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Overview of Forest Restoration Strategies and Terms

Authors:
Forest Restoration in Landscapes
WWF’s Forests for Life Programme
WWF’s vision for the forests of the world, shared with its long-
standing partner, the World Conservation Union (IUCN), is that
“the world will have more extensive, more diverse and higher-
quality forest landscapes which will meet human needs and aspi-
rations fairly, while conserving biological diversity and fulfilling the
ecosystem functions necessary for all life on Earth.”
WWF’s approach to forest conservation has evolved over time
into a global programme of integrated field and policy activities
aimed at the protection, responsible management, and restoration
of forests, whilst at the same time working to address the key
threats which could potentially undermine these efforts. Those of
particular concern to WWF are illegal logging and forest crime,
conversion of forests to plantation crops of palm oil and soy, forest
fires, and climate change.
The Forests for Life Programme consists of a global network of
more than 250 staff working on over 300 projects in nearly 90 coun-
tries. Regional forest officers coordinate efforts in each of the five
regions, supported by a core team based at WWF International in
Switzerland. The programme also draws on the complementary
skills and support of partners to help achieve its goals.
WWF and Restoring Forests and Their
Functions in Landscapes
WWF has adopted a target for forest restoration:“By 2020,restore
forest goods, services, and processes in 20 landscapes of outstand-
ing importance within priority ecoregions to regain ecological
integrity and enhance human well-being,” which is issued as a
challenge to the world.
As its contribution toward the target, WWF is actively develop-
ing a portfolio of forest landscape restoration programmes, and
also working with governments,international organisations,indige-
nous peoples, and other communities to pursue its work on forest
restoration within a landscape context, by doing the following:
Initiating and facilitating projects/programmes within landscapes
of high restoration priority in WWF Global 200 Ecoregions
Assisting others, and building local capacity to plan and imple-
ment forest restoration interventions
Developing suitable monitoring tools and techniques to measure
progress
Documenting, exchanging and disseminating lessons learnt and
experiences
For more information please see the Web site: http://www.panda.
org/forests/restoration/.
Stephanie Mansourian
Daniel Vallauri
Nigel Dudley
Forest Restoration in
Landscapes
Beyond Planting Trees
With 28 Illustrations
Stephanie Mansourian Daniel Vallauri
Consultant WWF France
WWF International 6 Rue des Fabres
Avenue Mont Blanc 13001 Marseille
Gland 1196 France
Switzerland
Nigel Dudley
Consultant
Equilibrium
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Cumberland Road
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United Kingdom
© 1986 Panda symbol WWF
® WWF is a WWF Registered Trademark
Cover Illustrations: Photo Cedar of Lebanon (Cedrus libani), tree seedling. Photo
Credit: © WWF-Canon/Michael Gunther. Background photo:Mt. Rinjani,Lombok,
Indonesia, © Agri Klintuni Boedhihartono.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2005927862
ISBN 0-387-25525-7 Printed on acid-free paper.
ISBN-13: 978-0387-255855
© 2005 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc.
Cite as Mansourian, S.,Vallauri, D., Dudley, N., eds. (in cooperation with WWF Inter-
national) 2005. Forest Restoration in Landscapes: Beyond Planting Trees, Springer,
New York.
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Is it a sign of the times that last year the Nobel committee chose
to award the Nobel Peace prize to Wangari Maathai for having
planted 30 million trees? We believe so. We think that while in the
20th century conservation made significant progress on setting up
a global protected area network, the 21st century will be a time of
forest restoration.The fact that Wangari Maathai is the first African
woman to receive such an honourable distinction is in itself a major
accomplishment.What is even more remarkable is that, for the first
time, this highly esteemed prize, which has long been associated
with political feats, was given for an environmental achievement.
And not just any environmental achievement, but forest restora-
tion. It is a comfort to see that it is not just us at WWF, the global
conservation organisation, who believe forest restoration to be of
global significance, but that the Nobel committee is in agreement.
The committee members are not the only ones, I should add. In
2003 WWF, IUCN, (the World Conservation Union), and the
United Kingdom Forestry Commission launched a global partner-
ship on forest landscape restoration to raise awareness about the
importance of the restoration of forests and to invite all decision
makers and influential organisations to join in a movement to
restore forests. Today this partnership includes governments as
diverse as Switzerland, Finland, El Salvador, and Italy, and inter-
national organisations such as the United Nations Food and Agri-
culture Organisation (FAO), the Centre for International Forestry
Research (CIFOR), the International Tropical Timber Organisa-
tion (ITTO), and it continues to grow.
