Highlights
Landscape Restoration
Restoring forest landscapes can help mitigate climate change, support sustainable livelihoods and maintain biodiversity. But to meet their targets, countries need answers to problems around finance, implementation and conflict resolution.
CIFOR’s work on forest landscape restoration aims to provide partners and governments across the globe with the information they need to solve such problems.
LATIN AMERICA
Ambitious country commitments need science-based planning
Mexico has pledged to restore more hectares of forest than any other Latin American country, including 8.5 million hectares under Initiative 20×20. Almost half of its landscape is degraded, mainly due to animal grazing. With the aim of informing Mexico’s upcoming national restoration plan, CIFOR and partners conducted a review of 75 restoration programs undertaken over the past three decades, covering more than 1.5 million hectares of temperate and tropical forests, swamps, mangroves and riverine ecosystems.
They found that around half of the restoration initiatives were located in protected areas, many of which are populated, and the other half were on communal lands. Local communities are highly engaged in restoration projects, which stands to reason. Since high-biodiversity areas in Mexico also tend to have more diverse languages, maintaining healthy landscapes can help local cultures and livelihoods thrive. But communities need to be involved earlier, at the planning stage of projects.
Mexico’s restoration initiatives are largely government-funded. But to be effective, restoration takes careful planning and sustained long-term commitment that transcends presidential terms.
CIFOR undertook a similar study in Colombia in 2014 and now is doing the same for Ecuador. And in 2018, CIFOR scientists worked in partnership with São Paulo University in Brazil on an analysis of the legal frameworks regulating the restoration of forests in 17 Latin American countries that are drafting or already have national restoration plans.
Because forest landscape restoration can mean different things to different people, countries need to create stable platforms for different sectors to agree on specific roles and responsibilities.
Despite the challenges, the study uncovered two positive trends: greater awareness among communities about the ecological services – such as clean water and forest products – that restored landscapes can provide, and a clearer understanding among decision makers of the kind of coordination needed to actually reach targets, both on paper and on the ground.
AFRICA
A major event to mobilize action around AFR100
African officials, international and non-governmental organizations, indigenous communities, youth and representatives from finance and the private sector, converged at the UN Environment headquarters in Nairobi on 29-30 August 2018 for the Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) ‘Prospects and Opportunities for Restoration in Africa’.
CIFOR and partners aimed to mobilize action around the unprecedented political will for forest and landscape restoration in Africa, as demonstrated by the commitment of 27 African countries to restore 100 million hectares of degraded forest landscapes by 2030 under the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100). To harness this enthusiasm and to elevate political, community and private sector support for the implementation of AFR100, GLF Nairobi 2018 brought together more than 800 delegates, with another 13,380 people joining the discussions online.
Global restoration efforts – while admirable – have for the most part taken a top-down approach. starting with an opening plenary session devoted to community restoration success stories that resulted in a ‘restoration manifesto’ reaffirming communities’ commitment to a global landscape restoration agenda. A dozen such stories from women and men across Africa are brought to life in a set of briefs that share insights from community efforts to restore degraded forests and landscapes. And a ‘Reshaping the Terrain’ series details reflections by technical experts in Africa on key accomplishments of restortation efforsts in seven African countries, and what is needed to address the remaining gaps.
Gender was another major focus of the event, and panelists at a plenary session on gender roles and implications for landscape restoration shared positive examples of gender-responsive approaches in different countries of Africa that could be replicated in the rest of the continent and globally.
Streamlining information to help protect Eastern Africa’s remaining forests
A new regional forest observatory aims to offer Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda a more efficient data system for sharing, exchanging and accessing information on the ecological, environmental and social aspects of their forests.
Jointly managed by CIFOR and the Regional Center for Resource Mapping and Development (RCMRD), the Eastern Africa Forest Observatory (OFESA) aims to strengthen the capacity of tropical institutions and networks to report on their mitigation actions in the context of reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD+). Countries can also use OFESA data on forest cover trends and drivers to track progress towards achieving restoration targets under AFR100 and other initiatives. A prototype of OFESA was revealed at the Global Landscapes Forum in Nairobi.
