Brazil’s Next Social Impact Agenda is in the land restoration economy

Author: Catharina Vale, G20 GLI Brazil Youth Engagement Consultant | November 3, 2025

Photo credit: UNCCD/G20 Global Land Initiative

“The restoration sector is about creating jobs where restoration happens, supported by a value chain that includes both small and large players,” Caio Franco, MOMBAK’s Head of Public Policy said in his remarks at the Impacta Mais Talk Event – Land Restoration, held by Impact Hub São Paulo in São Paulo in September 2025.

The Impacta Mais Talks (IM Talks) series is a national platform in Brazil that brings together entrepreneurs, investors and innovators to discuss how impact businesses can drive social and environmental transformation.

For the first time, MOMBAK, one of Brazil’s leading startup and impact-business communities was opening the stage to land restoration as a driver of social innovation and new markets.

MOMBAK is one of Brazil’s largest restoration companies and startups, which has already raised USD 120 million and acquired 20,000 hectares for land restoration in Pará in the Amazon region.

Franco’s statement was a highlight of the IM Talks – Restauração da Terra (Land restoration) hosted by Impact Hub São Paulo.

Photo credit: UNCCD/G20 Global Land Initiative

Brazil is a global driver in restoration and has made ambitious commitments on the climate change and reducing land degradation goals.

Under its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), for instance, Brazil pledged to restore and reforest 12 million hectares of forests by 2030. These are not mere numbers on paper; they are opportunities to reshape markets, livelihoods and innovation.

Restoration as a connector

On 11 September 2025, the vision of land restoration as a driver of social innovation and new markets took center stage at another event also in São Paulo, Brazil. More than 150 participants, onsite and online, gathered to explore how restoration can connect climate, biodiversity, water, food and technology.

The audience reflected a vibrant mix of startups, ecopreneurs, investors and representatives of larger companies seeking to understand their role in this growing ecosystem.

The opening session, with Paula Padrino Vilela, from UNCCD’s G20 Global Land Initiative (G20 GLI), framed restoration as both an economic and social driver.

The first panel brought together voices from across the spectrum of the restoration economy, such as international initiatives and social impact start-up business: Catharina Vale (G20 GLI), Thiago Augusto Terada (Genera Bioeconomia) and Caio Franco (MOMBAK).

The speakers explained that restoration is not only about recovering degraded lands. It is also about building connections between sectors and scaling solutions that touch everything from food systems to technology, making events of this type valuable for both speakers and participants.

The exchange demonstrated how land restoration engages a wide array of actors, from agronomists, lawyers and engineers, to ecopreneurs, seed collectors and technology developers. Ultimately, restoration is about building networks of support, not competition.

Restoration as an engine for a new economy

The subsequent panel pushed this discussion further.

With Iara Basso (Partnerships for Forests / Palladium), Ana Júlia Ferreira (RADIX Investimentos Florestais), and Renato Ximenes de Melo (XiCa Advogados and Nativas Brasil), the conversation turned to investment, entrepreneurship and the legal frameworks shaping restoration.

Ana Júlia, a young ecopreneur and one of the participants selected for the G20 GLI’s capacity-building program organized jointly with Instituto Terra in Brazil, shared her company’s (RADIX) experience with crowdfunding as a mechanism to support a reforestation business in the Amazon rainforest. Her conclusion? Community building is crucial in this sector.

A collective agenda

As the G20 Global Land Initiative / UNCCD continues to engage with partners in Brazil, IM Talks demonstrated that restoration can and should be embraced as a social impact agenda. It is about jobs, livelihoods, biodiversity, climate action and inclusive economic growth.

Brazil is showing that restoration is a business opportunity that belongs to everyone. From startups in São Paulo to seed collectors in the Caatinga, restoration is not a niche market but a new market frontier. It is where innovation meets community, where seed networks led by women and traditional communities meet cutting-edge technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence. It is where Brazil’s NDCs targets intersect with the everyday lives of people who depend on the land.

