Perspectives for Ecological Restoration in the Agricultural Frontier: Challenges and Possibilities for the Socio-Environmental Conservation of the Brazilian Cerrado

In 2019, the United Nations’ General Assembly established 2021 to 2030 as the Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, and ecological restoration should be adopted by the member nations. In 2015, Brazil had already committed to restoring (replanting) twelve million hectares of forests, and this commitment was reaffirmed in the National Plan for the Recovery of Native Vegetation in 2017 and relaunched at COP16 on diversity in 2024. Despite Brazil’s leadership in establishing the Tropical Forests Forever Fund (TFFF) in 2023, which was launched at COP30 in Belem in 2025, the expansion of the agricultural frontier remains the main driver of deforestation in the Amazon/Rain Forest and the Cerrado biomes. This article aims to examine the social and ecological consequences of the capitalist occupation and expansion of the agricultural frontier in the Cerrado. It will also study the counterpoint of the land struggles and initiatives of peasant organizations focused on conservation and restoration as possibilities and perspectives for the social and ecological restoration of the Cerrado landscapes. Based on an interdisciplinary approach, the specialized literature, and official agricultural data, the study shows that, in addition to degrading nature (deforestation, water and soil contamination, and desertification) and threatening the historical ways of life of countryside peoples, the frontier’s expansion blocks possibilities for restoration and hinders initiatives to protect the remaining nature of Brazil’s second-largest biome. On the other hand, resistance to expropriation and appropriation, and struggles for land and territory, have emerged as possibilities for socio-environmental restoration, beyond reforestation and the recovery of destroyed nature, by transforming landscapes, ways of life, and production, and by creating conditions for food sovereignty and sustainability in the countryside. Therefore, agroecological actions by agrarian movements and rural organizations in general, and those of the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST) in particular, have become emblematic in opposing agrarian extractivism and unsustainable monocrops imposed upon and disseminated throughout the Brazilian Cerrado.