deforestation
The Economic Case for Landscape Restoration in Latin America finds that achieving Initiative 20x20’s goal of restoring 20 million hectares of land in Latin America and the Caribbean could yield net benefits of at least $23 billion over 50 years, an amount equivalent to about 10% of the value of food exports from the region.
Degraded lands—lands that have lost some degree of their natural productivity through human activity—account for over 20 percent of forest and agricultural lands in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Tenure-secure indigenous and other community forestlands are often linked to low deforestation rates, significant forest cover, and the sustainable production of timber and other forest products. New WRI research shows that securing indigenous forestland is also a low-cost, high-benefit investment and therefore makes good economic sense.