Director's Message

The year 2024 was pivotal for the Global Land Initiative. Land degradation and restoration remained prominent on the global policy agenda throughout.

The UN Environmental Assembly, G7 Leaders’ Summit, G20 Environment and Climate Change Ministers’ meeting, and BRICS Leaders’ Summit addressed land degradation and committed to scaling up land restoration efforts.

The European Union passed a new Restoration Law mandating quantitative targets for land restoration. The UNFCCC, UNCBD and UNCCD Conferences of the Parties (COPs), held during the last quarter of the year, reinforced land restoration as a crucial solution to combat land degradation, biodiversity loss and climate change.

Building on this favorable policy momentum, the Global Land Initiative continued to develop and deliver a robust program. In collaboration with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), we completed a database on Global Restoration Commitments by countries under the UNCCD, UNCBD, UNFCCC and the Bonn Challenge.

Representing a significant increase in global commitments since 2021, the total global commitment now stands at 1.2 billion hectares, with 30 countries, including 11 G20 members, pledging to restore over 10 million hectares each.

The UNCCD, with financial support from the Global Land Initiative, published the first global restoration economy international report, titled, Investing in Land’s Future: Financial needs assessment for UNCCD. The report defines the private sector’s growing role in land restoration and its potential for creating green jobs.

The study outlines key recommendations to support the growth of the restoration economy, which has an associated market survey valued at $37 billion globally, growing at 8.2% annually and is projected to reach $70 billion by 2031. Together, these studies stressed the need for focused policy action to encourage private sector investment and engagement in the restoration economy.

Working with the International Trade Centre (ITC), the Global Land Initiative launched the first cohort of the “Global Ecopreneurs Program,” training 100 young entrepreneurs from restoration startups. These entrepreneurs received training on improving business plans and pitching to investors. We plan to scale this program regionally to reach 10,000 ecopreneurs by 2029.

Training remained a cornerstone of the Global Land Initiative, with programs on the restoration of mining areas, of urban lands, of lowland-based systems, of drylands and with biosaline agriculture. These trainings consistently attracted more applications than available slots. To accommodate this high demand and broader participation, we also conducted online webinars on these topics, in English, Arabic and French.

The first University Curriculum Course on Sustainable Agriculture for Land Restoration was launched this year. It reached over 400 university teachers, with over 100 trained on implementing the curriculum. A university module on urban land restoration is in its final stages.

Representatives from 25 countries attended the second Global Changemaker Academy for Parliamentarians held in Bonn. With the European Union Restoration Law’s passage, global best practices can now be discussed and adapted to national contexts.

The Global Land Initiative’s visibility surged with participation in the G20 Environment and Climate Change Working Group meetings in Brazil, the COPs of the UNCBD and UNCCD and 7 other international exhibitions. In December, the Initiative, in partnership with Germany’s Federal Museum of Arts and Sciences, opened the Save Land: United for Land Museum Exhibition, the first museum exhibition on land restoration, which will run until June 2025.

Online engagement grew, reaching over 35,000 newsletter subscribers and over 14,000 followers across social media platforms, and a global reach of nearly 400,000. The Global Photography Festival, which attracted 17,000 entries from 154 countries, further boosted visibility.

The Global Restoration Information Hub was launched in July 2024. It is a compilation of globally available data on land restoration from credible sources. The site provides information on global best practices, restoration commitments, best practice legislations, documentaries, restoration actors and other databases.

The Initiative issued a global call for communities and NGOs to submit their restoration projects for small grant support, receiving over 600 submissions from 100 countries. Forty-one projects from XX countries were selected for funding.

[Statement on faith, if the faith report is finalized]

The G20 Global Land Initiative Steering Committee was kept informed of developments through regular communication. It met in July and continues to provide guidance on program implementation. It received the work plan for 2025-26; an exciting period of action is ahead.

Executive Director's Message

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