Multiple Pathways Towards Climate and Ecological Restoration

In the face of the global polycrisis, optimistic scenarios help expand the space of possible futures and guide effective goal‑setting; however, most fail to envision large-scale ecological restoration. This study develops a set of optimistic scenarios designed to illustrate how diverse actors and levels of collective action could restore ecosystems and sequester carbon while maintaining food security. These scenarios envision a top-down policy of setting aside large areas of land for conservation, a reduction of the land necessary for food production through increases in agricultural productivity and changes in diet, and a large-scale adoption of agricultural practices consistent with carbon sequestration and biodiversity objectives. We quantify these narratives with the Global Change Analysis Model (GCAM) and find that all scenarios show large ecological and climate improvements relative to a reference case, with those incorporating regional or global conservation incentives achieving net‑negative AFOLU emissions by 2100 that are consistent with limiting warming below 2°C. While trade‑offs emerge with resulting increases to food prices, they can be offset through relatively modest coordinated financial support. Together, these optimistic scenarios reveal multiple policy, technological, and behavioral pathways whereby broad cooperation among actors delivers transformative, synergistic benefits for climate and ecological restoration and human well‑being.