Ecosystem restoration legislation calls for predicting achievability and forecasting pathways

With the enaction of the EU Nature Restoration Law in August 2024, and adoption of the related Kunming‐Montreal Biodiversity Framework, there is an urgent need to scale the effectiveness of ecosystem restoration. The legally binding EU law sets ambitious targets for restoration, in particular its commitment to restore 30% of the area of all degraded habitats in Europe by 2030. The targets for restoration set by the EU and other voluntary frameworks pose key challenges to how restoration targets are defined and measured against. This requires addressing two key challenges: setting forward‐looking restoration targets that are ecologically achievable and account for dynamic environmental changes, and developing methods to predict and forecast progress. We propose that restoration targets and references should be based on fundamental ecological processes, revealed by both historical and future ecological states, that are also resilient to future environmental changes. Secondly, restoration efforts should be predictive, and we propose a two‐stage process to predict outcomes prior to an intervention for setting ecologically achievable reference states, and to forecast progress toward the target state. We argue that by integrating these approaches, restoration policies can lead to large‐scale restoration for ecological recovery and long‐term societal benefits.