Too much damage has already been done for us to afford to
ignore our dwindling forest resources.If we wait until tomorrow to
restore forests, it will be too late. If too little is left, it will take
longer, will be more difficult, and will cost much more to begin
restoring a healthy forest—and it may also be too late.
At WWF we are aware of this urgency, and with this book we
invite practitioners, researchers, and decision makers to join us in
doing something practical about our forests. As the Nobel com-
mittee has noted, too many wars are fought over dwindling
resources. If we do not do something about it, this may well be the
new security scourge jeopardising our future and that of our
children.
Chief Emeka Anyaoku
President, WWF International
Foreword
v
For WWF, the global conservation organisation, achieving lasting
forest conservation requires working on a large scale and integrat-
ing global strategies and policies to protect, manage, and restore
forests.
In an ideal world, restoration would not be necessary; however,
today many forest habitats are already so damaged that their long-
term survival, and the ecological services they provide, are in doubt
and we urgently need to consider restoration if we are to achieve
conservation and sustain the livelihoods of people dependent on
nature.
Forest conservation strategies that rely solely on protected areas
and sustainable management have proved insufficient either to
secure biodiversity or to stabilise the environment. The United
Nations Environment Programme now classifies a large proportion
of the world’s land surface as “degraded,” and this degradation is
creating a wide range of ecological, social,and economic problems.
Forest loss and degradation is a particularly important element in
this worldwide problem with annual global estimates of forest loss
being as high as 16 million hectares,and those for degradation even
higher. Reversing this damage is one of the largest and most
complex challenges of the 21st century.
An analysis of the WWF Global 200 ecoregions—those areas of
greatest importance for biodiversity on a global scale—demon-
strates the problems. For example, over 20 percent of forest ecore-
gions have already lost at least 85 percent of their forests: sometimes
only 1 to 2 percent remains. Deforestation is a key threat to water
quality in 59 percent of freshwater ecoregions. Many of the charis-
matic species that are flagships for conservation (African elephant,
Asian elephant, great apes, rhinoceros, giant panda, and tiger) are
threatened by forest loss,fragmentation, and degradation.
Forest loss is not only of concern to conservationists. According
to the World Bank about 1 billion people in the developing world
depend either directly or indirectly on goods and services from the
forests, and these provide an essential safety net to many of the
world’s poorest people.
Preface
vii
WWF’s mission is to stop degradation on our planet and to
achieve a world where humans and nature live in harmony
together. Decades of overexploitation have brought us to a world
characterised by imbalance: imbalance between rich and poor,
imbalance between supply of natural resources and demand for
natural resources, imbalance between biodiversity needs and
human needs.WWF’s approach to forest restoration, in the context
of ecoregion conservation, seeks to redress these imbalances in
order to restore healthy landscapes that are able to benefit both
biodiversity and people.
This book harnesses the expertise of over 70 authors drawing on
a wealth of practical experience and a wide range of expertise. It
is practical, hands on,and illustrated with numerous examples from
across the world. The aim is to synthesise in an easily accessible
format the knowledge and expertise that exists and also to high-
light areas that need further work.We are hoping to encourage field
staff—ours and those of other organisations interested in conser-
vation and development—who are out there dealing with the
impacts of forest loss and degradation, to apply landscape-scale
forest restoration as an approach to help them meet their conser-
vation goals and our conservation goals.
Dr. Chris Hails
Programme Director, WWF International
viii Preface
This book has been designed to help readers understand how forest
restoration can be integrated with other aspects of conservation
and development in landscapes.Parts A,B,and C introduce the ele-
ments for planning and implementing restoration on a broad scale,
including a range of social, political, and economic considerations
that will influence and that will be influenced by any large-scale
restoration effort. Part D focusses on more specific issues, includ-
ing restoration in different forest habitats and for different reasons.
While we believe that successful restoration generally needs to
be planned on a large scale, it will probably be implemented in one
or more sites within a landscape, and the book similarly starts with
very broad-scale considerations and then focusses increasingly on
actions that can be taken at the site. Parts A, B, and C thus provide
what could be seen as the foundations, and part D provides some
much more specific tools and considerations that are applicable in
different situations. We recommend that you read the relevant
chapters in part D once you have read all of parts A, B, and C.
The final part (part E) discusses some of the lessons learned to
date from practical experiences and recommendations for future
work related to forest restoration on a large scale.
Each chapter starts with an introduction to the issue, illustrating
it with a series of brief thumbnail examples,showing, where appro-
priate,both good and bad practice. Some useful tools are then listed
followed by a brief description of future work required and finally
and importantly a set of references. We cover a vast subject here
and each chapter is as a result kept deliberately short, we can only
introduce many of the techniques described but have provided
detailed sources for those who wish to follow up specific issues in
greater detail.
