Q&A: Mexico's Felipe Calderón on how to make land restoration profitable

The former president of Mexico, Felipe Calderón, thinks that most degraded land can be restored in a profitable way — but “creative” approaches are needed to make restoration projects attractive to investors.

Speaking at the Global Landscapes Forum in Germany this week, Calderón talked about the urgent need to restore the world’s degraded land — estimated at 2 billion hectares — and how it can offer governments, companies, and communities both economic and social returns. While stressing the need to preserve pristine forest, Calderón told Devex that “most degraded land could be recovered in a profitable way, in my opinion,” but “you need to be careful that you don’t compete with the nature of the original forest.”