported under restoration, driven mainly by initiatives targeting drylands, rangelands and agricultural landscapes.
However, despite the substantial area under restoration, the region has achieved only about five per cent of its ambitious target of restoring 480 million hectares.
IUCN noted that Sub-Saharan Africa remains one of the world’s most active regions for restoration implementation, supported by major initiatives including the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100) and the Great Green Wall.
Nevertheless, limited access to finance and weak institutional coordination continue to constrain progress in many countries, with several reporting only partial implementation of their restoration commitments.
Muneeswaran Mariappan, IUCN Senior Programme Officer for Geospatial Intelligence and Digital Innovation and lead author of the report, said the disparities reflected not only differences in the scale of restoration activities but also variations in monitoring and reporting systems.
“The regions reporting the largest areas under restoration are all places where national policy priorities align to promote restoration, but that isn’t the only factor that explains their dominance,” Mariappan said.
“The figures also reflect differences in the scale of restoration efforts and how consistently progress is monitored and reported.”
He cautioned that restoration activities taking place in many countries may not yet be fully reflected in international datasets.
“The global results should therefore be interpreted as a lower-bound estimate of restoration progress,” he said.
“To ensure no restoration effort goes unnoticed in the future, we need stronger national monitoring systems, more cross-country alignment on how data is reported and enhanced integration between reporting frameworks.”
The report underscores the growing urgency for governments and development partners to translate ambitious restoration pledges into measurable action, particularly as the 2030 deadline for many global environmental commitments draws closer.
While more than 124 million hectares of land now show evidence of restoration progress, the IUCN assessment makes clear that achieving the global ambition of restoring over one billion hectares will require a dramatic acceleration in financing, implementation, monitoring and international cooperation over the next four years.