The book includes contributions from a large number of authors.
Although we have all been writing within the framework of forest
landscape restoration, there are inevitably different nuances in how
this should be interpreted and applied. What follows is a set of
experienced opinions rather than a rigid blueprint. We will in turn
very much appreciate hearing feedback, criticism, and experience
from users.
Note from the Editors
ix
The editors would like to thank Mark Aldrich, James Aronson,
Chris Elliott, Chris Hails, and Pedro Regato for their emphatic and
very welcome support throughout the conception and production
of this book. On behalf of WWF International we would also like
to thank the 70 authors who donated their expertise, for no
payment and under what must have often been a frustratingly tight
timetable, to help produce such a comprehensive review of this
rapidly emerging field.
The following people have kindly reviewed different sections
and chapters and provided us with valuable feedback: Chris Elliott
(WWF International), Louise Holloway, Jack Hurd (the Nature
Conservancy), Val Kapos (U.N. Environment Programme–World
Conservation Monitoring Centre), John Parrotta (U.S. Forest
Service), Duncan Pollard (WWF International), Fulai Sheng (Con-
servation International), P.J. Stephenson (WWF International),and
Colin Tingle (NR Group).
A special thank you is due to Tom McShane for taking the time
to read and comment on the whole manuscript.
Nelda Geninazzi played an essential role in helping to organise
the various editorial meetings,and Katrin Schikorr deserves special
mention for helping the editors with references.
The authors would like to specifically thank the following people
for contributing in some form or another to their respective
chapters: José María Rey Benayas, André Rocha Ferretti, Karen
Holl, Ramdan Lahouati, N. Lassettre, Stewart Maginnis, Hal
Mooney, Guy Preston,Mohamed Raggabi, Peter Schei, and Kristin
Svavarsdottir.
The authors would also like to thank the following agencies
and/or institutions for support in projects that have made it possi-
ble for them to write their respective chapters: European Life Envi-
ronment programme “Water and Forest,” French Research
Ministry, French National Forest Office (ONF) and Water Agency
(Agence RMC), the European Commission (EC) (for the project
Biodiversity Conservation, Restoration and Sustainable Use in
Fragmented Forest Landscapes (BIOCORES), the Long-Term
Acknowledgements
xi
Ecological Research programme in Puerto Rico, funded by the
National Science Foundation, the government of Japan (for the
CIFOR/ Japan Research project on lessons from past rehabilita-
tion experiences), and the Generalitat Valenciana and Fundación
Bancaja. The authors from CIFOR would like specifically to thank
the various research and support staff,as well as workshop and case
study participants from the different countries for their invaluable
contributions to the project “Review of Forest Rehabilitation Ini-
tiatives: Lessons from the Past”, which formed the basis for their
chapter in this book.
Finally, WWF would like to thank Lafarge for supporting the
development of its forest landscape restoration programme.
The book represents a collection of individual essays and are the
opinions of the authors and should not be seen as representing
opinions from their respective employers or organisations. Need-
less to say, despite the enormous help we have received in putting
this book together, any remaining errors of fact or opinion remain
the responsibility of the editors.
xii Acknowledgements
Foreword by Chief Emeka Anyaoku, President,WWF
International . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v
Preface by Chris Hails, Programme Director, WWF
International . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Note from the Editors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
Acronyms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxi
Contributors’ List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxiii
Part A Toward a Wider Perspective in Forest
Restoration
Section I Introducing Forest Landscape Restoration
Chapter 1
Forest Landscape Restoration in Context
Nigel Dudley, Stephanie Mansourian, and
Daniel Vallauri . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Chapter 2
Overview of Forest Restoration Strategies and Terms
Stephanie Mansourian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Section II The Challenging Context Of Forest
Restoration Today
Chapter 3
Impact of Forest Loss and Degradation on Biodiversity
Nigel Dudley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Chapter 4
The Impacts of Degradation and Forest Loss on Human
Well-Being and Its Social and Political Relevance for
Restoration
Mary Hobley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Table of Contents
xiii
xiv Table of Contents
Chapter 5
Restoring Forest Landscapes in the Face of Climate
Change
Jennifer Biringer and Lara J. Hansen . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Section III Forest Restoration in Modern Broad-Scale
Conservation
Chapter 6
Restoration as a Strategy to Contribute to
Ecoregion Visions
John Morrison, Jeffrey Sayer, and Colby Loucks . . . . . 41
Chapter 7
Why Do We Need to Consider Restoration in a
Landscape Context?
