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COP31 Media Statement: Forest Restoration Must Scale in an Overshoot World
From Climate Commitments to Forest Restoration at Scale: Terraformation Calls for a New Era of Global Action at COP31
UN Climate Change Conference (COP31) | Antalya, Türkiye | November 2026: As world leaders gather in Antalya for COP31, the challenge facing the international community is to rapidly scale solutions to return the world from overshooting the 1.5C safe warming threshold agreed under the Paris Agreement.
To meet this challenge, the world must accelerate efforts to bring native forest ecosystems back to life. Scaling forest restoration at the speed and rigor science demands will require a fundamental shift from financing isolated projects to building the national systems that allow hundreds of locally led restoration efforts to succeed.
The world is confronting three interconnected crises—climate change, biodiversity loss, and persistent economic inequality. Restoring tropical forests is one of the few solutions capable of addressing all three at once.
The new UNEP report “Limiting Overshoot” underscores the central importance of reforestation in all its forms (including afforestation and agroforestry) as a climate solution. The report notes that reforestation is already removing 2.2 gigatons of CO2e per year, and has a clear pathway to scale this to 5.6 gigatons per year—making it a “must-have” pathway if we are to achieve the necessary carbon removals to return to a safe climate system.
Yet despite growing recognition of the importance of nature-based solutions, the pace and scale of reforestation progress falls short. As one example, data from the UN FAO suggest that active reforestation through tree planting is regenerating less than a half million acres per year in Africa despite huge reforestation opportunities on the continent.
The challenge is no longer simply recognizing the value of forest restoration. It is building the systems, partnerships, and financial mechanisms necessary to deliver it at unprecedented scale.
Terraformation believes COP31 must mark a turning point in our stewardship of the natural systems that underpin human flourishing.
We are calling on governments, multilateral institutions, philanthropic organizations, and private investors to unite behind four priorities of specific importance to fully mobilize reforestation as a climate solution:
1. Commit to action at the country scale through collaborative “Country Platforms” for reforestation. Governments can empower higher quality reforestation with a faster pace and scale through a combination of multi-partner collaboration, improved enabling conditions of law, policy and finance, and systematic capacity building of organizations and reforestation infrastructure at the local level. We are working to demonstrate this now, in partnership with the Ghana Government. We call on governments to embrace this approach as a means to move from project-by-project implementation to a more synergistic national approach.
2. Commit to a blended financial framework that matches the diversity of reforestation opportunities. Many important reforestation opportunities do not align with carbon markets or other private finance opportunities. That is why we call on world leaders at COP31 to mobilize public, philanthropic, and private financing, from grants to commercial investment, to meet the needs and accelerate viable reforestation efforts in each landscape.
3. Build the infrastructure needed to restore forests at scale. We call for dedicated investment in the foundational infrastructure of restoration, including native seed banks, nurseries, technical training, project development, and monitoring systems. These investments are essential to ensuring that restoration projects can move from planning to implementation and deliver measurable, lasting results.
4. Treat jobs, biodiversity, and climate as co-equal goals of reforestation. A restored forest creates employment, strengthens local economies, protects threatened species, and secures water and food supplies. These are not side effects of carbon removal; they are reasons to restore forests in their own right. We call for every reforestation effort to be designed to deliver all of them, even when the money behind it is tied to a single outcome such as carbon.
Terraformation is putting these priorities to work across the tropics: building the seed banks, nurseries, and trained teams that restoration depends on, and developing projects designed from the start to attract investment and deliver measurable climate, ecological, and social results.
Forest restoration is not a substitute for rapidly cutting fossil fuel emissions. It is an essential complement, and one of the few climate solutions that also puts people to work and restores the systems they depend on.
At COP31, Terraformation stands ready to work with partners who share a commitment to turning that opportunity into measurable results.
The time for incremental progress has passed. The time to restore our planet's forests at scale is now.
About Terraformation
Terraformation supports large-scale native forest restoration to stabilize the climate, boost biodiversity, and create long-term economic opportunity for local communities. Through training, technology, and access to capital, Terraformation equips forestry teams to deliver high-integrity reforestation outcomes worldwide.
Our project teams have planted over 4.7 million biodiverse and native trees, stored 139 million seeds, supported 68 forestry projects across 18 countries, and created over 800 jobs through reforestation efforts worldwide.Our innovative approach not only equips local forestry teams with training, technology, and access to capital, but also empowers businesses to be a part of the solution to climate change. By investing in our projects, businesses can directly address climate change, offset carbon emissions, meet net zero commitments, and enhance corporate sustainability initiatives.
Founded in 2020, Terraformation’s mission-driven global team, which includes experts in forest science, carbon markets, operations management, and business development, demonstrates how diverse backgrounds drive innovation and create significant impact.
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