Prevalent Greening Conceals the Forgone Ecological Potential of Forest Loss in Southeast Asia

Across Southeast Asia (SEA), rapid land-use transformations have extensively replaced natural forests with fragmented plantations and agricultural mosaics. However, quantifying the ecological legacy of this transformation is hindered by persistent cloud cover and the confounding signal of vegetation growth driven by concurrent environmental change. To address this, we constructed a cloud-robust, 30-m vegetation record (2001–2022) using a multi-sensor Landsat harmonization framework. We found a regional paradox: despite extensive forest loss (25.18%), the region exhibited net increases in greenness (Enhanced Vegetation Index, +5.47%) and productivity (Near-Infrared Reflectance of vegetation, +12.47%). Using propensity-score matching to estimate counterfactual stable-forest trajectories, we disentangled land-use effects from broader environmental trends. We quantified that forest loss compromised the potential gains under the environmental changes, creating lasting deficits in greenness (∼16.12%) and productivity (∼6.06%) relative to stable-forest baselines. This recovery debt constrains the region from reaching its full ecological potential and underscores the need to prioritize protection of remaining intact forests.