What a Forest Is — and What It Is Not — in Light of the Universal Declaration of Tree Rights

A Global Classification of Forest Ecosystems, Protection of Primary Forests, and a Program for the Recovery of Naturalness

The word “forest” now encompasses such different realities that it may refer both to a primary forest arising from centuries or millennia of ecological continuity and to a regularly spaced plantation established for industrial harvesting. This equivalence facilitates global inventories, but it becomes inadequate whenever naturalness, integrity, biodiversity, ecological continuity, or the irreplaceable value of an ecosystem must be assessed.

In light of the Universal Declaration of Tree Rights, this article advances a global doctrine founded on an essential distinction: not every area covered by trees is necessarily a forest. It establishes a multidimensional classification, distinguishes genuine forest ecosystems from production-oriented tree-growing systems, places primary forests under a principle of non-substitution, and opens a multigenerational and multi-century horizon for the recovery of naturalness.

This proposal does not replace FAO statistical definitions, national legal categories, or existing scientific typologies. It constitutes an ecological and interpretive framework specific to the Declaration, intended to inform public policy, voluntary commitments, ecological restoration, silviculture, and the intergenerational continuity of forests.

Article prepared on August 1, 2026, drawing in particular on FAO’s Global Forest Resources Assessment 2025, the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the scientific workshop co-sponsored by IPBES and the IPCC, and the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology.

I. Why the Words “Tree,” “Plantation,” and “Forest” Are Not Interchangeable

A tree is a living organism. A group of trees is a stand. An area on which trees form a canopy is tree-covered land. A plantation is an area in which trees have been deliberately established for a defined purpose. A forest, by contrast, is an ecosystem in which trees structure a living community that extends far beyond the trees themselves.

These categories may overlap, but they are not identical. A forest contains trees, but the presence of trees alone does not necessarily create a forest ecosystem. A plantation may develop into a complex forest ecosystem, but it does not necessarily possess that quality when it is established. Conversely, a natural forest may be relatively species-poor without ceasing to be a forest: some boreal, montane, swamp, or naturally monodominant forests contain few tree species while retaining fully functioning forest soils, ecological cycles, interactions, and regeneration.

The distinction cannot rest on a single criterion. The number of tree species, regular alignment, planted origin, or economic purpose are indicators. What truly characterizes a forest ecosystem is their interaction with the site’s history, continuity of the soil, diversity of organisms, autonomy of regeneration, trophic and symbiotic networks, the presence of multiple phases of life and death, and the ecosystem’s capacity to continue its own dynamics.

Fundamental Terminological Principle

A group of trees may constitute tree cover without constituting a forest ecosystem.

This formulation does not diminish the value of planted trees. Every tree remains a living being and performs biological functions. Nor does it deny the economic usefulness of timber production, the climate-related functions of certain stands, or the landscape value of a park. It simply rejects any claim that systems with radically different histories, levels of complexity, and functions are ecologically equivalent.

II. The Limits of Current Statistical Definitions

FAO defines forest as land spanning more than 0.5 hectares with trees higher than 5 meters and a canopy cover of more than 10 percent, or trees able to reach those thresholds in situ, excluding land that is predominantly under agricultural or urban land use. This definition performs an indispensable function: it enables States to describe land use, track change over time, and compare highly diverse national data. Consult FAO’s FRA 2025 Terms and Definitions.

That statistical function is not, however, a comprehensive definition of an ecosystem. Two areas meeting precisely the same thresholds of height, area, and canopy cover may exhibit opposite levels of naturalness, diversity, integrity, continuity, and ecological autonomy.

FAO itself recognizes this heterogeneity. It distinguishes naturally regenerating forests from planted forests and, within the latter, forest plantations that are intensively managed and meet, at planting and stand maturity, the criteria of one or two species, even age class, and regular spacing, from other planted forests that may eventually resemble naturally regenerating forests. Consult the official definitions of planted forests and forest plantations.

The issue, therefore, is not that the FAO definition is incorrect. It answers a different question. It asks: what area must be reported within an internationally standardized land-use category? The doctrine advanced under the Declaration asks: what kind of living system should be recognized, protected, restored, and preserved for future generations as a forest ecosystem?

The Declaration therefore proposes the simultaneous use of two vocabularies without setting them against one another: statistical language, which is indispensable to international cooperation, and ecological language, which is indispensable to protecting the living world.

III. The Definition of a Forest in Light of the Declaration

In light of the Universal Declaration of Tree Rights, a forest may be defined as a terrestrial, coastal, or seasonally or periodically inundated ecosystem in which trees constitute a structural component of a living community capable of organization, renewal, and evolution.

That community cannot be reduced to visible trunks or the volume of standing timber. It includes forest soils, organic and mineral horizons, water, the forest microclimate, roots, fungi, mycorrhizal networks, bacteria, microorganisms, understory flora, animals, decomposers, deadwood, cavities, seeds, young trees, mature and senescent trees, and the natural or anthropogenic disturbances to which the whole system responds.

