Authors: Warren-Thomas, Eleanor; Arbaleaz Gaviria, Juliana ;Chavarro, John;Jones, Julia;Leclère, David;Peña, Andres;Rosa, Isabel;Visconti, Piero;

Reversing trends in forest degradation and deforestation is essential for tackling climate change and preventing ecosystem service and biodiversity decline: critical if the Sustainable Development Goals are to be met. Political support for forest restoration at global, regional and national levels is high, but set against a backdrop of continued demand for cultivated land and ongoing deforestation. There is a risk that meeting nationally-determined restoration targets could displace land demand to active deforestation frontiers, generating net biodiversity and carbon losses. Focussing on Colombia, a country that hosts 10% of global biodiversity, we use the spatial partial-equilibrium model GLOBIOM to ask whether restoration targets (1 million ha by 2030) could be achieved in congruence with increasing demand for agricultural, bioenergy and wood products. We also project forest cover change using a probabilistic model based on historic biophysical, demographic, market and non-market drivers of land cover change. Contrasting these results suggests that while there is substantial space for forest restoration to occur on degraded pastureland without displacing market demand for agriculture to forest frontiers, land use change drivers such as conflict, illicit crops and land speculation that are not captured in market-focussed models might determine success in generating net benefits from restoration.