Global ecosystem restoration alone is not enough to mitigate climate change

Abstract Ecosystem restoration is increasingly recognized as a means of climate change mitigation. Former global-scale studies predicted that ecosystem restoration can nearly offset human carbon emission since the Industrial Revolution¹,², but these were heavily criticized for their tree-centric view or questionable modeling approaches³,⁴, which hinders planning large-scale, long-term restoration strategies, such as the EU’s Nature Restoration Law. Here, we developed a novel, realistic model for the carbon sequestration potential of ecosystem restoration until 2100, and show that the maximum carbon capture is 96.9 Gt, which is 17.6% of the anthropogenic emissions to date, and only 3.7–12.0% if taking into account future emissions until 2100. Thus, ecosystem restoration can play a role in climate change mitigation only if orchestrated with a pervasive shift towards sustainable, low-emission economies globally. Even in the most favorable scenario⁵,⁶, the year when we cross the global zero emission line is brought forward by less than a decade to the late 2060s. Therefore, we suggest that political/economic views of climate change mitigation should not overshadow the primary goals of ecosystem restoration, which are combating the biodiversity crisis and supporting human livelihoods by increasing the resilience of ecosystem services (apart from carbon sequestration), even in a changing climate.