Peer-reviewed Journal Articles

Conservation International's science is the foundation for all our work. Our global science team is dedicated to advancing conservation science — pursuing actionable knowledge and amplifying it through partnerships and outreach.

To date, Conservation International has published more than 1,300 peer-reviewed articles, many in leading journals including Science, Nature and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Here is an archive of our most recent research:

Evidence on scaling forest restoration from the Atlantic Forest Restoration Pact in Brazil

Roberto Toto, Jennifer Alix-García, Katharine R. E. Sims, Bruno Coutinho, Carlos Muñoz Brenes, Ludmila Pugliese, Alex Fernando Mendes

Nature Communications, 16

May 21, 2025

Forest restoration is a vital strategy to combat climate change, preserve biodiversity, and maintain ecosystem services. Yet scarce evidence exists evaluating the impact of forest recovery interventions at scale. This study estimates the impact of the Atlantic Forest Restoration Pact on forest restoration in Brazil. We compare forest change on lands supported by the Pact to change on similar lands, before and after the program started, thereby isolating the causal impact of restoration support. Here we show that the intervention increased restored forest cover by 10-20 percentage points, likely because it helped to overcome key financial and informational barriers faced by private landowners. Larger effects are associated with greater distance to cities and more state-level environmental enforcement. These findings demonstrate that large-scale forest restoration on private land is possible, but that low returns from competing land uses and complementary institutional environments play key roles in supporting these efforts.

CITATION

Toto, R., Alix-García, J., Sims, K. R. E., Coutinho, B., Muñoz Brenes, C., Pugliese, L., & Mendes, A. F. (2025). Evidence on scaling forest restoration from the Atlantic Forest Restoration Pact in Brazil. Nature Communications, 16(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-59194-3