# Land tenure regimes influenced long-term restoration gains and reversals across Brazil’s Atlantic forest

## TL;DR

This study shows that land ownership types in Brazil's Atlantic Forest affect how well forest restoration efforts last over time.

## Contribution

The study introduces agglomerative matching to analyze how land tenure influences restoration outcomes.

## Key findings

- Indigenous lands and agrarian-reform settlements show more long-term restoration gains than private properties.
- Private properties have relatively low restoration longevity.
- Indigenous lands and agrarian-reform settlements also show slightly higher restoration reversals.

## Abstract

Forest restoration is increasingly promoted to mitigate climate change, conserve biodiversity, and secure food and water sovereignty. Yet many restored forests do not persist in the long term, and the role of land tenure regimes in shaping these outcomes remains poorly understood. We examine restoration reversals (restored forests later deforested) and long-term restoration gains (restored forests that remained intact) across 1.9 million territories in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest from 1985 to 2022. We compare Indigenous lands, Afro-descendant (Quilombola) territories, agrarian-reform settlements, protected areas, and private properties, introducing a statistical matching technique–agglomerative matching–to account for systematic differences between land tenure regimes. We find that Indigenous lands and agrarian-reform settlements exhibit significantly more long-term restoration gains than private properties. Concurrently, and by a smaller margin and on a smaller land area, Indigenous lands and agrarian-reform settlements exhibit higher reversals. These results highlight the relatively low restoration longevity of private properties and emphasize the importance of socio-political conditions in enabling long-term restoration gains.

When analyzing patterns of long-term restoration gains and reversals in the Atlantic Forest of Brazil, the study finds that Indigenous lands and agrarian-reform settlements have significantly more long-term restoration gains than private properties.