Interest in restoration and reforestation is growing as forest destruction and degradation continue worldwide, and as increasingly severe climate-related disturbances such as fires, heat waves, and droughts affect their vitality or even cause local collapse. At the same time, there is increasing evidence that the resilience of forests is declining and, in the worst cases, that recovery from severe stand-replacing calamities is slowing down or failing altogether. The aim of this review is therefore to provide an overview of the extent to which the recent scientific literature assesses the problem of critically declining forest resilience after a calamity and the difficulties of recovery due to climate change. There is a wealth of compelling literature on this topic, which is already a well-established field of research in some parts of the world. This is particularly true in western North America, and also in biomes in Australia where fire is a natural factor, but where the intensity and frequency of fire are increasing. There is evidence that fire in particular, but in systemic interaction with heat and drought, threatens the resilience of ecosystems that are in principle even fire-adapted. Particularly, the non-linearly increasing atmospheric water demand, the vapour pressure deficit, becomes a major risk to ecosystem health and recovery with rising temperatures. The problem of potential failure of recovery appears to be spreading to more and more biomes, already affecting boreal and occasionally temperate regions. It is the feedbacks with vegetation degradation and self-reinforcing and expanding droughts and heat waves that are of concern. What needs to be quickly understood is that the ability of damaged forest ecosystems to recover can be further reduced by post-calamity management (e.g. salvage logging). To better assess the challenge and effectiveness of restoration efforts, it is important to collect more data on failures of natural recovery and reforestation, and to learn from these results, especially failures and problems.