Nature restoration legislation means redefining targets and forecasting progress

David Y. Shen, Signe Normand

Nature restoration is at a pivotal moment, driven by global initiatives like the EU Nature Restoration Law and the Kunming-Montreal Biodiversity Framework. These frameworks pose key challenges to how restoration targets are defined to ensure they are not only achievable and measurable but also resilient to future environmental changes. This requires addressing two key challenges: setting forward-looking restoration targets that account for dynamic environmental changes and developing methods to predict and forecast progress. We propose that restoration should focus on restoring ecosystem functions that represent the natural state based on current conditions, ecological history, and are resilient to future environmental change. Secondly, restoration efforts must be predictive, and we propose a two-stage process to predict outcomes prior to an intervention, and forecast progress over time. We argue that only by integrating these approaches, can restoration policies lead to large scale restoration for ecological recovery and long-term societal benefits.