Abstract
Research Highlights: The global Forest Landscape Restoration ambitions could be impaired by projects that ignore key principles such as the engagement of local communities in decision making and implementation, equitable benefit sharing, and monitoring for adaptive management. This entails the danger of continued degradation, disappointed local stakeholders, and ultimately, project failure. Other projects face technical problems related to tree establishment and nursery production. Background and Objectives: There are high hopes for Forest and Landscape Restoration to regain ecosystem integrity and enhance human well-being in deforested and degraded areas. We highlight various problems and success factors experienced during project implementation on a global scale. Materials and Methods: We use data from a global online survey to identify common obstacles and success factors for the implementation of forest restoration. Results: While the majority of respondents reported successful projects, others indicate drastic problems and failed projects. Major obstacles to forest restoration experienced by survey respondents were a lack of local stakeholder involvement and a mismatch between goals of local communities and restoration managers, as well as environmental, anthropogenic, and technical barriers to tree regeneration. Conclusions: When local communities, their goals, and needs are disregarded in project planning and implementation, as reported from various cases in our survey and the limited available literature, there is a risk of project failure. Failed projects and disappointed stakeholders, as well as discouraged funders and policy-makers, could lessen the momentum of global forest restoration ambitions. Adhering to key principles of Forest and Landscape Restoration can promote much-needed community support, with the potential to overcome barriers to forest regeneration and enable communities for the protection, management, and monitoring of the restored forests beyond the limited project and funding periods. Research is needed to gain a better understanding of the perception of local communities towards restoration activities. Further studies on the implementation of forest restoration at the intersection of environmental factors, socioeconomic conditions, forest regeneration/silviculture, and nursery production are needed.
Highlights
Forest and Landscape Restoration (FLR) has attracted global attention with the recent declaration of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration [1] and the Bonn Challenge/New York Declaration on Forests aiming to bring 350 million hectares of deforested and degraded land into restoration by 2030 [2].Likewise, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) calls for the restoration of 15% of the degraded ecosystems and the associated ecosystem services, as stated in Aichi Target No 14 and 15 [3]
When local communities, their goals, and needs are disregarded in project planning and implementation, as reported from various cases in our survey and the limited available literature, there is a risk of project failure
We summarize the information provided in a global online survey on experiences with forest restoration and adaptation, following the Adaptive Measures concept that integrates adaptive forest management (AFM) and FLR at different spatial scales [23]
Summary
Forest and Landscape Restoration (FLR) has attracted global attention with the recent declaration of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration [1] and the Bonn Challenge/New York Declaration on Forests aiming to bring 350 million hectares of deforested and degraded land into restoration by 2030 [2].Likewise, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) calls for the restoration of 15% of the degraded ecosystems and the associated ecosystem services, as stated in Aichi Target No 14 and 15 [3]. Forest and Landscape Restoration (FLR) has attracted global attention with the recent declaration of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration [1] and the Bonn Challenge/New York Declaration on Forests aiming to bring 350 million hectares of deforested and degraded land into restoration by 2030 [2]. Successful restoration efforts must consider the complexity and changing nature of ecosystems and site conditions [4], diverse and sometimes unstable sociopolitical systems and stakeholder needs [5], difficult economic and legal situations [6], continued deforestation and forest degradation, and limited technical capacities [7]. The review identifies a lack of tools that go beyond assessments of restoration opportunities at broader scales (e.g., the country level) and aid decision-making for FLR implementation [8], there has been some effort to address this [9,10]
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