Ecological restoration is part of the climate and biodiversity global goals. Although ambitious targets have been set - for instance 12 million ha in Brazil until 2030 - most of the basic and applied knowledge on conservation ecology comes from local and regional experiences. Nevertheless, challenges related to land prioritization and the lack of robust datasets hinder reliable estimates of the positive impacts arising from ecological restoration at both local and regional scales. This symposium aims to discuss challenges on different topics by addressing restoration in a large-scale context. We hope to bridge the gap between local and large-scale foundations and to bring together researchers that are coming up with scientific answers to practical problems in the topic.

Given that the challenge to achieve ambitious global targets depend on humongous efforts from different stakeholders, our symposium will bring together people working at universities, research centers, and the private sector in Latin America. Although we are not organizing a symposium with participants from all continents, our goal is also to promote connections between Latin-American and Asian initiatives in the field of restoration. We invited five speakers to discuss distinct views on synthesis, natural regeneration, carbon, people, and data. All speakers will bring diverse experiences and points of view on restoration that converge on the same main goal: restoration for people and the planet at a large scale. We expect to address the challenge to reach global impact with ecological restoration while remaining true to local diversity, context, knowledge, and data. In a scenario where climate and biodiversity are collapsing and taking action is urgent, we want to promote partnership and collaboration among people working with local and scalable restoration-based solutions. Finally, our purpose is to create an environment where different voices can speak, interact and be inspired to build connections between efforts to restore ecosystems that will develop science, society, and the environment and, ultimately, provide human well-being.