Yes, the key to success here is restoring the soil. Once you have healthy soil, the only way to stop forests from happening is large herbivores. There are some

Yes, the key to success here is restoring the soil. Once you have healthy soil, the only way to stop forests from happening is large herbivores. There are some interesting large scale efforts to attempt to restore soil across the world. It's a remarkably fast process once it gets going. The Chinese have a few decades experience with regreening: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall_(China) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall_(China) Doing it wrong, can have some negative effects as well.