Drivers of reforestation across land-use sectors in the state of São Paulo, Brazil

Upscaling reforestation efforts is essential to meet ambitious global reforestation targets, requiring a clear understanding of the drivers and facilitating factors of forest gain, which may vary across land-use sectors. We analyse drivers of forest area change across various land-use sectors in the Atlantic Forest of São Paulo state, Brazil, to identify the Forest Transition pathway that best explains reforestation patterns. Using multiple regression, we found that reforestation is preferentially more likely to occur on mixed farming land and less likely on land used for cash crop production. Between 1990 and 2020, gross forest area change was about 10 times greater than net forest area change. Considerable overlap exists between the drivers and facilitating factors of both reforestation and deforestation, suggesting a mix of more dynamic (with higher forest area gains and losses) and more stable landscapes in São Paulo’s Atlantic Forest. However, many drivers and facilitating factors are uniquely tied to reforestation in specific land-use types. Reforestation does not fit neatly into a single Forest Transition pathway, but we can identify different pathways by considering the land-use type that was replaced. Reforestation on mixed farming land, which accounts for 77 % of reforestation events, shows a strong connection to the Forest Policy pathway. If different land uses follow distinct Forest Transition pathways, a one-size-fits-all approach may be ineffective for scaling up reforestation. Our findings indicate that ( various pathways provide opportunities to target specific land-use sectors for reforestation scaling. Recognising the differences in reforestation drivers across sectors is a key step towards aligning policy incentives with these drivers effectively.