Global land restoration gains ground, but delivers only 10% of national pledges – IUCN report

Countries have pledged to restore 1.2 billion hectares as part of their national targets under four major international frameworks: the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration; the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework; the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) Land Degradation Neutrality targets; and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Nationally Determined Contributions. 

While deadlines associated with national pledges vary, commitments largely converge around a 2030 implementation horizon. Official government-reported data and government-endorsed sources analysed by IUCN, however, indicate that the current rate of implementation is insufficient to meet 2030 milestones. 

“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. 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. Restoring degraded ecosystems strengthens climate resilience and addresses biodiversity loss, while delivering significant economic and environmental returns on investment,” said IUCN Director General, Dr Grethel Aguilar. 

“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.” 

“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. The priority now is to understand what is holding implementation back and to strengthen the capacities, monitoring, finance and partnerships needed to turn national targets into measurable results on the ground. The discussion here in Ulaanbaatar should reinforce one clear message: 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,” said Dr Yasmin Fouad, Executive Secretary of UNCCD, which funded the analysis through its G20 Global Land Initiative.  

The analysis represents the first comparable and structured global synthesis of restoration efforts, addressing a critical gap between commitments and measurable outcomes. It is based on official data compiled in the Global Restoration Achievements Database, a platform developed and run by IUCN to provide a transparent and standardised evidence base to track restoration targets, reconciling differences in how data is reported across countries and reporting frameworks. 

The findings are outlined in IUCN’s “Global Land Restoration Achievement Database: 2026 Report”, launched during the 17th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the UNCCD in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. 

East Asia, South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa lead restoration achievements 

A small group of regions dominates the ranking for most documented restoration efforts, collectively accounting for 80% of the global land area under restoration, rehabilitation and improved management. East Asia accounts for 31% of the total global restoration area, followed by South Asia (30%) and Sub-Saharan Africa (19%). The contributions from other regions range from 6% to 0.1% of the global total, painting a picture of uneven progress across the globe. 

In East Asia, an area of 38.8 million hectares was reported as being under restoration – the largest share in the report, largely driven by forest restoration efforts and a long-standing monitoring system that helped the region deliver on 35% of its restoration pledges. In second place, South Asia reported a restoration area of 37.8 million hectares, mostly due to land productivity and agricultural interventions. That represents 40% of the region’s commitments and the highest delivery rate globally. 

In third place, Sub-Saharan Africa reported 23.3 million hectares of land under restoration, predominantly thanks to efforts to restore drylands, rangelands and agricultural landscapes. However, the region’s ambitious commitment to restore a total area of 480 million hectares means that reported achievements meet only 5% of its pledges. Sub-Saharan Africa is the most active region for restoration implementation globally, underpinned by initiatives such as the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100) and the Great Green Wall. Yet, many countries in the region report only partial implementation of their targets due to limited finance and institutional coordination, according to IUCN’s analysis. 

“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. The figures also reflect differences in the scale of restoration efforts and how consistently progress is monitored and reported. In many countries, restoration may take place but is not yet fully visible in international reporting. The global results should therefore be interpreted as a lower-bound estimate of restoration progress”, said Muneeswaran Mariappan, Senior Programme Officer for Geospatial Intelligence and Digital Innovation at IUCN and lead author of the report. “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.”