Key Details
Nature’s Comeback, the 2026 Restoration Progress Report, brings together national and international reporting to compare restoration commitments, documented activity and estimated needs. “Under restoration” means work is reported as underway; it does not mean an ecosystem has fully recovered.
Scale and target: About 252 million hectares are documented as under restoration—roughly one-quarter of the 1 billion hectares covered by countries’ commitments. The report says implementation must triple to meet the 2030 global restoration target.
Uneven coverage: Land accounts for about 232 million hectares of documented activity. Freshwater ecosystems account for 11 million hectares, and marine and coastal ecosystems for 5.7 million hectares; a further 3.2 million hectares are not assigned to an ecosystem type.
Finance: Traceable restoration finance reached US$64 billion in 2022, against estimated annual needs of US$296 billion by 2030 and US$448 billion by 2050.
Asia’s share: Asia accounts for 192.2 million hectares, or 76.3%, of the documented global area. The report estimates that the region needs the largest increase in annual restoration investment—about US$102 billion by 2030.
India example: The return of Ganges river dolphins is cited among species-recovery examples associated with UN World Restoration Flagships. The report does not use this example to assess India’s overall restoration performance.
Reported Progress Is Dominated by Land Restoration
Countries have expanded their restoration commitments, and activity is documented at a substantial scale. Yet the global picture is heavily weighted towards terrestrial ecosystems, especially forests and landscapes. Freshwater and marine habitats occupy a much smaller share of the reported area despite severe degradation.
That contrast reflects both uneven action and uneven measurement. River, wetland and underwater restoration can be harder to express as a single area or separate from a wider landscape project. Low reported coverage should therefore not automatically be read as proof that little work is happening.
Hectares Alone Cannot Show Whether Nature Is Recovering
The report measures area under restoration, not the final condition of every site. It notes that countries use different definitions and reporting methods, and that some ongoing activity may be missing from global datasets. For the 2030 target—bringing at least 30% of degraded terrestrial, freshwater and marine and coastal ecosystems under effective restoration—the test is whether interventions improve biodiversity, ecological functions and benefits for people over time.
The report calls for stronger monitoring through the Framework for Ecosystem Restoration Monitoring, alongside clearer national reporting. Better evidence would help distinguish a reported project from sustained recovery.
Finance Must Address Both Restoration and Ongoing Damage
Annual restoration finance would need to rise more than fourfold from its 2022 level to reach the estimated 2030 requirement. The report also points to financial incentives working in the opposite direction: it cites US$7.3 trillion in nature-negative finance in 2023, including US$2.4 trillion in environmentally harmful public subsidies. These wider nature-related flows should not be treated as a restoration budget available for direct transfer, but they show why funding recovery while continuing to reward degradation is insufficient.
The proposed shift is from isolated projects towards lasting restoration economies: arrangements that sustain ecological recovery, local livelihoods, finance and monitoring beyond a project’s initial funding period. Secure rights and meaningful participation by Indigenous Peoples and local communities are central to that approach.
Policy Relevance
For India, the Ganges river dolphin example shows what species recovery can contribute to a wider restoration effort, but it is not a national scorecard. The more useful policy test is whether restoration across land, rivers, wetlands and coasts can be tracked consistently and shown to deliver durable ecological and community benefits.
Financing decisions also need to consider activities that continue to degrade ecosystems. Identifying harmful incentives, their beneficiaries and the likely effects of reform would help governments weigh restoration goals against livelihoods, food security and affordability, rather than assuming that every subsidy can simply be withdrawn.
Follow the Full Report Here: Restoration Progress Report: Nature’s Comeback