1. Constitutive Characteristics

A forest, in the ecological sense advanced by the Declaration, is identified through a combination of characteristics:

• a living community, comprising multiple trophic, symbiotic, and functional levels;
• an ecological structure, through which trees organize light, humidity, temperature, soils, and habitats;
• an internal dynamic, consisting of growth, competition, cooperation, mortality, decomposition, regeneration, and succession;
• material and biological continuity, especially in soils, propagules, root networks, fauna, and microorganisms;
• a capacity for regeneration, whether natural or progressively restored, that does not depend exclusively on complete human re-establishment at every cycle;
• functional diversity, which may exist even where tree-species diversity is naturally low;
• territorial embeddedness, connecting the stand to water, landform, climate, neighboring ecosystems, and species movements;
• a history, because a forest ecosystem is also the product of ecological continuity or an ecological trajectory.

2. A Definition Based on Trajectory

Classification cannot be treated as static. A degraded area may recover forest functions. A diversified plantation may develop into an ecologically oriented planted forest and, later, reach a very high degree of naturalness. Conversely, a naturally regenerating forest may lose its structure, fauna, soils, and capacity for renewal without immediately disappearing from forest statistics.

The proposed doctrine therefore assesses both present condition and trajectory. It does not ask only, “What do we see today?” It also asks, “Where did this area come from? Which processes remain active? What is it becoming? Which interventions are necessary to allow it to become more autonomous and more fully alive?”

3. Definition of “Natural Forest” for the Purposes of This Article

For the purposes of this article, a “natural forest” is a forest whose establishment or renewal relies primarily on natural regeneration processes and whose functioning is not organized around complete artificial re-establishment at each cycle.

This classification describes the stand’s predominant origin and trajectory. It does not necessarily mean that the forest is primary, long-continuity, intact, or composed exclusively of native species. Its integrity, composition, degree of degradation, and historical continuity should be assessed separately. Consult FAO’s FRA 2025 Terms and Definitions.

4. The Place of Human Intervention

Human presence is not, in itself, incompatible with a forest. Indigenous Peoples and local communities have lived in, cultivated, harvested from, protected, and governed forest environments for generations without necessarily interrupting their major ecological processes. The relevant boundary therefore does not separate nature “without people” from nature “with people.” It distinguishes uses compatible with the continuity of the living world from uses that simplify, convert, or persistently disrupt the ecosystem.

Proposed Doctrinal Definition

A forest is a living community structured by trees, rooted in soil and a water regime, and capable of regeneration, evolution, and ecological relationships extending beyond the production of biomass alone.

IV. A Global Classification by Degree of Naturalness

A simple list of “forest types” would be scientifically inadequate. The same forest may simultaneously be tropical, montane, humid, primary, fragmented, peat-forming, and under the governance of an Indigenous People or local community. The proposed classification should therefore be multidimensional.

Its first axis is naturalness and ecological history. This is not a moral scale mechanically opposing what is “good” to what is “bad.” It identifies what is irreplaceable, what remains functional, what has been degraded, what may be restored, and what belongs primarily to production-oriented tree cultivation.

Class 1 — Primary Forests

FAO defines primary forest as naturally regenerating forest of native tree species, where there are no clearly visible indications of human activities and the ecological processes are not significantly disturbed. Its characteristics include natural species composition, natural age structure, deadwood, natural regeneration, an area large enough to maintain ecological processes, and the absence of significant recent human disturbance. Consult the official definition of primary forest.

This class should be subdivided according to integrity, fragmentation, protection, and governance:

• large, intact primary forest;
• fragmented primary forest;
• primary forest subject to compatible traditional uses;
• primary forest under threat or undergoing degradation;
• primary forest legally protected and effectively conserved;
• primary forest protected in law but inadequately protected in practice;
• primary forest without a specific legal protection status.

Class 2 — Forests of Very High Naturalness

This class covers forests that retain nearly all attributes of a primary forest, but whose history includes ancient, limited, or uncertain human intervention. It may include some long-continuity forests, mature or late-successional forests, forests subjected to ancient selective harvesting, secondary forests that have regained complex structure, and traditionally managed forests that have not undergone major alteration.

Four concepts should remain distinct:

• primary forest: continuity of ecological processes without significant human disturbance;
• long-continuity forest: historical continuity of forest cover, without that fact alone determining current integrity;
• mature or late-successional forest: the presence of advanced developmental stages, old trees, and age-related structures;
• high-integrity forest: composition, structure, functioning, and connectivity close to the ecosystem’s natural reference condition.

Class 3 — Naturally Regenerating Secondary Forests

A secondary forest re-establishes after major disturbance: abandoned agriculture, logging, fire, storm, conflict, population displacement, or another transformation. Once natural regeneration, ecological interactions, and forest dynamics recover, the area is genuinely a forest.

The category should distinguish young secondary forest, intermediate secondary forest, mature secondary forest, post-agricultural forest, post-logging forest, post-fire forest, post-storm forest, and spontaneous forest recovery. Their value cannot be measured by age alone: proximity to seed sources, soil continuity, hunting, grazing, invasive species, hydrology, and fragmentation determine their trajectory.

Class 4 — Degraded Natural Forests

A forest may remain visible in satellite imagery while having lost much of its integrity. Repeated removal of the largest trees, drainage, roads, human-caused fires, hunting that eliminates seed dispersers, erosion, pollution, or introduced species may profoundly simplify the ecosystem without immediately removing its canopy.

Degradation should therefore be distinguished from deforestation. Deforestation converts forest to another land use. Degradation retains the appearance or statistical category of forest while reducing diversity, structure, functioning, resilience, or regenerative capacity.

Class 5 — Forests Under Ecological Restoration

This class includes areas in which deliberate action seeks to recover the ecosystem: removing pressures, assisted natural regeneration, hydrological restoration, reconnection, re-establishment of native species, soil restoration, targeted control of invasive species, or setting land aside for natural processes.

The term “restoration” should describe a trajectory, not an automatically achieved outcome. A project, budget, or planting operation does not prove that integrity is recovering. Restoration should be tied to measurable ecological objectives, a reference condition, monitoring, and the capacity to adapt interventions in response to results.

Class 6 — Ecologically Oriented Planted Forests

Planted origin does not permanently preclude forest status. A planted area may be designed to develop into a diversified stand, composed predominantly of native species, multi-layered, uneven-aged, spatially irregular, connected, and capable of natural regeneration. It may also provide a first step where soils, seed sources, or succession conditions have been too severely altered to permit rapid spontaneous recovery.

Classification then depends less on the initial act of planting than on the ecological trajectory: progressively reducing intervention, retaining deadwood, developing an understory, establishing a diversity of age classes, enabling the return of fauna, achieving autonomous regeneration, and restoring water and soil cycles.

V. Production-Oriented Tree Plantations That Should No Longer Be Classified as Forests

The proposed doctrine places outside the ecological category of forests those systems whose predominant purpose is the planned production of raw materials and whose management persistently reduces ecological autonomy, structural diversity, and forest dynamics.

Depending on how they are actually established and managed, this category may include plantations of conifers, eucalyptus, poplar, rubber trees, or teak; short-rotation coppice; industrial tree-growing systems; energy plantations; pulpwood plantations; and certain offset plantations established primarily to generate carbon credits or offset claims.

1. Identification Criteria

No single criterion is sufficient. Classification results from a converging set of indicators:

• deliberate establishment and mechanical site preparation;
• one or two dominant tree species selected for production performance;
• trees of the same age or within very narrow age ranges;
• regular rows and spacing;
• genetic selection directed toward uniform output;
• short or predetermined production cycles;
• scheduled thinning, inputs, treatments, or harvesting;
• limited representation of senescent stages and deadwood;
• simultaneous harvest or clear-cutting at stand scale;
• low regenerative autonomy and the need for re-establishment at every cycle;
• a production function that clearly predominates over other functions;
• persistent simplification of soils, understory, fauna, or ecological networks.

2. A Classification That Does Not Condemn Timber Production

Wood is a renewable resource when it is produced under ecologically sustainable conditions and used efficiently and sustainably, including in long-lived products. Production plantations may reduce pressure on some natural forests, provide employment, supply timber and fiber value chains, and help substitute for more carbon-intensive materials. Those benefits do not, however, justify presenting them as the ecological equivalent of the forests they may help preserve.

Terminological transparency also protects the legitimacy of production. A well-designed tree plantation that is clearly reported and integrated into a landscape mosaic can be assessed on its own merits: productivity, soils, water, pesticide use, genetic diversity, fire risk, connectivity, social conditions, and its actual contribution to reducing pressure on natural ecosystems.

3. Other Tree-Based Systems

The following should likewise be distinguished from forests without being devalued:

• orchards and fruit-tree crops;
• olive groves and oil-palm plantations;
• agroforestry and silvopastoral systems;
• hedgerow-based bocage landscapes, hedgerows, and windbreaks;
• urban parks, gardens, and tree-covered cemeteries;
• roadside rows of trees and isolated trees;
• nurseries and Christmas-tree crops;
• ornamental or heritage plantations.

VI. The Planet’s Major Forest Biomes

Degree of naturalness alone does not describe the world’s forest diversity. The classification should be cross-referenced with the major climatic domains. FAO reports the 2025 global forest area across tropical, boreal, temperate, and subtropical domains. That broad framework should then be refined by precipitation, seasonality, elevation, soils, and biogeography. Consult the Global Forest Resources Assessment 2025.

This bioclimatic classification should remain compatible with more detailed frameworks, including the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology, which distinguishes ecosystems by their functions, biotic assemblages, and ecological drivers. The doctrine advanced under the Declaration is not intended to replace those typologies, but to add an analysis of naturalness, protection, and trajectory. Consult the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology.

VII. Forests in Relation to Water, Soils, and Landforms

A forest never exists independently of its substrate. The same assemblage of species does not have the same ecological meaning on alluvial soil, peat, a dune, a volcanic slope, karst, or permafrost. Water, soil, landform, and physical disturbance should therefore form a separate axis of classification.

1. Major Physical Settings

• lowland and plateau forests;
• slope, ravine, and scree forests;
• montane, subalpine, and cloud forests;
• alluvial and riverine forests;
• riparian and gallery forests;
• swamp and seasonally flooded forests;
• forests on peatlands;
• mangroves and coastal forests;
• dune forests;
• karst and limestone forests;
• volcanic forests;
• forests on permafrost;
• dry and xeric forests or forests subject to pronounced seasonal water limitation.

2. Disturbance Regimes Are Part of the Ecosystem

Fire, wind, floods, avalanches, insects, windthrow, and natural mortality are not always anomalies external to a forest. In many systems they create gaps, recycle nutrients, trigger regeneration, or maintain an age mosaic. The doctrine should distinguish disturbances that are inherent to the ecosystem from disturbances that human activity has intensified, displaced, or rendered destructive.

Protection therefore cannot mean the universal suppression of all fire, flooding, or mortality. It should preserve natural ecological regimes while reducing human-caused risk, ecological threshold crossings, and dangerous consequences for human communities.

VIII. Forest Structure and Ecological Integrity

Two areas with the same canopy cover may have radically different structures. A global description should therefore integrate the horizontal, vertical, temporal, and functional dimensions of a stand.

Ecological integrity results from coherence among composition, structure, function, and process. It does not mean the absolute absence of change. An intact forest evolves, may burn, undergo mortality, migrate, or change in composition. It remains ecologically integral when those transformations are compatible with its fundamental processes, diversity, continuity, and capacity for renewal.

Landscape-scale integrity must also be assessed. The Forest Landscape Integrity Index, for example, combines observed pressures, inferred pressures, and loss of connectivity to show that tree cover alone does not describe the condition of remaining forests. Consult the foundational scientific paper on the Forest Landscape Integrity Index.

IX. The Global State of Forests in 2025

FAO’s Global Forest Resources Assessment 2025 provides the most comprehensive international statistical baseline. It draws on national reports, common terms, and a coordinated process covering the world’s countries and territories. Its figures should be used rigorously while recognizing differences in methods, inventory capacity, and national categories. Consult the Global Forest Resources Assessment 2025.

These data do not permit the area of “real forests” to be calculated by simple subtraction. Deducting the 312 million hectares of planted forests from the official total of 4.14 billion hectares would be methodologically incorrect. Some planted forests develop into complex ecosystems. Conversely, some naturally regenerating forests are highly degraded, severely fragmented, or depleted of fauna.

The conclusion is therefore not to replace existing statistics, but to supplement them with an accounting of naturalness and integrity.

X. Primary Forests: Definition, Extent, Distribution, and Threats

1. A Definition That Does Not Necessarily Mean “The Complete Absence of Human Presence”

Primary forest is naturally regenerating forest of native tree species in which ecological processes are not significantly disturbed. That definition may include forests in which Indigenous Peoples and local communities carry out traditional forms of use or management that remain compatible with those processes. Consult the FRA 2025 criteria applicable to primary forests.

Compatible traditional use should be distinguished from industrial extraction, road opening, fragmentation, and transformations that persistently alter composition or structure. A forest does not cease to be primary merely because a community lives within it. It may, however, lose primary attributes when intervention breaks its dynamics, simplifies age structure, removes its largest trees, or transforms its soils.

2. An Uneven Global Distribution That Is Still Imperfectly Documented

Major primary-forest continuities are concentrated in particular within the tropical basins of the Amazon and Congo, the boreal regions of North America and Eurasia, parts of New Guinea and Southeast Asia, and temperate, montane, or island massifs that remain relatively intact. That distribution should not obscure small relict primary forests, which may be essential to an ecoregion and far more vulnerable to a single infrastructure project.

Mapping should combine several levels of analysis:

• continent, State, and territory;
• biome and ecoregion;
• river basin;
• size and continuity of the forest complex;
• protection status;
• public, community, Indigenous, private, or shared governance;
• degree of fragmentation;
• current pressures and authorized projects;
• quality and date of the data.

3. Direct and Indirect Threats

Primary forests are threatened by agricultural conversion, livestock expansion, mining, oil and gas development, roads, dams, energy infrastructure, logging, human-caused fires, drainage, pollution, invasive species, unsustainable hunting, land conflict, and land grabbing.

Climate change acts as a threat multiplier. It alters rainfall regimes, increases drought and heat waves, shifts climatic zones, intensifies some fires, and may exceed species’ capacity to migrate or adapt. A primary forest that is legally protected but isolated, dried, or surrounded by infrastructure may therefore progressively lose its integrity.

4. Degradation That May Be Invisible from Above

An apparently continuous canopy does not always reveal selective extraction, the disappearance of large animals, the loss of deadwood, hunting, understory alteration, drainage, or soil damage. Remote sensing is indispensable, but it should be complemented by field inventories, Indigenous and local knowledge, and indicators of fauna, soils, structure, and functioning.

XI. Why Primary Forests Are Irreplaceable

A primary forest is not merely a group of older trees. It is the accumulation of an ecological history that cannot be reproduced within the time frame of a human project. Its soils, trees, microorganisms, dispersal networks, predator–prey relationships, cavities, deadwood, genetic variation, and evolutionary continuities have developed over periods that often exceed many human generations.

1. Biological and Genetic Diversity

Primary forests support specialized species that depend on old trees, large diameters, cavities, microhabitats, long-decomposing deadwood, undisturbed soils, or complex ecological relationships. Many cannot persist within short rotations, uniform stands, or fragmented landscapes.

2. Soils and Underground Networks

A decisive share of the ecosystem is invisible: soil carbon, roots, fungi, bacteria, pore structures, organic horizons, and relationships among plants. Planting young trees does not immediately reconstruct these components. Some may partly recover; others depend on long continuity that is difficult or impossible to recreate in identical form.

3. Carbon: Protect Existing Stocks Before Promising Future Flows

Primary forests contain major carbon stocks in biomass and soils. Their destruction causes immediate or progressive emissions, whereas a new plantation absorbs carbon only over time. Comparing only future growth flows may therefore conceal the loss of an already accumulated stock and uncertainty regarding long-term storage.

4. Water, Regional Climates, and Resilience

Large forests influence evapotranspiration, rainfall, runoff, water quality, temperatures, and soil stability. Simplification or fragmentation may reduce those functions even where some tree cover remains.

5. Cultures, Knowledge, and Relationships to Territory

Many primary forests are territories of life, memory, spirituality, food, and knowledge. Their value cannot be reduced to a carbon price, timber volume, or species count. Protecting the ecosystem therefore entails recognizing the peoples and communities connected to it.

Principle of Irreplaceability

What has developed over centuries or millennia cannot be deemed replaced by the recent planting of trees elsewhere.

XII. The Principle of Non-Substitution Between Natural Forests and Plantations

The principle of non-substitution provides that the destruction or degradation of a primary forest—and, more broadly, of a high-integrity natural forest—cannot be offset by establishing a plantation, even where the planted area is equal or larger.

One hectare of recent plantation does not replace one hectare of primary forest because it does not replace its history, soils, specialized species, diversity of ages, ecological interactions, carbon stocks, or evolutionary continuity.

1. The Action Hierarchy

Under the doctrine advanced here, the following hierarchy should apply:

1. avoid destruction or degradation;
2. minimize impacts that cannot be avoided;
3. restore on site the functions that have been altered;
4. remedy residual harm without presenting that remedy as ecological equivalence;
5. create additional gains elsewhere only where those gains are additional to protection of the threatened ecosystem and are not used to authorize its destruction.

2. The Difference Between Accounting Compensation and Ecological Restoration

An offset may balance an administrative, financial, or carbon unit. It does not necessarily recreate the ecosystem that was destroyed. Restoration seeks to recover composition, structure, function, and trajectory. Even when successful, it requires time and does not guarantee the return of every lost attribute.

3. The Disclosure Rule

Any project causing the loss of a natural forest should separately disclose:

• the area and ecosystem type lost;
• the degree of naturalness and integrity;
• the species, soils, stocks, and functions affected;
• permanent and temporary impacts;
• avoidance and minimization measures;
• on-site restoration measures;
• plantations or actions carried out elsewhere, without aggregating them into the balance of the natural forest.

XIII. Secondary Forests and Restoration Trajectories

The absolute priority accorded to primary-forest protection should not lead to the undervaluation of secondary forests. In many territories, they constitute most of the remaining forest, provide major habitat, protect water, store carbon, and offer the principal opportunity to recover high naturalness.

1. Recognizing Their Value Without Erasing Their History

A mature secondary forest may become highly complex and functional. It may regain a diversified canopy, old trees, decomposition cycles, rich fauna, and autonomous regeneration. It does not thereby become historically primary. Maintaining the distinction preserves the truth of the trajectory without diminishing the ecological value acquired.

2. Favoring Natural Regeneration First

Where soils, hydrology, seed sources, and human pressure permit, natural regeneration often provides the closest fit to local conditions. It mobilizes existing genetic diversity, selects individuals capable of establishing, and avoids some of the impacts associated with site preparation.

It may be assisted by protection from grazing or cutting, targeted control of invasive species, hydrological restoration, limited enrichment planting, creation of ecotones, or reconnection of fragments.

3. Intervening Without Locking the Ecosystem into Permanent Dependence

Restoration may require substantial initial work. Its purpose should nevertheless be to restore to the ecosystem an increasing capacity to function without continual intervention. A project that indefinitely requires planting, inputs, artificial drainage, or intensive control may improve some functions, but it has not yet recovered advanced naturalness.

4. Measuring Long Time Horizons

Results should be monitored across several horizons:

• five to ten years: survival, establishment, erosion, hydrology, and immediate pressures;
• twenty-five to fifty years: structure, regeneration, connectivity, and diversification;
• one century: maturity, old trees, deadwood, soils, and functional continuities;
• several centuries: very high naturalness, advanced succession, and intergenerational continuity.

International restoration standards reinforce this trajectory-based approach: restoration should be guided by an appropriate reference ecosystem, measurable attributes, transparent monitoring, and adaptive management. Consult the International Principles and Standards for the Practice of Ecological Restoration.

XIV. The Global Program for the Recovery of Forest Naturalness

The Declaration could establish an international program for areas that are no longer primary but may recover very high naturalness over multiple generations.

1. Eligible Areas

• mature secondary forests;
• long-continuity forests that have been exploited but retain major ecological continuities;
• degraded but still connected natural forest complexes;
• former plantations capable of developing toward autonomous forest structure;
• buffer zones around primary forests;
• corridors between natural forest complexes;
• strategic watersheds;
• restorable alluvial forests and forested peatlands;
• former agricultural land undergoing natural regeneration;
• territories in which a community seeks to commit to very long-term succession.

2. Conditions for Registration

Registration should not be granted on the basis of a promise alone. It would require:

• an independent initial assessment;
• public mapping and stable boundaries;
• identification of land, use, and governance rights;
• an ecological baseline and reference condition;
• a stated trajectory and measurable indicators;
• a prohibition on conversion;
• a financial regime ensuring continuity of the undertaking;
• a scientific and community-based monitoring system;
• review, alert, and accountability mechanisms.

3. Long-Term Regime

Depending on the needs of each site, registered areas would be subject to a regime including:

• no industrial exploitation;
• priority for natural regeneration;
• initial restoration of soils and hydrology;
• progressive removal of unnecessary infrastructure;
• targeted control of invasive species where indispensable;
• reconnection with neighboring ecosystems;
• retention of old trees, deadwood, and microhabitats;
• local, Indigenous, or shared governance;
• protection against land speculation and changes of use;
• indefinite duration or a legally secured commitment extending across several centuries.

4. A Transparent International Register

For every site, the program should publish its status, initial condition, owners or custodians, use rights, funding, indicators, interventions, results, and any failures. Registration must not become a decorative label or an opaque carbon asset.

XV. Sanctuaries for Multi-Century Forest Succession

Within the Global Program, certain areas could receive the enhanced status of a “forest succession sanctuary.” The term “sanctuary” does not imply exclusion of human communities. It denotes protection of the ecological trajectory against conversion, production rotations, and changes in land use.

A forest of recovered naturalness may perform many of the ecological functions associated with a primary forest. It may become long-established, mature, rich in deadwood, and highly diverse. It does not, however, recreate exactly the history that was lost. Preserving that distinction prevents restoration from becoming an argument for destroying the last areas of primary-forest continuity.

Legally Securing Duration Across Generations

The principal challenge is institutional. Political mandates, budgets, and contracts are short; forest development unfolds over centuries. Succession sanctuaries therefore require instruments capable of maintaining continuity beyond individual owners, governments, and generations: conservation easements or covenants adapted to domestic law, trusts, foundations, protected areas, legally recognized Indigenous territories, very long-term agreements, perpetual endowment funds, and public oversight mechanisms.

XVI. Global Objectives for 2030, 2050, 2100, and Beyond

A single global target for forest cover would be scientifically dangerous. It could lead to tree planting in savannas, grasslands, steppes, heathlands, open peatlands, or tundra whose ecological value depends precisely on their non-forest character.

Objectives should therefore be defined by biome, ecoregion, watershed, potential natural vegetation, species requirements, connectivity, climate projections, land and territorial rights, and the need to protect other natural ecosystems from inappropriate afforestation.

1. Proposed Baseline for 2030

The restoration objective corresponds to Kunming–Montreal Target 2, which calls for at least 30 percent of areas of degraded terrestrial, inland water, coastal, and marine ecosystems to be under effective restoration by 2030. The conservation objective corresponds to Kunming–Montreal Target 3, which calls for ecologically representative, well-connected, and equitably governed systems, while recognizing Indigenous and traditional territories.

2. Objectives for 2050

The Global Biodiversity Framework calls for ecosystem integrity, connectivity, and resilience to be maintained, enhanced, or restored, and for the area of natural ecosystems to increase substantially by 2050. The proposed forest doctrine translates that direction into the following objectives:

• a substantial increase in the area of natural forests;
• no gross or net loss of natural forests;
• restoration of continuity among major forest complexes;
• re-establishment of essential hydrological regimes;
• a major reduction in fragmentation;
• restoration of all severely depleted forest ecoregions;
• a representative network of forests placed under very long-term natural-process management in every biome;
• transition of the most vulnerable production plantations toward more diversified landscape mosaics;
• legal security for the rights, financing, and governance required for conservation.

Consult the 2050 goals of the Global Biodiversity Framework.

3. The Horizon of 2100 and Beyond

By 2100, States and territories should be able to demonstrate:

• that an ecologically sufficient share of every forest ecoregion is placed under indefinite natural succession;
• that continental and transboundary corridors function in practice;
• that primary forests are surrounded by buffer zones and compatible landscapes;
• that mature forests are being rebuilt across several human generations;
• that the area of forests of very high naturalness is measurably increasing;
• that legal commitments are carried forward across generations.

4. Why No Single Global Percentage Should Be Declared at This Stage

The ecological need for forest varies by region. A historically forested and heavily deforested ecoregion may require extensive restoration. A natural steppe or savanna may, by contrast, be degraded by afforestation. Percentages should therefore remain indicators derived from ecological analysis, not abstract objectives imposed uniformly.

XVII. Protection of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities

A global doctrine of forest protection would be legally and morally unacceptable if it turned the peoples who live in forests into obstacles to conservation. The territorial, cultural, political, and economic rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities should be integral to the very definition of effective protection.

1. Human Presence Must Not Be Confused with Degradation

Many high-integrity forests have been maintained in inhabited and governed territories. Traditional practices may contribute to regeneration, fire stewardship, habitat diversity, seed dispersal, and protection against industrial conversion.

2. Minimum Safeguards

• recognition of lands, territories, and resources;
• respect for representative institutions;
• full, effective, and equitable participation in decision-making;
• free, prior and informed consent where required by applicable standards;
• protection of customary uses compatible with conservation;
• direct access to financing;
• protection of environmental and human-rights defenders;
• respect for ownership, control, and confidentiality of knowledge;
• fair and equitable benefit-sharing;
• access to justice and effective remedies.

These requirements are consistent with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and with the participation, information, justice, and rights safeguards reflected in Target 22 of the Global Biodiversity Framework. Consult the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Consult Target 22 of the Global Biodiversity Framework.

3. Rejecting Exclusionary Conservation

The creation of a protected area should not cause displacement, criminalization, or loss of livelihoods for populations whose practices have maintained the ecosystem. Protection should be equitably governed, recognize Indigenous territories, and integrate communities into monitoring, decision-making, and the allocation of resources.

XVIII. Global Indicators of Naturalness, Integrity, and Connectivity

The Declaration should propose a global dashboard complementary to existing inventories. Indicators should be measurable, comparable, and sufficiently disaggregated to prevent gains in plantation area from concealing losses of natural forest.

The Central Accounting Principle

National and international reports should separately disclose:

• losses of primary forest;
• losses and degradation of natural forest;
• gains through natural expansion or regeneration;
• areas under ecological restoration;
• ecologically oriented planted forests;
• production-oriented tree plantations;
• offset or carbon plantations;
• agricultural, urban, and linear tree cover.

XIX. Dual Accounting: Forest Ecosystems and Plantations

Dual accounting does not abolish FAO categories. It adds a presentation designed to prevent confusion. A State could continue reporting forest area under international criteria while publishing, in a separate account, the ecological nature of the areas concerned.

An Example of Reporting That Should No Longer Be Acceptable

A country that loses 100,000 hectares of natural forest and establishes 120,000 hectares of plantations should not report only a “net gain” of 20,000 hectares. Its report should simultaneously disclose:

• 100,000 hectares of natural forest lost;
• the naturalness and integrity of the forests destroyed;
• 120,000 hectares of plantations established;
• their composition, purpose, location, and management regime;
• the statistical balance, presented as such and not as an ecological gain.

XX. What This Doctrine Changes for Silviculture, Climate, and Biodiversity

1. For Silviculture

The doctrine does not abolish silviculture. It clarifies its respective domains. Timber production should be organized in places and through methods compatible with soils, water, biodiversity, resilience, and social needs. It should not extend into primary forests or be presented as equivalent conservation where it simplifies a natural ecosystem.

It calls for:

• reserving primary forests for protection and compatible uses;
• conserving high-integrity forests and ancient structures;
• diversifying production plantations at stand and landscape scales;
• extending rotations where doing so improves soils, carbon stocks, and habitats;
• reducing large, continuous clear-cuts;
• maintaining ecotones, riparian forests, old trees, corridors, and senescence islands;
• clearly separating production, restoration, and conservation objectives;
• providing remuneration for ecological functions that do not immediately produce timber.

2. For Climate Policy

The doctrine calls for a clear distinction between existing carbon stocks and future removals. Protecting an existing stock avoids emissions and maintains an ecosystem. Planting may create a future sink, but that sink is subject to time, fire, drought, harvesting, and permanence of land use.

Climate policies should therefore report separately:

• emissions avoided through protection of natural forests;
• removals attributed to natural regeneration;
• removals from ecological restoration;
• temporary stocks held in production plantations;
• emissions associated with harvesting, soils, inputs, and land-use change;
• non-permanence risks.

3. For Biodiversity

The doctrine shifts evaluation from a simple count of hectares to ecosystem representativeness, habitat quality, and continuity of processes. It calls for the protection not only of iconic large forest complexes, but also of underrepresented relict, alluvial, dry, island, montane, coastal, and other forest ecosystems.

4. For Finance, Certification, and Corporate Commitments

Public and private actors should separately report impacts on primary forests, other natural forests, degraded forests, and plantations. A “zero-deforestation” commitment should not authorize degradation. A “nature-positive” claim should not aggregate plantations and natural ecosystems. A carbon obligation should not override biodiversity and rights criteria.

5. For Land-Use Planning

Decisions should be made at the scale of watersheds, ecoregions, biological continuities, and fire regimes. Administrative and property boundaries correspond neither to water flows, species movement, nor local climate.

XXI. What the Declaration Does Not Say

The doctrinal scope of this article requires explicit limits.

The Declaration and Legal Personality

The Universal Declaration of Tree Rights does not confer legal personality upon trees; legal personality is not provided for in its text. The Declaration does not, by itself, create a cause of action, confer legal capacity to hold or administer assets, or reallocate public powers or jurisdiction. Legal systems may adopt mechanisms of representation, protection, or rights of nature, but those mechanisms should not be attributed to the Declaration when they do not appear in its text.

The Declaration and Production

The distinction between forest and plantation is not intended to disqualify all economic activity. It is intended to prevent economic use from erasing the nature of the system being used. A production plantation may be acknowledged, improved, and integrated within a landscape. It should not become the replacement metric for a natural forest.

XXII. Conclusion — Passing On Forests, Not Merely Planted Areas

The global forest crisis cannot be understood from the number of hectares covered by trees alone. The world may gain plantations while simultaneously losing natural forests, ancient soils, specialized species, ecological continuities, and cultures connected to forest territories.

The doctrine advanced under the Universal Declaration of Tree Rights rests on a simple requirement: the realities involved must be named before they are counted. A primary forest, a secondary forest, a degraded forest, a restoration area, a production plantation, a hedgerow landscape, and an urban park may all contain trees. They do not share the same history, autonomy, function, or replacement value.

Within the doctrine advanced here, protecting primary forests constitutes a paramount requirement of avoidance; restoring degraded forests constitutes a requirement of ecological repair. Enabling new forests to recover high naturalness is a responsibility toward the future. Producing timber within transparent, resilient, and appropriately located systems is an economic necessity that should no longer be confused with the conservation of natural ecosystems.

The true ambition is therefore not to maximize a single global figure for forest cover. It is to guarantee, in every biome and ecoregion, a sufficient area of natural forests that are ecologically integral, connected, diverse, and capable of regeneration, while rebuilding over centuries the continuities that human societies have interrupted.

Article III of the Universal Declaration of Tree Rights

“Human beings, endowed with reason and conscience, must act with the Tree in a spirit of fraternity and solidarity.”

To act with the Tree, at the global level, means protecting what cannot be replaced, restoring what can still be restored, producing without concealing impacts, and accepting responsibility for trajectories whose full realization will belong to future generations.

We must pass on not merely trees, but forests.

XXIII. Legal and Methodological Note

The classification set out in this article constitutes a doctrinal proposal advanced under the Universal Declaration of Tree Rights. It serves ecological, interpretive, and programmatic functions. It may provide a basis for voluntary commitments, public policies, charters, scientific work, monitoring systems, or future standards. Consult the Official Framework of the Universal Declaration of Tree Rights.

It does not constitute:

• an amendment to FAO terms and definitions;
• a new binding category of international law;
• an automatic amendment of forest codes, property rights, or protected-area regimes;
• a site-specific expert assessment in the absence of field data;
• a presumption that every planted forest is devoid of ecological functions;
• a presumption that every naturally regenerating forest is intact.

The proposed classifications should be applied on the basis of verifiable data, ecological assessment, historical analysis, local and Indigenous knowledge, mapping, indicators, and a transparent and procedurally fair review in which affected rights-holders and stakeholders can be heard.

XXIV. Global Scientific Annex and Forest Atlas

The doctrine should be extended through an international scientific annex and an evolving atlas. The annex would not establish a uniform percentage. It would determine, for each biome and ecoregion, the actual condition of forests and the needs for conservation or recovery.

1. Data to Be Established for Each Ecoregion

• historical or potential area of forest ecosystems;
• current area under the statistical definition;
• primary-forest area;
• area of very high naturalness;
• secondary-forest area by maturity class;
• degraded natural-forest area;
• restorable area and the nature of the constraints;
• production-plantation area;
• connectivity, fragmentation, and principal corridors;
• viability thresholds for species and ecological processes;
• climate risks;
• natural regimes of fire, flooding, storms, or insects;
• Indigenous territories and community rights;
• essential human needs and compatible uses;
• non-forest ecosystems requiring protection from afforestation;
• priorities for protection, restoration, and natural succession.

2. Pluralistic Scientific Governance

The annex should bring together ecologists, foresters, soil scientists, hydrologists, climate scientists, geographers, lawyers, social scientists, Indigenous representatives, and local communities. Protocols, uncertainties, conflicts of interest, and sources of funding should be public.

3. A Dynamic Atlas

The global atlas would present separate layers for:

• forests under the statistical definition;
• primary and high-integrity forests;
• secondary forests and maturity classes;
• degradation and pressures;
• production plantations;
• protected areas and effectiveness;
• Indigenous and community territories;
• corridors and watersheds;
• restoration programs;
• succession sanctuaries;
• expected trajectories to 2050, 2100, and beyond.

The objective is not to produce a definitive map of a living and changing world. It is to make visible the differences erased by aggregated accounts and to enable every jurisdiction and territory to assess its own responsibilities.

Principal References

The international data and policy directions cited in this article are based in particular on the following official and scientific sources. Domestic application should be informed by applicable laws, inventories, and local knowledge.

1. FAO — Global Forest Resources Assessment 2025.
2. FAO — Global Forest Resources Assessment portal.
3. FAO — FRA 2025, Terms and Definitions.
4. FAO — FRA global data platform.
5. FAO — “Global deforestation slows, but forests remain under pressure,” October 21, 2025.
6. FAO — The role of primary forests in climate and biodiversity goals.
7. Convention on Biological Diversity — Target 2: restore 30 percent of degraded ecosystems.
8. Convention on Biological Diversity — Target 3: conserve 30 percent of land, inland waters, coastal areas, and oceans.
9. Convention on Biological Diversity — Global goals for 2050.
10. IPBES–IPCC — Report of the co-sponsored scientific workshop on biodiversity and climate change.
11. IUCN — Global Ecosystem Typology.
12. United Nations — United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
13. Convention on Biological Diversity — Target 22: participation and rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities.
14. Official Framework of the Universal Declaration of Tree Rights.
15. Society for Ecological Restoration — International Principles and Standards for the Practice of Ecological Restoration, third edition.
16. Grantham et al. — “Anthropogenic modification of forests means only 40% of remaining forests have high ecosystem integrity,” Nature Communications.

Official website: www.declarationuniverselledesdroitsdelarbre.org.