Nigel Dudley, John Morrison, James Aronson, and
Stephanie Mansourian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Chapter 8
Addressing Trade-Offs in Forest Landscape Restoration
Katrina Brown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Part B Key Preparatory Steps Toward Restoring
Forests Within a Landscape Context
Section IV Overview of the Planning Process
Chapter 9
An Attempt to Develop a Framework for
Restoration Planning
Daniel Vallauri, James Aronson, and Nigel Dudley . . . . 65
Section V Identifying and Addressing Challenges/
Constraints
Chapter 10
Assessing and Addressing Threats in
Restoration Programmes
Doreen Robinson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Chapter 11
Perverse Policy Incentives
Kirsten Schuyt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Chapter 12
Land Ownership and Forest Restoration
Gonzalo Oviedo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Table of Contents xv
Chapter 13
Challenges for Forest Landscape Restoration
Based on WWF’s Experience to Date
Stephanie Mansourian and Nigel Dudley . . . . . . . . . 94
Section VI A Suite of Planning Tools
Chapter 14
Goals and Targets of Forest Landscape Restoration
Jeffrey Sayer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Chapter 15
Identifying and Using Reference Landscapes for
Restoration
Nigel Dudley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Chapter 16
Mapping and Modelling as Tools to Set Targets, Identify
Opportunities, and Measure Progress
Thomas F. Allnutt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Chapter 17
Policy Interventions for Forest Landscape Restoration
Nigel Dudley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Chapter 18
Negotiations and Conflict Management
Scott Jones and Nigel Dudley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
Chapter 19
Practical Interventions that Will Support Restoration in
Broad-Scale Conservation Based on WWF
Experiences
Stephanie Mansourian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
Section VII Monitoring and Evaluation
Chapter 20
Monitoring Forest Restoration Projects in the Context of
an Adaptive Management Cycle
Sheila O’Connor, Nick Salafsky, and Dan Salzer . . . . . 145
Chapter 21
Monitoring and Evaluating Forest Restoration Success
Daniel Vallauri, James Aronson, Nigel Dudley, and
Ramon Vallejo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
xvi Table of Contents
Section VIII Financing and Promoting Forest Landscape
Restoration
Chapter 22
Opportunities for Long-Term Financing of Forest
Restoration in Landscapes
Kirsten Schuyt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Chapter 23
Payment for Environmental Services and Restoration
Kirsten Schuyt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
Chapter 24
Carbon Knowledge Projects and Forest Landscape
Restoration
Jessica Orrego . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
Chapter 25
Marketing and Communications Opportunities: How to
Promote and Market Forest Landscape Restoration
Soh Koon Chng . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
Part C Implementing Forest Restoration
Section IX Restoring Ecological Functions
Chapter 26
Restoring Quality in Existing Native Forest Landscapes
Nigel Dudley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Chapter 27
Restoring Soil and Ecosystem Processes
Lawrence R. Walker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
Chapter 28
Active Restoration of Boreal Forest Habitats for
Target Species
Harri Karjalainen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
Chapter 29
Restoration of Deadwood as a Critical Microhabitat in
Forest Landscapes
Nigel Dudley and Daniel Vallauri . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
Chapter 30
Restoration of Protected Area Values
Nigel Dudley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
Table of Contents xvii
Section X Restoring Socioeconomic Values
Chapter 31
Using Nontimber Forest Products for Restoring
Environmental, Social, and Economic Functions
Pedro Regato and Nora Berrahmouni . . . . . . . . . . . 215
Chapter 32
An Historical Account of Fuelwood Restoration Efforts
Don Gilmour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
Chapter 33
Restoring Water Quality and Quantity
Nigel Dudley and Sue Stolton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
Chapter 34
Restoring Landscapes for Traditional Cultural Values
Gladwin Joseph and Stephanie Mansourian . . . . . . . 233
Section XI A Selection of Tools that Return Trees to
the Landscape
Chapter 35
Overview of Technical Approaches to Restoring Tree
Cover at the Site Level
Stephanie Mansourian, David Lamb, and
