Global reforestation potential by country?

The purpose of this data-file is to estimate the ‘reforestation potential’ by country, across 170 countries globally, based on their climate, total area available, risk levels and economic costs.


These factors are cross-plotted on the chart above. Variables we tabulated and considered included land area, coast line, current forest cover, historical forest loss, rainfall, temperature ranges, population, population density, ease of doing business, corruption perceptions, income per capita and land costs.

A caveat: clearly these different variables are broad-brush, if they are meant to reflect entire countries in a single summary number, in some cases we have had to make best-estimates, and the variables also need to be weighted together, but we have taken a stab at a ranking.

Our conclusion is that many of the most attractive geographies to reforest will require navigating a somewhat challenging business climate. There are outlier countries in the developed world that also have excellent potential. Our note quantifying total realistic reforestation potential is here.

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