‘Crisis restoration’ in post-frontier tropical environments: Replanting cloud forests in the Ecuadorian Andes

Abstract

Extensive areas of tropical land have been deforested and degraded, leading to declines in ecosystem services, biodiversity, and farm productivity over time in these post-frontier environments. Conservation and development organizations are promoting community-based tree planting for forest restoration as a means to conserve biodiversity, sequester carbon, and improve farmland. This multi-site study examines household-level participation in tree planting in a biodiversity hotspot, the Ecuadorian Andes. We ask: who participates in tree planting, why, and how do practices differ on private and communal land? We interviewed 120 households, conducted oral histories and focus groups, and observed communal workdays. We found that ranchers and farmers (land-reliant households) with a history of community engagement were most likely to plant trees. Farmers planted more trees, more kinds of trees, and more native trees than wage and salary earners, integrating them into farming systems. In contrast to previous studies, we did not find that wealth or the total area of land holdings explained household level participation in tree planting; instead, land-reliant households with a vested interest in their communities were the most likely to participate. After planting on communal land, many households applied newly acquired arboricultural knowledge and techniques on their own farms, implementing innovative tree-based systems to restore soils and water availability. On-farm planting tended to be production-focused, whereas on communal land people planted with a wide range of native trees to restore diverse cloud forest and hydrological services. However, the ultimate aim of both was to restore ecosystem services essential to farming. Driven by local ecosystem service scarcity, this ‘crisis restoration’ was an integral part of a local movement to renew and sustain farming culture, and created forests for which people feel a sense of stewardship, ownership and pride. This model of restoration holds considerable potential to benefit rural farmers and restore biodiversity across the many heavily deforested regions of the Andes.