Don Gilmour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
Chapter 36
Stimulating Natural Regeneration
Silvia Holz and Guillermo Placci . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
Chapter 37
Managing and Directing Natural Succession
Steve Whisenant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
Chapter 38
Selecting Tree Species for Plantation
Florencia Montagnini . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
Chapter 39
Developing Firebreaks
Eduard Plana, Rufí Cerdan, and Marc Castellnou . . . . 269
Chapter 40
Agroforestry as a Tool for Forest Landscape Restoration
Thomas K. Erdmann . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
xviii Table of Contents
Part D Addressing Specific Aspects of Forest
Restoration
Section XII Restoration of Different Forest Types
Chapter 41
Restoring Dry Tropical Forests
James Aronson, Daniel Vallauri, Tanguy Jaffré, and
Porter P. Lowry II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
Chapter 42
Restoring Tropical Moist Broad-Leaf Forests
David Lamb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
Chapter 43
Restoring Tropical Montane Forests
Manuel R. Guariguata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298
Chapter 44
Restoring Floodplain Forests
Simon Dufour and Hervé Piégay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306
Chapter 45
Restoring Mediterranean Forests
Ramon Vallejo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
Chapter 46
Restoring Temperate Forests
Adrian Newton and Alan Watson Featherstone . . . . . . 320
Section XIII Restoring After Disturbances
Chapter 47
Forest Landscape Restoration After Fires
Peter Moore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
Chapter 48
Restoring Forests After Violent Storms
Daniel Vallauri . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
Chapter 49
Managing the Risk of Invasive Alien Species in
Restoration
Jeffrey A. McNeely . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
Chapter 50
First Steps in Erosion Control
Steve Whisenant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350
Chapter 51
Restoring Forests After Land Abandonment
José M. Rey Benayas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356
Chapter 52
Restoring Overlogged Tropical Forests
Cesar Sabogal and Robert Nasi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361
Chapter 53
Opencast Mining Reclamation
José Manuel Nicolau Ibarra and
Mariano Moreno de las Heras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 370
Section XIV Plantations in the Landscape
Chapter 54
The Role of Commercial Plantations in Forest Landscape
Restoration
Jeffrey Sayer and Chris Elliot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
Chapter 55
Attempting to Restore Biodiversity in Even-Aged
Plantations
Florencia Montagnini . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384
Chapter 56
Best Practices for Industrial Plantations
Nigel Dudley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392
Part E Lessons Learned and the Way Forward
Chapter 57
What Has WWF Learned About Restoration at an
Ecoregional Scale?
Nigel Dudley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401
Chapter 58
Local Participation, Livelihood Needs, and Institutional
Arrangements: Three Keys to Sustainable Rehabilitation
of Degraded Tropical Forest Lands
Unna Chokkalingam, Cesar Sabogal, Everaldo Almeida,
Antonio P. Carandang, Tini Gumartini, Wil de Jong,
Silvio Brienza, Jr., Abel Meza Lopez, Murniati,
Ani Adiwinata Nawir, Lukas Rumboko, Takeshi Toma,
Eva Wollenberg, and Zhou Zaizhi . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405
Table of Contents xix
xx Table of Contents
Chapter 59
A Way Forward:Working Together Toward a Vision for
Restored Forest Landscapes
Stephanie Mansourian, Mark Aldrich, and
Nigel Dudley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
Appendix
A Selection of Identified Ecological Research Needs
Relating to Forest Restoration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427
ACG—Area Conservación Guanacaste
CAP—common agriculture policy
CATIE—Centro Agronómico Tropical de
Investigación y Ensen¯ anza
CBD—Convention on Biological Diversity
CBFM—community-based forest management
CDM—clean development mechanism
CEAM—Centro de Estudios Ambientales
Mediterráneos (Mediterranean Centre for
Environmental Studies)
CIFOR—Centre for International Forestry
Research
DFID—U.K. Department for International
Development
DG—Directorate General
EC—European Commission
ECCM—Edinburgh Centre for Carbon
Management
ERC—ecoregion conservation
EU—European Union
FAO—United Nations Food and Agriculture
Organisation
FLO—Fair-Trade Labelling Organisation
FLR—forest landscape restoration
