Restoration at Scale: Landscapes Built Through Systems, People, and Long-Term Value

26 November 2025 Event report

Restoration in Brazil is increasingly approached as part of territorial development rather than as isolated ecological interventions. The focus is shifting toward models grounded in local institutions, shared governance, diverse land-use approaches and value that remains within landscapes.

This framing guided the COP30 session Restoration at Scale: Collaborative Solutions to Address the Climate Crisis, which explored how restoration becomes socially and economically viable over time.

Opening the discussion, Thorsten Arndt, Head of Advocacy at PEFC International, emphasized that restoration needs to function as a long-term societal process rather than a project-based activity. Landscapes endure, he argued, when people have viable futures within them. “If the systems that sustain people are strong, restoration will last,” Thorsten said. “If livelihoods fail, landscapes remain vulnerable regardless of ecological progress.”

The panel brought together Marcela Porto (Suzano), Manuel Reyes-Retana (IFC) and Teresa Campello (BNDES), representing distinct institutional vantage points – implementation, development finance and socio-environmental public policy – alongside Arndt as moderator. While their roles differ, the discussion consistently highlighted that restoration is shaped by governance, economics and social systems as much as by ecological practice.

Different landscapes, different pathways

Brazil’s ecological and cultural diversity requires multiple pathways to restoration, not a singular model. Approaches that succeed in one region may not translate to another because communities organise differently, rely on distinct income streams and operate under varied historical and institutional conditions.

Examples referenced during the discussion illustrated how restoration efforts increasingly integrate community-led functions such as seed collection, nursery operations, technical work and local logistics. These models tend to be more durable when decision-making and economic benefit remain within territories rather than being externalised to implementing agencies.

What matters is not the scale of any individual effort, but whether long-term structures allow communities to anchor restoration within their own development trajectory.

Finance as enabler rather than driver

Finance plays a catalytic role when it reduces risk for producers, supports technical capacity and enables processing and value-creation closer to where restoration occurs. Investment structures that treat communities as partners – not contractors or beneficiaries – were presented as essential for scale.

Rather than purchasing activities, financing should provide predictability: planning horizons, services, training and institutional support that persist beyond funding cycles.

Evidence, assurance and trust

A further theme concerned how certification can support systemic restoration by providing credible evidence of outcomes rather than prescribing specific technical methods.

Verification can help align institutions, markets and public programmes around shared expectations of impact.

Thorsten emphasized that “different landscapes will always need different technical methods. What unifies them is whether we can credibly demonstrate impact in a way that institutions, communities and markets trust.”

In this sense, assurance operates as governance infrastructure, helping translate local action into recognised results.

People at the centre of resilience

Across the session, one premise remained constant: restoration is sustained by people, not by external cycles of funding or attention. Where livelihoods, governance structures and local institutions are strong, restoration becomes embedded in daily life. Where they are fragile, landscapes remain vulnerable even with ecological gains.

“Restoration is not separate from the lives of those who do it,” Thorsten said. “If they thrive, the landscape thrives.”

When leadership is local, value remains within territories, and institutions can verify results and reduce risk, restoration becomes self-sustaining rather than externally driven.