PACT is a movement created in 2009, motivated by the critical level of deforestation witnessed in the Atlantic Forest biome, one of the most species-rich on the planet, but with less than 16% of the original vegetation cover left. At that time, many restoration initiatives in Brazil had little synergy, working in isolation in small areas, and struggling to collaborate with partners to achieve larger impacts. In this context, PACT aimed to assemble the main stakeholders and guide restoration science in practice in Brazil.

Currently PACT is a diverse movement composed of more than 270 institutions. Including universities, state agencies, private companies and NGOs, distributed across the 8 biogeographical regions and 17 states of the Atlantic Forest. With such a large network, the current goal of PACT is to galvanize its members to restore 15 million hectares of native forests by 2050, an area larger than Greece.

To reach such an ambitious goal, PACT relies on volunteer teams composed of some of its members to simultaneously work on different aspects of ecological restoration, such as science, public policies, gender equality, economy, mapping and communication, among others. Active members of the PACT recently provided policy and technical support for the development of Brazil’s National Plan for the Recovery of Native Vegetation (PLANAVEG), publishing a book on ecological restoration economics, mapping remnants of the Atlantic Forest and a booklet on forest restoration and gender.

The ambitious and scientific oriented goals of the PACT are aligned with the large-scale restoration approaches of WeForest activities worldwide. Being part of such a large coalition of local stakeholders allows us to find synergies with local actors and aligns our goals with an even larger nationwide restoration plan.

WeForest’s first step as member of PACT is to contribute to mapping natural regeneration and deforestation of the Atlantic Forest at the national scale. This is an important step in identifying sites where forest is expanding or retracting and will help to guide site selection for forest restoration efforts in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest.