Published on: 2026-09-28
Source: United Nations – United Nations –
An important disclaimer is at the bottom of this article.
September 28, 2026 Climate and Environment
Restoring degraded forests and landscapes is an economically efficient way to address food security, climate, and development challenges: under favorable conditions, every dollar invested can yield up to 30 dollars in return. This is stated in the report “The State of the World’s Forests – 2026,” which the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) presented on Monday in Rome.
Forests cover 4.14 billion hectares – about 32 percent of the land surface, store 714 gigatons of carbon, and provide up to 80 percent of terrestrial biodiversity. Food security and livelihoods of nearly one-third of the world’s population depend on forests and trees. Meanwhile, it is estimated that 489 million hectares of forests have been lost due to deforestation since 1990. Land degradation affects 1.56 billion hectares, including more than 460 million hectares of forests. Annually, fires affect about 127 million hectares of forests; damage is also caused by pests, diseases, and extreme weather events.
Largely due to the increase in forest area in countries such as Russia, Canada, China, and the USA, the rate of net forest loss worldwide, according to FAO data, decreased from 10.7 million hectares per year in 1990–2000 to 3.68 million in 2000–2015. However, in 2015–2025 it rose again—to 4.12 million hectares per year.
The failure to restore ecosystems costs the world between $878 billion and $6.3 trillion annually, note the authors of the report. Restoring more than 1 billion hectares of land could generate $1.8 trillion annually. If $2.6 trillion is invested over 15 years to combat land degradation and mitigate the effects of drought, the return for society will exceed the investment by eight times.
Aral: the sea cannot be restored
The Aral Sea basin, which covers Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and part of Afghanistan, is cited by the authors as a clear example of why ecosystems need to be restored on the scale of entire landscapes.
Excessive water withdrawal for irrigation has become one of the main causes of degradation, worsened by climate change. The area of floodplain forests in Central Asia has decreased by 90 percent. The Aral Sea, once the fourth largest inland lake in the world, has sharply shrunk, and a desert called Aralkum, covering more than 5.5 million hectares, has formed on its bed. Every year, more than 100 million tons of dust and toxic salts rise from there. More than 73 million people suffer from water and air pollution, desertification, and loss of biodiversity.
© UNDP The Aral Sea, once the fourth largest lake in the world, has dried up, leaving behind 5.4 million hectares of salt desert.
According to experts, it is impossible to restore the sea to its former state: this would require stopping key economic activities in the region for at least 30–40 years. The only realistic path is to restore ecosystems throughout the basin: planting native shrubs on the drained bottom to contain salt and dust storms, reviving floodplain forests, and creating salt-tolerant meadows on salt marshes.
The governments of Central Asian countries have joined forces to restore the Aral Sea basin with financial and technical support from intergovernmental organizations, development banks, and the private sector. The downstream countries are working on the dried-up seabed and floodplains of rivers, while the upstream countries are responsible for the joint management of water resources and glacier conservation. In 2021, the UN General Assembly declared the Aral Sea region a zone of ecological innovations and technologies.
Kalmykia: sands stopped
In the 1980s, the Northern Caspian region, primarily Kalmykia, suffered from desertification due to a dry climate and overgrazing. The livelihoods of more than 135,000 people engaged in pastoral livestock farming were under threat. In 1986, still during the Soviet Union era, a General Scheme was adopted to combat desertification of the Black Lands and Kizlyar pastures — considered by its authors to be one of the most successful large-scale restoration programs in the region.
From 1990 to 1995, restoration work covered more than 250 thousand hectares of pastures, and another 400 thousand hectares of sands were stabilized. More than 50 thousand people gained long-term economic benefits from this. Thanks to agroforestry reclamation and planting of local salt-tolerant shrubs and grasses, including Lerch’s wormwood and leafless juzzgun, the fodder base for livestock and saiga improved. According to satellite data, from 1975 to 2016, the area of soils in the Black Lands subject to wind erosion decreased by up to 70 percent.
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According to data presented by the FAO, Russia restored 1.7 million hectares of forests in 2018–2021, surpassing the target of 1.55 million hectares set for 2024. From 1990 to 2020, restoration efforts in the country covered more than 18 million hectares of forests.
Russia also entered the list of countries – along with Canada, China, and the USA – thanks to which the rate of net forest loss worldwide decreased from 10.7 million hectares per year in 1990–2000 to 3.68 million in 2000–2015.
Kazakhstan: Turan from the cryobank
Riparian forests along the rivers of Central Asia and western China are oases in the desert, home to species such as the Bukhara deer. Today, due to river regulation, climate change, and livestock grazing, they cover less than 10 percent of the area they did in the 1960s. One of the main species, the relic Turanga poplar, is listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as “near threatened.” In nature, its seeds lose viability within a few days.
In the Ramsar site (a wetland of international importance protected by the Ramsar Convention – editor’s note) “Ili River Delta and the southern part of Lake Balkhash” in the Almaty region of Kazakhstan, a project to restore the Turanga poplar has been underway since 2018, planned until 2048. Work is already being conducted on 25,500 hectares out of the planned 200,000. Scientists have deposited 100,000 seeds in a cryobank, collected a DNA collection, and created three collections in botanical gardens.
The optimal combination turned out to be: 90 percent of seedlings are grown from seeds to preserve genetic diversity, while 10 percent are propagated using clonal micropropagation to make up for the shortage of male trees for pollination. Male clones do not produce fluff and may be suitable for greening neighboring cities. Local residents also participate in the project by collecting seeds, tending seedlings in greenhouses, and earning additional income, while akimats assist in resolving land use disputes.
Four directions
The report’s authors highlight four complementary areas of work: the focus must be on people, and restoration outcomes should be determined taking into account the rights, knowledge, and priorities of local residents; restoration should be carried out at the landscape scale, balancing conservation, production, and community income issues; long-term results require the involvement of public and private resources; finally, coordinated policy measures, legal norms, and institutional mechanisms are important.
FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu emphasized in the preface to the report that forest and landscape restoration is not only a priority task in environmental protection but also a farsighted investment in agro-food systems resilient to external impacts and rural development.
“There is less and less time left for action, and delays in restoration and its inefficient planning are fraught with increased long-term costs, exacerbation of inequality, and the consolidation of unsustainable landscape development trajectories,” he warned.
The report was published within the framework of the 28th session of the FAO Committee on Forestry and the 10th World Forest Week.
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