On May 1, 2026, Brazil launched a restoration program for 15,000 hectares of degraded land in northern Rio de Janeiro. The goal: to bring back one of Earth's most biodiverse and severely destroyed forests. Whether the program succeeds depends on structural challenges researchers have identified for years.
Once 150 Million Hectares, Now Fragmented
The Mata Atlântica stretched across roughly 150 million hectares along the Brazilian coast and parts of Argentina and Paraguay before European settlement. Today, only about twelve percent of this original forest remains, fragmented into thousands of small islands. Around eighty percent of these remnants are fragments smaller than 50 hectares, too small for many species dependent on continuous forest.
Despite its fragmentation, the Atlantic Forest ranks among Earth's most biodiverse ecosystems. According to UNEP, it hosts more than 20,000 plant species, with about forty percent found nowhere else. Simultaneously, most of Brazil's population, more than 120 million people, lives in the Atlantic Forest watershed. This made the forest a focal point of conflict between economic development and conservation for decades.
The New Program: BNDES and 15,000 Hectares in Rio
The program launched May 1, 2026, targets 15,000 hectares of degraded land in northern Rio de Janeiro state. Brazil's development bank BNDES finances the project through its forest strategy, linking ecological restoration with bioeconomy tools. According to program guidelines, measures will occur exclusively in protected areas with native biodiversity as the priority.
15,000 hectares equal roughly 150 square kilometers. In the scale of the entire Atlantic Forest, this is a small but symbolically significant step. Since 2022, the Atlantic Forest has held the UN designation "World Restoration Flagship," one of ten globally recognized ecosystem restoration initiatives.
The Coalition Behind the Program: 300 Organizations, Target 2050
The Rio program is part of a larger framework, the Atlantic Forest Restoration Pact (PACTO), a coalition founded in 2009 by more than 300 organizations, research institutions, and agencies in Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay. Their goal: restore 15 million hectares of Atlantic Forest by 2050, roughly thirty percent of the entire biome.
Between 2011 and 2015, approximately 700,000 hectares of native forest were already restored. According to the pact, the goal of one million hectares by 2020 set under the Bonn Challenge was met. Between 2023 and 2025, the initiative mobilized approximately 1.4 billion USD, according to UNEP. This capital aims to plant 280 million trees, create 70,000 jobs, and sequester 54 million tons of CO2.
In Comparison: What Has Worked Elsewhere
Costa Rica offers the most well-known counterexample to a tropical deforestation story. By 1987, only about twenty-one percent of the country remained forested after decades of clearing for livestock and agriculture devastated original rainforests. Through a combination of national parks, a logging ban, and state payments to landowners for ecosystem services, forest coverage grew to nearly sixty percent by 2020. CNN called Costa Rica the first tropical nation on Earth to permanently reverse deforestation.
For the Atlantic Forest, recent research data shows particularly encouraging signals. Scientists from CIFOR-ICRAF found that the forest regenerates naturally faster than previously thought. With a combination of natural forest regrowth and active reforestation, up to 21.6 million hectares could be restored by 2035, exceeding PACTO's original target. This natural regeneration would reduce restoration costs compared to pure planting programs by 90.6 billion USD.
The Critical Hurdle: Restoration Must Hold Long-Term
The greatest threat to long-term success lies not in planting but in persistence. A study published in Nature Communications analyzing 1.9 million plots in the Atlantic Forest between 1985 and 2022 shows many restored areas were later deforested again. The effect was particularly pronounced on private land. Indigenous territories and agrarian settlements, by contrast, showed significantly better long-term results because land control there is more stable.
A second structural challenge, noted by Mongabay, concerns dependence on markets for native plants. Small farmers could supply millions of seedlings and double restoration speed, but currently lack reliable buyers and price guarantees. The BNDES program in Rio de Janeiro deliberately focuses on protected areas, making deforestation relapse unlikely. Whether this model scales to PACTO's entire 15 million hectares remains the core open question for Brazilian forest restoration.