FSC—Forest Stewardship Council
FONAFIFO—Fondo Nacional de Finan-
ciamiento Forestal (National Fund for
Financing Forestry)
GEF—global environment facility
GIS—geographical information system
GTZ—Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische
Zusammenarbeit (German Company for
International Technical Cooperation)
HCVF—high conservation value forest
IAS—invasive alien species
ICDP—Integrated Conservation and Devel-
opment Programme
IFOAM—The International Federation of
Organic Agriculture Movements
IMF—International Monetary Fund
IPF—Intergovernmental Panel on Forests
ITTO—International Tropical Timber
Organisation
xxi
Acronyms
IUCN—The World Conservation Union
IISD—International Institute for Sustainable
Development
IIED—International Institute for
Environment and Development
LULUCF—Land Use, Land-Use Change, and
Forestry
MOSAIC—Management of Strategic Areas
for Integrated Conservation
NTFP—nontimber forest products
NGO—Nongovernmental organisation
ODA—Overseas Development Assistance
PES—payment for environmental services
PRA—participatory rural appraisal
PVA—population viability analysis
RIL—reduced-impact logging
RRA—rapid rural appraisal
REACTION—Restoration Actions to
Combat Desertification in the Northern
Mediterranean
SAPARD—Special Action for Pre-Accession
Measures for Agriculture and Rural
Development
SERI—Society for Ecological Restoration
International
SDC—Swiss Agency for Development and
Cooperation
SEI—Stockholm Environment Institute
SLU—Swedish University of Agricultural
Sciences
TDF—tropical dry forests
TNC—The Nature Conservancy
UNCCD—United Nations Convention to
Combat Desertification
UNFCCC—United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change
USAID—U.S.Agency for International
Development
WWF—Worldwide Fund for Nature (also
known as World Wildlife Fund in North
America)
Mark Aldrich
Manager, Forest Landscape Restoration
Forests for Life Programme
WWF International
Av. Mont Blanc
1196 Gland, Switzerland
E-mail: maldrich@wwfint.org
Thomas F. Alnutt
Senior Conservation Specialist
Conservation Science Programme
World Wildlife Fund–US, Suite 200
Washington, DC 20037
E-mail: tom.allnutt@gmail.com
Everaldo Almeida
CIFOR Regional Office for Latin America
c/o EMBRAPA Amazônia Oriental
Trav. Dr. Enéas Pinheiro s/n
CEP 66.010-080 Belém—Pará, Brazil
E-mail: e.almeida@cgiar.org
James Aronson
Restoration Ecology Group
CEFE (CNRS-U.M.R. 5175)
1919, Route de Mende
F-34293 Montpellier, France
E-mail: james.aronson@cefe.cnrs.fr
Martin Ashby
Sion Chapel
Llanwrin
Powys
SY20 8QH
Wales, United Kingdom
E-mail: martin.ashby@Martin-Ashby.
demon.co.uk
Contributors’ List
xxiii
Eduard Plana
Head of Forest Fire Working Group
Forest Technology Centre of Catalonia
Area de Política Forestal
Pujada del Seminari s/n
Solsona 25280, Spain
E-mail: eduard.plana@ctfc.es
Nora Berrahmouni Corkland Programme
Coordinator
WWF Mediterranean Programme Office
Via Po 25/C
00198 Rome, Italy
E-mail: nberrahmouni@wwmedpo.org
Jennifer Biringer
World Wildlife Fund–US, Suite 200
Washington, DC 20037
E-mail: jennifer.biringer@wwfus.org
Silvio Brienza, Jr.
Embrapa Amazônia Oriental,
Trav. Dr. Enéas Pinheiro s/n 66095-100
Belém—Pará, Brazil
E-mail: brienza@cpatu.embrapa.br
Katrina Brown
Professor of Development Studies
School of Development Studies
University of East Anglia
Norwich
NR4 7TJ, United Kingdom
E-mail: k.brown@uea.ac.uk
xxiv Contributors’ List
Antonio P. Carandang
Forestry Consultant
Main Street
Marymount Village,Anos
Los Banos,
Laguna 4030, Philippines
E-mail: apc@laguna.net
Marc Castellnou
Forestry Engineer
GRAF-Fire Service
Government of Catalonia
Ctra. Universitat Autònoma, s/n
08290 Cerdanyola del Vallès (Vallès
Occidental)
Spain
E-mail: incendis@yahoo.com
Rufi Cerdan
Dr. in Geography
Autonomous University of Barcelona
Campus de la UAB, Edifici B
08193 Bellaterra
Spain
E-mail: rufi.cerdan@uab.es
Soh Koon Chng
Communications Manager
WWF International
Av. Mont Blanc
1196 Gland, Switzerland
E-mail: skchng@wwfint.org
Unna Chokkalingam
Scientist
Environmental Services and Sustainable Use
of Forests Programme
Centre for International Forestry Research
(CIFOR)
P.O. Box 6596 JKPWB
Jakarta 10065, Indonesia
E-mail: u.chokkalingam@cgiar.org
Nigel Dudley
Consultant
Equilibrium
47 The Quays
Cumberland Road
Bristol
BS1 6UQ, United Kingdom
E-mail: equilibrium@compuserve.com
Simon Dufour
PhD student
CNRS UMR 5600
18 rue Chevreul
69362 Lyon Cedex 07, France
E-mail: sim_dufour@yahoo.fr
Chris Elliott
Director, Forest Programme
WWF International
Av. Mont Blanc
1196 Gland, Switzerland
E-mail: celliott@wwfint.org
Thomas K. Erdmann
Regional Coordinator
ERI Madagascar Project
c/o Development Alternatives, Inc.
