RESTORE+: Addressing Landscape Restoration on Degraded Land in Indonesia and Brazil

Although crucial for many activities, the availability and accessibility of map data in Brazil and Indonesia are often limited. This limitation hampers detailed planning of forest and landscape restoration, as well as mobilization of financial and institutional resources that require baseline setting and monitoring of results. In the context of avoiding deforestation, data limitation will also result in limited ability to participate in markets that incentivize/enforce sustainable practices. The project aims to deliver mapping technologies to help key actors access high-quality data in planning, mobilizing funds, and implementing efforts to avoid deforestation and restore degraded forests and landscapes. Additionally, the project will also derive insights for national policies and long-term strategies to further demonstrate the multiplier effect of high-quality map data towards increased capacity for delivering land use sustainability.

Project data

Countries: Brazil, Indonesia
IKI funding: 12,498,171.00 €
Duration: 03/2017 till 12/2028
Status: open
Implementing organisation: International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)
Political Partner: Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC)

National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) - Indonesia
Implementing Partner: SELPER Brazil

World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF)
Online: http://www.restoreplus.org/

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State of implementation/results

Epistem, a participatory mapping initiative in Indonesia under RESTORE+, expanded piloting activities beyond South Sumatra by holding new rounds of community engagement workshops called kopi darat, or "Kopdar" with the Karsa Bentala community of practice in South Sulawesi and East Nusa Tenggara, in April-May and July-August 2026. Kopdar workshops combine capacity building, needs assessment, and usage case development activities involving local Forestry Offices, the Social Forestry Agency and the Plantation Offices, with continuous support from the Ecology Research Center at the National Research and Innovation Agency of Indonesia (PRE-BRIN) through a series of technical discussions preparing and backing the meet-ups in both provinces.
Since Luma (Land Use Mapping for All, luma.epistem.io) officially launched on 20 May 2026, it has moved from a project tool into public domain for beta testing. Luma is a free, cloud-based platform that guides users step by step for creating land use and land cover maps from satellite images, without needing specialised software. User testimonies from the launching event reflected the data empowerment objectives of Epistem's Luma platform. Staff at the South Sumatra Plantation Office noted that the platform enables them to support land-use claims with spatial evidence rather than relying solely on tabular data, for example by distinguishing coffee-growing areas from forest zones. Lecturers also highlighted that Luma operates effectively on lower-specification laptops, extending access to spatial analysis beyond well-resourced institutions.
From July to August 2026, "Epistem Goes to Campus" trained over 200 students in South Sulawesi and hundreds more in South Sumatra and East Nusa Tenggara, and launched "#StoryBehindTheMap" (epistem.io/…), a mapping competition for students in the three provinces, growing the pool of people able to produce and use reliable land use data.
In Brazil, using the Rural Environmental Cadastre (CAR) database, RESTORE+ researchers found that private properties in the Amazon need to restore 19 million hectares of land to comply with Brazil's Forest Code, underlining the urgent need to bring private properties into full compliance.
The project continues to strengthen Brazil's forest monitoring capacity through the open-source software SITS (Satellite Image Time Series Analysis), developed for the National Institute for Space Research (INPE). INPE is now carrying out its 2026 deforestation assessment for Brazil's biomes with support from the RESTORE+ team.
Using technologies developed in RESTORE+, INPE and the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) have started producing land use and land cover maps of the Amazon and Cerrado biomes for 2026. The work is expected to finish by mid-2027, with results available at www.terraclass.gov.br/…
The project has released a long-term (2000-2025) land-use dataset for the Amazon biome to support the development of national greenhouse gas emission scenarios, and is now preparing an equivalent dataset for the Cerrado biome, expected to be released in September 2026.

Latest Update:
09/2026