The stories behind the headlines.

Researchers led by Brooke Williams of Queensland University of Technology, working with Matthew Fagan of the University of Maryland, used satellite images to find millions of small areas where tree cover increased between 2000 and 2012 and persisted through 2015. Machine learning filtered out plantations, and a model then predicted the chance of natural regrowth for every 30-metre square of the deforested tropics.

The answer: about 215 million hectares — an area larger than Mexico — could regrow naturally. That forest would capture an estimated 23.4 gigatonnes of carbon above ground over 30 years, and up to 30 gigatonnes when roots are included. Brazil, Indonesia, China, Mexico and Colombia hold more than half of the potential.

The economics are striking. Natural regrowth can cost as little as about $5 per acre, while planting can exceed $10,000 per acre. Naturally regrown forests often hold more biodiversity and tend to remain stable for longer. “Tree planting in degraded landscapes can be costly,” Williams notes.

Regrowth is not automatic. The highest potential lies within 300 metres of existing forest, where seeds and pollinators are plentiful, and healthy soil carbon is a strong predictor of success. Young forest can still be lost to farming, building or fire, and carbon markets rarely reward natural regrowth. “The people who live there should be in charge of what happens there,” says Fagan.

Dr Aoife Bennett of the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute combined four decades of land cover data with interviews on how communities make decisions. Published in Global Environmental Change, the study found deforestation of 5% on titled Indigenous lands, compared with 18% outside them. Counting forest that grew back, net loss on titled land fell to just 3.5%.

Titles matter because they let communities exclude illegal loggers and settlers, and make long-term conservation work possible. “It’s not true that once a forest is damaged it can never recover,” Bennett says.

The study also warns against romantic assumptions. Forest change varied widely between communities, shaped by eco-tourism, territory size, roads, politics and economic opportunity. Many communities do not automatically put conservation above other livelihoods, and some cannot continue environmental work once project funding ends.

The researchers recommend counting regeneration in official deforestation figures, granting titles without making them conditional on conservation, and asking funders to engage with each community individually — before a project is designed, not after.

The review “notes with deep concern” that, unless action is “rapidly accelerated”, the 23 targets for 2030 “will not be achieved”. Countries are behind on 22 of them. The final scorecard uses only colour codes, which critics say blurs how far off track the world really is.

Subsidies. Governments spend up to $1.8 trillion a year on subsidies that can harm nature. Target 18 calls for cutting them by at least $500 billion a year by 2030, but 84% of countries missed the 2025 deadline just to identify them. A “friends of target 18” group, co-chaired by Colombia and Finland, will report in May 2027.

Genetic data and the Cali Fund. Companies profiting from digital sequence information are asked to pay 1% of profits or 0.1% of revenue. Half of the fund goes to Indigenous peoples and local communities. By the end of the conference, pledges totalled just $10,565.

Nature credits. The EU, France and Peru launched an informal group on credits for nature, while Indigenous leaders objected that “nature is not an asset class”. Before COP18, the UN secretariat will study whether credits and offsets actually add conservation value.

The oceans. The High Seas Treaty entered into force in January 2026 with more than 100 ratifications, yet references to it were weakened in the final texts.

Reactions were mixed. COP17 president Hambardzum Matevosyan said “we have achieved more than we could have expected”. WWF’s Daudi Sumba urged negotiators to “turn the global review into clear dedicated action”, while Greenpeace sensed “some backtracking” compared with the 2024 talks in Cali.

The fund aims to grow to $125 billion, with around $100 billion expected from private investors. Rather than spending the capital, it invests it and uses the net proceeds to reward tropical countries that keep their forests intact — an indicative $4 per hectare per year, with forest cover checked by satellite.

Its backers say it could help protect up to 900 million hectares of tropical forest. Brazil, Indonesia, the United Kingdom, Norway, France and Germany have pledged support, and in October 2026 the Netherlands committed up to $500 million over the next decade. The World Bank is developing the facility, which should be operational by mid-2027.

Whether it attracts enough investment is one of the key tests forest researchers are watching. With tropical primary forest loss still at 4.3 million hectares in 2025, the case for rewarding protection has rarely been clearer.

More forest, slower growth. Europe gained about 2 million hectares since 2020, reaching 232 million. Growing stock rose to 171.5 m³ per hectare — about 45% more than in 1990 — but annual growth slowed from a long-term 1.3% to just 0.3% over the last five years.

Harvesting more of the growth. The share of annual increment that is felled rose from 73% to 81%. Estonia, Belgium, Sweden and Germany reported harvests above 100% of annual growth.

Closer to nature. Uneven-aged forest rose from 28.2% to 36.3%, broadleaved trees from 37% to 40%, deadwood from 11.5 to 14 m³ per hectare, and protected forest from 23.6% to 26.4%. Plantations fell from 3.8% to 2.4% of forest area.

Under strain. Trees with moderate to severe defoliation rose from 26.4% to 31.1%, linked to drought, pests and climate stress. Forest sector jobs fell from 2.6 to 2.4 million, while marketed forest services rose from €495 million to €1.26 billion.

Canada had its second-worst fire season on record, after 2023: 5.3 million hectares of tree cover lost and more than 80,000 people evacuated. Warmer conditions also fuelled spruce budworm outbreaks in Quebec and New Brunswick. Repeated fires may delay or prevent forests from regenerating at all.

In Bolivia, likely human-set fires after severe drought pushed primary forest loss to its second-highest level on record. In Europe, France’s fire-driven loss reached a record — seven times the 2024 level — and fire caused around 60% of tree cover loss in Spain and Portugal.

Forest Watch researchers warn that forests “do not always recover” after fire, and that deforestation combined with climate change could tip parts of the Amazon towards a degraded, savannah-like state. With El Niño conditions expected, they call for proactive fire prevention rather than reaction alone. Measurement is tricky too: some 2025 losses came from late-2024 fires hidden from satellites by smoke.