7250 Woodmont Ave.
Suite 200
Bethesda, MD 20814
E-mail: tom_erdmann@dai.com
Alan Watson Featherstone
Trees for Life
The Park
Findhorn Bay
Forres IV36 3TZ
Scotland, United Kingdom
E-mail: trees@findhorn.org
Don Gilmour
Environmental Consultant
42 Mindarie Cres Wellington Point
4160 Queensland, Australia
E-mail: gilmour@itxpress.com.au
Manuel Guariguata
Environmental Affairs Officer
United Nations Environment Programme
Secretariat of the Convention on Biological
Diversity
413 St. Jacques, Suite 800
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
E-mail: manuel.guariguata@biodiv.org
Tini Gumartini
Environmental Services and Sustainable Use
of Forests Programme
Centre for International Forestry Research
(CIFOR)
P.O. Box 6596 JKPWB
Jakarta 10065, Indonesia
E-mail: gumartini@cgiar.org
Contributors’ List xxv
Lara J. Hansen
Chief Scientist for Climate Change
WWF
1250 24th Street NW
Washington, DC 20016
E-mail: lara.hansen@wwfus.org
Mary Hobley
Consultant
Glebe House
Chard Street
Thorncombe
Chard TA20 4NE, United Kingdom
E-mail: mary@maryhobley.co.uk
Marja Hokkanen
Metsähallitus
Natural Heritage Services
P.O Box 94
01301 Vantaa, Finland
E-mail: marja.hokkanen@metsa.fi
Silvia Holz
Ph.D. candidate,
National University of Buenos Aires
Departamento de Ecología, Genética y
Evolución
(4to Piso, Pabellón II).
Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales
Güiraldes 2620. Ciudad Universitaria
CP: 1428, Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Argentina
E-mail: silviaholz@yahoo.com.ar
José Manuel Nicolau Ibarra
Profesor Titular de Ecología
Departamento de Ecología
Universidad de Alcalá
28871 Alcalá de Henares
Madrid, Spain
E-mail: josem.nicolau@uah.es
Tanguy Jaffré
Directeur de Recherche de l’IRD
Laboratoire de Botanique et d’Ecologie
Végétale
Centre IRD
BP A5
F-98848 Noumea Cedex
Nouvelle-Calédonie, France
E-mail: jaffre@noumea.ird.nc
Wil de Jong
Professor
Japan Centre for Area Studies, National
Museum of Ethnology
10-1 Senri Expo Park, Suita
Osaka 565-8511, Japan
E-mail: wdejong@idc.minpaku.ac.jp
Scott Jones
Forests for People Group
Centre for International Development and
Training
University of Wolverhampton
Telford Campus
TF2 9NT, United Kingdom
E-mail: tiger.moth@ntlworld.com
Gladwin Joseph
Director and Fellow
Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the
Environment
Hebbal
Bangalore 560024, India
E-mail: gladwin@atree.org
Harri Karjalainen
Head, Forest Programme
WWF Finland
Lintulahdenkatu 10
00500 Helsinki, Finland
E-mail: harri.karjalainen@wwf.fi
David Lamb
School of Integrated Biology
University of Queensland
Brisbane, 4072, Australia
E-mail: d.lamb@botany.uq.edu.au
Abel Meza Lopez
Centre for International Forestry Research
(CIFOR)
Apdo. 558, Carretera Fdco. Basadre km 4,200
Pucallpa, Peru
E-mail: cifor-peru@cgiar.org;
a.meza@cgiar.org
Colby Loucks
Conservation Science Programme
World Wildlife Fund–U.S., Suite 200
Washington, DC 20037
E-mail: colby.loucks@wwfus.org
xxvi Contributors’ List
Porter P. Lowry II
Curator and Head, Africa and Madagascar
Department
Missouri Botanical Garden
P.O. Box 299
St. Louis, Missouri 63166-0299,
and
Département Systématique et Evolution,
Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle
C.P. 39
57 rue Cuvier
75231 Paris CEDEX 05, France
E-mail: Pete.Lowry@mobot.org
Stephanie Mansourian
Consultant—WWF International
10 rte de Burtigny
1268 Begnins, Switzerland
E-mail: stephanie.mansourian@worldcom.ch
Jeffrey A. McNeely
Chief Scientist
IUCN—The World Conservation Union
Rue Mauverney, 28
1196 Gland, Switzerland
E-mail: jam@iucn.org
Florencia Montagnini
Professor in the Practice of Tropical Forestry
Yale University
School of Forestry and Environmental Studies
370 Prospect St.
New Haven, CT 06511
E-mail: florencia.montagnini@yale.edu
Peter Moore
Fire Management and Policy Specialist
Metis Associates—Strategic Analysts
P.O. Box 1772
Bowral NSW 2576, Australia
E-mail: metis@metis-associates.com
Mariano Moreno de las Heras
PhD Student
Departamento de Ecología
Edificio de Ciencias
Universidad de Alcalá
28871 Alcalá de Henares
Madrid, Spain
E-mail: mariano.moreno@uah.es.
