Forest Restoration in Brazil: Essential Factors for Promoting Restoration at Scale

This report by Climate Policy Initiative/Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (CPI/PUC-Rio) analyzes the regulatory, legal, and economic frameworks for forest restoration in Brazil. It argues that current policies are designed for property-scale rather than landscape-scale restoration and identifies three essential factors—regulatory flexibility for restoration typologies, integration of public and private land tenure, and the synergy between mandatory and voluntary restoration—necessary to enable large-scale initiatives, particularly those driven by the carbon market.

• Brazil possesses significant potential for climate mitigation through the restoration of approximately 35 million hectares of severely degraded land. In the Amazon region specifically, carbon prices above U$ 20 per ton of CO2 could enable natural regeneration capable of capturing 16 Gt CO2 and generating U$ 320 billion in revenue over 30 years.
• Current Brazilian restoration policies are limited by their design, which focuses on the scale of individual rural properties rather than the landscape scale. To achieve results across watersheds or biomes, the report argues that regulatory and institutional requirements must be updated to allow a single project to combine multiple restoration typologies, such as natural regeneration, native silviculture, and agroforestry systems (AFS).
• Land tenure complexity, particularly in the Amazon where public lands account for roughly 63% of the region, creates significant barriers to large-scale restoration. The report notes that many public areas suffer from property rights uncertainty, land grabbing, and fraudulent titles, necessitating innovative contractual models and effective land governance to enable restoration across different tenure categories.
• Restoration in Brazil is categorized as either mandatory or voluntary. Mandatory restoration occurs in three scenarios: remedying environmental damage, non-compliance with conservation obligations (such as Permanent Preservation Areas and Legal Reserves), or as a compensatory measure for legal deforestation. Voluntary restoration occurs in areas of alternative land use and is generally exempt from environmental licensing under the Forest Code, though contradictions exist with CONAMA Resolution no. 237/1997 regarding silviculture.
• The report identifies a normative contradiction between the Forest Code, which exempts the planting of native or exotic species from prior authorization, and environmental licensing regulations (such as CONAMA Resolution no. 237/1997) that treat silviculture as a potentially polluting activity. This lack of clarity, along with the collection of the Environmental Control and Inspection Fee (TCFA), hinders the expansion of native silviculture.
• The ongoing revision of the National Plan for Native Vegetation Recovery (PLANAVEG) by the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change (MMA) is identified as a key opportunity for the federal government to integrate landscape-scale goals, include diverse restoration modalities, and leverage carbon market financing.

APA

Climate Policy Initiative (2024). Forest Restoration in Brazil: Essential Factors for Promoting Restoration at Scale. https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/publication/forest-restoration-in-brazil-essential-factors-for-promoting-restoration-at-scale/

Chicago

Climate Policy Initiative. Forest Restoration in Brazil: Essential Factors for Promoting Restoration at Scale. 2024. https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/publication/forest-restoration-in-brazil-essential-factors-for-promoting-restoration-at-scale/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Climate Policy Initiative |title=Forest Restoration in Brazil: Essential Factors for Promoting Restoration at Scale |date=12 March 2024 |url=https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/publication/forest-restoration-in-brazil-essential-factors-for-promoting-restoration-at-scale/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{climatepolicyinitiative2024forest, author = {{Climate Policy Initiative}}, title = {{Forest Restoration in Brazil: Essential Factors for Promoting Restoration at Scale}}, institution = {Climate Policy Initiative}, year = {2024}, month = mar, url = {https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/publication/forest-restoration-in-brazil-essential-factors-for-promoting-restoration-at-scale/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }