Forest Continuum

As we all know, forests are among the most powerful and scalable climate solutions available today, absorbing roughly one-third of global anthropogenic carbon emissions each year. Yet forests play an even more fundamental role in providing ecosystem services, the benefits that people derive from ecosystems.

As highlighted by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment–a study involving thousands of scientists from around the world under the auspices of the United Nations–these services include the provision of material goods such as food, timber, fibers, water, and genetic resources. Forests also regulate environmental processes, including climate, carbon sequestration and storage, water quality, flood and erosion control, pollination, and processes related to human health. They support fundamental ecological processes such as soil formation and nutrient cycling. In addition, they provide intangible benefits related to cultural identity, spirituality, recreation, and broader human well-being.

The field of ecosystem services has given rise to initiatives such as the Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services (CICES), an initiative under the custodianship of the European Environment Agency (EEA), which provides a framework for classifying the diverse benefits that nature contributes to human well-being. In parallel, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) was established to strengthen the science-policy interface for biodiversity and nature. It is broadly analogous to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which focuses on the climate agenda.

In general, these initiatives seek to give political and economic tangibility to the value of nature. They are complemented by another United Nations initiative, the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA), which seeks to establish a formal accounting framework compatible with national accounts. Its central purpose is to integrate environmental and economic information into national accounting systems, particularly the System of National Accounts (SNA), which measures production, income, consumption, and investment, but does not fully capture the value of ecosystem services.

As is often the case in frontier areas of knowledge and policy, several proposals and approaches overlap. Alongside the scientific, political, and macroeconomic efforts to understand and classify nature described above, concrete initiatives have also emerged in the financial sector. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) proposes that nature should not be regarded merely as something that needs to be protected, but as infrastructure on its own, based on the understanding that infrastructure consists of the structures and systems necessary for society to function. A report by the China-based bank states that “nature is arguably the most significant infrastructure sustaining human civilizations.” Among other proposals, the Bank has called for transforming Nature as Infrastructure from an abstract concept into “an impactful asset class,” capable of attracting increasing volumes of investment and regulatory attention. Potential mechanisms for channeling financial flows include performance-linked bonds, policy-based lending, debt-for-nature swaps, nature credit markets, and other instruments. 

Without attempting to exhaust the range of existing initiatives, it is also worth mentioning the Natural Capital Project at Stanford University and its platform Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST), which provides models for quantifying and valuing ecosystem services using spatial data, including open-source information as well as primary data collected in specific areas.

Different forest systems generate interconnected environmental services, while recognizing that the intensity and fundamental characteristics of ecological functions vary among forest types and therefore require distinct financial instruments and eligibility criteria, each associated with specific ecological and climate outcomes. This is the basis of the forest continuum concept used by some of the most influential environmental organizations. It refers to a territorial and economic framework, rather than a scientific classification. It recognizes the complementary roles of conservation forests, restored forests, and sustainably managed planted forests. 

The forest continuum concept offers an alternative way of addressing the different forms of human interaction with forests. The continuum begins with the permanent preservation of intact forest landscapes and progresses through increasing levels of human intervention: sustainable forest management; silvicultural enrichment of degraded forests; restoration of converted areas through biodiverse planting; restoration or planting with lower species diversity; long-rotation plantations of exotic species, potentially combined with native species; and monoculture plantations of species such as eucalyptus. The forest continuum also encompasses agroforestry systems and integrated crop-livestock-forestry systems.

Provided that none of these forest activities involve the conversion of existing forests through deforestation, all alternatives along the forest continuum can generate some form of positive impact. Strict conservation ensures that carbon remains stored in the environment within a natural equilibrium, thereby avoiding greenhouse gas emissions. It also helps maintain water resources and biodiversity. At the other end of the continuum, intensive tree plantations integrated with permanently protected native forests in landscape mosaics can provide substantial carbon stocks while rapidly removing carbon from the atmosphere.

Sustainable forest management, even when involving the selective harvesting of trees, can help ensure the permanence of forests in regions facing intense pressure for land conversion, while generating income and supplying products for furniture manufacturing and construction that can substitute for materials with high greenhouse gas footprints, such as concrete, plastics, and metals. Studies also indicate that the germination of dormant seeds and the growth of young trees in forest gaps and along access routes can promote additional carbon uptake. Forest restoration using native species, in addition to restoring biodiversity, can generate timber and non-timber products with significant socioeconomic impacts while also providing environmental services.

Land-use mosaics incorporating the forest continuum concept, therefore, fit within the broader framework of Nature-based Solutions, as they combine conservation, restoration, and production while generating benefits for biodiversity and human well-being.