ASIA
Learning from over 40 years of landscape restoration
From free-access satellite images, repeat photography and participatory approaches in Nepal to a benefit-transfer tool in Bhutan and household analyses in India, CIFOR is studying ways some South Asian regions are mapping the benefits that mountain forest ecosystems provide, to both local residents and those living downstream. To help researchers and land managers understand and apply such tools in their own landscapes, the authors compiled all relevant tools and approaches used to assess the sociocultural, economic and ecological values of mountain ecosystems, where isolated local communities rely heavily on ecosystem services for their basic needs.
Drawing lessons from over 40 years of community-based forest landscape restoration in Nepal, a CIFOR study published in a special issue of International Forestry Review documents how the government-led initiative led to the ecological recovery of the Phewa Lake watershed – and to a booming tourism-based economy.
In Indonesia, findings from CIFOR and partners showed that biofuel-friendly trees can help landscape restoration efforts in Central Kalimantan, where forest fires and conversion to agricultural and mining activities have devastated forests. The nyamplung tree was the most adaptive species for degraded peatlands in the area, and grows best when planted in a mixed agroforestry setting.
GLOBAL
Moving beyond problem vs. solution thinking
CIFOR and partners assessed the growing number of tools designed to help develop strategies and identify priority areas for restoration. Many, such as WWF’s Restoration Diagnostic and the Restoration Opportunities Assessment Methodology (ROAM) are useful for national and regional planning, but there is little available to help enthusiastic local planners and communities weigh the trade-offs that inevitably come with land-use decisions.
One recommendation is for more apps or games that can get communities, researchers, practitioners and policy makers talking with one another in a local context. Rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, such focused collaboration can identify custom strategies to restore land while providing livelihoods and ecosystem services to local communities, and also yielding a return on financial investments.
A separate review of ROAM reports for Brazil, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guatemala, Malawi, Rwanda and Uganda found that, while most acknowledged a lack of rights can get in the way of efforts to scale up forest landscape restoration work, few went into any detail about rights, especially for marginalized groups such as women and pastoralists. The authors point to the need for a tenure-specific diagnostic as an add-on to the ROAM handbook and Restoration Diagnostic, to help restoration planners identify areas where a lack of rights to land, forests and trees could undermine the success of projects.
CIFOR also published a case for participatory monitoring – getting communities involved in setting goals for forest restoration projects, measuring progress against them, and then sharing and learning from the results with decision-makers at various levels – to ensure planted trees are maintained and survive.
In pictures
Forest management, landscapes and restoration … over the years
CIFOR research has evolved from an early focus on forest management and restoration of degraded lands to landscape approaches that aim to address the environmental, social and political challenges facing forests and people.
Research timeline
1993
In its first year, CIFOR launched global comparative research to identify the best tree species for reforestation of degraded lands
1999
CIFOR created the Criteria and Indicators Toolbox to assist those in charge of managing production forests taking into account environmental and human well-being issues
2002
Guidelines for the restoration, management and rehabilitation of degraded and secondary tropical forests, published in partnership with the International Tropical Timber Organisation (ITTO)
2006
Six-book series Review of forest rehabilitation: Lessons from the past analyzed restoration initiatives in Indonesia, the Philippines, China, Vietnam, Brazil and Peru
2012
Tropical managed Forests Observatory (TmFO) informally launched to monitor the resilience of tropical forests after logging and silviculture.
2016
Peru’s Forest Service incorporated CIFOR’s research into the legal norms that govern timber extraction in Brazil nut concessions.
2017
Global Landscapes Forum in Nairobi, Kenya focuses on turning AFR100 restoration commitments into action
2018
Ethiopia’s Forest Law drew on CIFOR recommendations to recognize the rights of local communities in forest management and restoration.