Brazil is one of the world’s leading forest nations, particularly in the tropics. It is home to the largest area of tropical forests on the planet, with more than 500 million hectares of native forests covering nearly 60% of its territory. The country has established a broad mosaic of territorially protected areas, including Indigenous Lands and conservation units under the National System of Conservation Units (SNUC), which together cover roughly one-third of the national territory, although the categories differ substantially in their legal regimes, conservation objectives and permitted uses, and some areas overlap. SNUC Conservation Units represented about 11% of Brazil in the land-tenure analysis, but accounted for only 0.77% of deforestation in 2025. Homologated Indigenous Lands occupy about 12.5% of Brazil, but accounted for only 0.56% of the country’s deforestation in 2025. Including non-homologated Indigenous Territories raises their territorial share to about 13.7%, while their combined share of deforestation remains below 0.7%.

Brazil has also developed a distinctive model of forest governance. Under the Brazilian Forest Code, rural landowners are required to conserve a portion of the native vegetation on their properties, creating a large-scale model that combines agricultural production with ecosystem conservation. Approximately 40% of Brazil’s native vegetation under conservation is located on private lands, the vast majority of which belong to agricultural producers. As a result, forests conserved by the agribusiness sector offer a unique condition that combines global food and energy security with the generation of a wide range of environmental services that benefit society and the global climate. This condition is at the heart of the forest continuum concept, demonstrating that forest conservation is increasingly a shared responsibility between public and private actors.

More recently, the country has emerged as a pioneer in large-scale forest restoration, advancing knowledge and practical solutions for recovering degraded landscapes, particularly through tropical forest restoration. In addition, Brazil is a global leader in planted forests for timber, pulp, and bioenergy production. In this context, Brazil occupies a distinctive position: it combines globally significant forest conservation with highly productive planted forests and increasingly ambitious large-scale restoration efforts. 

Beyond the ecosystem services they provide to society, different forest typologies can coexist in mutually reinforcing ways. Within forest continua, the benefits generated by conservation areas for neighboring production-oriented forest activities, involving greater levels of human intervention–such as restoration, agroforestry and planted forests–are increasingly recognized. These benefits include important effects related to resilience to extreme climatic events, water regulation, complex pollination systems, and other ecological functions crucial to the results of economically oriented forest activities. 

At the same time, unfortunately, Brazil has historically been one of the countries most affected by deforestation. Recognizing all forests included in the forest continuum concept as an asset class could become an important complement to command-and-control measures aimed at definitively eliminating illegal deforestation. In this context, measurable, regulated, politically and economically valued attributes must be recognized nationally and internationally. 

The World Resources Institute (WRI) publication Natural Asset Companies Could Finally Make Healthy Ecosystems Investable points to the growing recognition that nature-related resources can increasingly be understood through an asset-class perspective–that is, as groups of financial instruments or assets with sufficiently similar characteristics to operate within comparable market frameworks. Assets belonging to the same class tend to exist within similar institutional environments. They operate under comparable rules of the game, particularly legal and regulatory frameworks, as well as established informal and cultural practices. In general, they exhibit risks and returns with broadly comparable patterns of predictability, while their costs and prices tend to be influenced by similar factors and time horizons.

Characterizing ecosystem services–the principal outputs of natural capital, as reflected in the myriad initiatives mentioned at the beginning of this text–is far from straightforward. Many of the ecosystem services provided by nature remain poorly understood. Carbon, water, and mineral resources are relatively measurable, although global standards remain incomplete. Biodiversity, however, presents a considerably greater challenge. It is extraordinarily sophisticated and complex, involving multiple hierarchies and levels of analysis. It encompasses the submicroscopic world of genes; the vast universe of species that emerge from their expression and their organization into biological kingdoms–plants, animals and, in simplified terms, microorganisms; and ultimately the landscape level, including the ways in which living systems interact with their physical environment and with human beings, whose activities are deeply intertwined with them.

Technology is, therefore, of fundamental importance in transforming natural capital into an asset class, insofar as it contributes to the characterization and measurement of ecosystem products and services. Monitoring instruments are proliferating, ranging from sensors deployed in soils, plants, and animals to increasingly sophisticated satellite systems. Technologies capable of sequencing the genetic material of living species are becoming increasingly accessible. Biological diversity ultimately arises from the expression of genetic material, and genetic sequencing provides access to vast libraries of biological data. When correlated with databases describing the environments in which organisms live, these data open up an extraordinarily complex and promising field of knowledge. The volume of data, computational memory, and patterns that can now be processed through artificial intelligence is immense. The convergence of biotechnology, big data, and artificial intelligence, therefore, makes it increasingly possible to understand, characterize, and monitor the underlying object of investment. Initiatives such as MapBiomas, a Brazilian collaborative scientific and technological network, demonstrate how these technologies can enable the visualization, monitoring, and design of public and private strategies for expanding and managing forest continua across large territories.

A recent publication prepared with the participation of more than one hundred experts–The Leading Role of Brazilian Tropical Forests for the Global Climate Agenda, developed as a contribution to the COP30 Action Agenda–argues that the country can reverse its historical trajectory of forest loss and generate a positive forest balance in the coming years. A public-policy approach, implemented nationally and internationally and drawing on the forest continuum concept, would be to recognize all forest typologies as strategic assets, providing a broad and differentiated range of ecosystem services and investment opportunities capable of attracting diverse financial actors–from philanthropic and public-finance institutions to private investors and capital markets.

This makes the private sector a crucial actor not only in productive forestry activities, such as planted forests for timber, pulp, and bioenergy, but also in the conservation of native ecosystems and the provision of environmental services. Multilateral, governmental, commercial, and corporate initiatives increasingly recognize economic rights and values associated with ecosystem services such as climate regulation, erosion control, pest and pollution control, soil quality and nutrient cycling, water provision, mineral and genetic resources, and–of growing importance–the maintenance of climate resilience.

The growing recognition of the value of these services has opened opportunities for businesses focused on a wide range of activities. Business innovations include companies specializing in analyzing, characterizing, measuring, and producing technically sophisticated reports on the different components of natural assets–or derivatives of natural capital. To do so, they have access to an increasingly sophisticated technological toolkit, including physical sensors installed in the soil, data analysis and algorithms applied to drone and satellite imagery, artificial intelligence, and advanced data-management systems. Importantly, Natural Asset Companies (NACs) may operate in relation to ecosystem services without necessarily owning the underlying land.

Innovative ventures are also emerging in the consolidation of data on natural resources, developing protocols for aggregating technical information and producing authoritative reports, together with verification and audit pathways for the information presented. These companies can play an important role in developing methodologies for valuing and monetizing forest assets. In some cases, they develop platforms for presenting and managing information, sometimes using blockchain technologies, enabling not only the creation and digitization of representations of this capital, but also the curation of information for near-real-time monitoring.

These ventures are complemented by independent certifiers, auditors, and verification bodies, often connected with public entities responsible for registering information. One example is Brazil’s carbon-market regulation. Legislation enacted in 2024 established the Brazilian Emissions Trading System (SBCE), which is designed to operate through a digital environment for the registration and trading of carbon assets, including Verified Emission Reduction or Removal Certificates (CRVEs), under institutional arrangements established by the federal government.

Exchange platforms, some of them specialized, are beginning to offer these assets to the market with greater credibility and transparency, within regulatory frameworks established by banking and capital-market authorities, as environmental assets such as carbon credits increasingly enter financial markets.

Clearly, the principal actors in this field include the owners and stewards of the land where these natural assets are located, particularly forests encompassed by the forest continuum concept. This underscores the importance of the relationship between land stewards/owners and the broader ecosystem of businesses associated with this emerging value chain. These businesses can play an important role in connecting holders of environmental assets with a wide range of buyers seeking rights associated with those assets. Such buyers include companies seeking to neutralize carbon emissions and other negative externalities in response to regulatory, fiscal, or market pressures, including reputational considerations and access to specific markets. They may also include investment funds seeking to build portfolios of natural assets based on expectations regarding their future economic value.

Ecosystem services are therefore increasingly being treated as productive, measurable, and tangible assets. As they become more visible and subject to clearer regulatory frameworks, their economic value can increasingly be recognized. This is a dynamic process: not only can economic recognition increase over time, but in some activities, such as reforestation, the provision of ecosystem services itself expands as ecosystems mature.

The value associated with these assets may be recognized through accounting and financial mechanisms, while potential revenue streams can develop, for example, through carbon credits; direct payments for environmental services, such as water provision and watershed protection for cities and specific economic operations; fiscal compensation; mechanisms for meeting environmental obligations, such as Brazil’s Environmental Reserve Quota (CRA); and other instruments.

The growing recognition of natural assets is also related to increasing attention to the fiduciary responsibilities of corporate directors and asset managers regarding the condition and performance of ecosystems affected by companies, the generation of negative externalities, and their relationship with the interests of shareholders and society over both the short and long term. Ecological performance is becoming increasingly financially material, particularly as new accounting and disclosure rules are implemented in various countries. Independent verification and auditing mechanisms are progressively being established, connecting these issues more closely with regulatory and compliance frameworks.

A well-designed political, institutional, and strategic framework for applying the forest continuum concept and the wide and diverse range of ecosystem services offered could provide Brazil and the world the conditions required to consolidate the emerging global economy of natural assets.

Submitted: September 28, 2026

Accepted for publication: September 29, 2026

Copyright © 2026 CEBRI-Journal. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original article is properly cited.