John Morrison
Deputy Director
Conservation Science Programme
World Wildlife Fund–U.S., Suite 200
Washington, DC 20037
E-mail: john.morrison@wwfus.org
Murniati
Forestry Research and Development Agency
(FORDA)
Jalan Gunung Batu No. 5
Bogor, Indonesia
E-mail: murniati@forda.org
Robert Nasi
Principal Scientist
Programme on Environmental Services and
Sustainable Use of Forests
Centre for International Forestry Research—
CIRAD
Campus International de Baillarguet TA 10/D
34398 Montpellier Cedex 5, France
E-mail: r.nasi@cgiar.org
Ani Adiwinata Nawir
Scientist
Forests and Livelihoods Programme
Centre for International Forestry Research
(CIFOR)
P.O. Box 6596 JKPWB
Jakarta 10065, Indonesia
E-mail: a.nawir@cgiar.org
Adrian Newton
Senior Lecturer
School of Conservation Sciences
Bournemouth University
Talbot Campus
Fern Barrow
Poole
Dorset BH12 5BB, United Kingdom
E-mail: anewton@bournemouth.ac.uk
Nguyen Thi Dao
Annamites Ecoregion Conservation Manager,
Vietnam
WWF Indochina Programme
40 Cat Linh
Ba Dinh District
Hanoi, Vietnam
E-mail: dao@wwfvn.org.vn
Contributors’ List xxvii
Sheila O’Connor
Director, Conservation Measures and Audits
WWF International
39 Stoke Gabriel Rd.
Galmpton nr Brixham
Devon TQ5 0NQ, United Kingdom
E-mail: soconnor@wwfint.org
Jessica Orrego
Forestry Project Manager
Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Management
Tower Mains Studios
18F Liberton Brae
Edinburgh, EH16 6AE, United Kingdom
E-mail: jessica.orrego@eccm.uk.com
Gonzalo Oviedo
Senior Advisor, Social Policy
IUCN–The World Conservation Union
28 Rue Mauverney
1196 Gland, Switzerland
E-mail: gonzalo.oviedo@incn.org
Jussi Päivinen
Metsähallitus, Natural Heritage Services
P.O. Box 36
40101 Jyväskylä, Finland
E-mail: jussi.paivinen@metsa.fi
Hervé Piégay
Researcher
CNRS UMR 5600
18 rue Chevreul
69362 Lyon Cedex 07, France
E-mail: piegay@univ-lyon3.fr
Guillermo Placci
Consultant
Constitución 237
5800—Río Cuarto, Cba, Argentina
E-mail: guillermoplacci@ciudad.com.ar
Gérard Rambeloarisoa
Forest Programme Officer
WWF Madagascar
WWF Madagascar and West Indian Ocean
Programme Office
B.P. 738
Antananarivo 101, Madagascar
E-mail: grambeloarisoa@wwf.mg
Pedro Regato
Head, Forest Programme
WWF Mediterranean Programme Office
Via Po 25/C
00198 Rome, Italy
E-mail: pregato@wwfmedpo.org
José M. Rey Benayas
Dpto. de Ecología
Edificio de Ciencias
Universidad de Alcalá
28871 Alcalá de Henares, Spain
E-mail: josem.rey@uah.es
Doreen Robinson
Biodiversity and Natural Resources Specialist
USAID
1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Ronald Reagan Building 3.08
Washington, DC 20523-3800
E-mail: drobinson@usaid.gov
Triagung Rooswiadji
Programme Manager
WWF Indonesia’s Nusa Tenggara Programme
Jl. DODIKLAT No. 2
Kelurahan Oebubu
Kupang, NTT 8500, Indonesia
E-mail: triagung@kupang.wasantara.net.id
Lukas Rumboko Wibowo
Forestry Research and Development Agency
(FORDA)
Jalan Gunung Batu No. 5
Bogor, Indonesia
E-mail: lukas_19672000@yahoo.com
Cesar Sabogal
Senior Scientist, Tropical Silviculture and
Forest Management
CIFOR Regional Office for Latin America
c/o EMBRAPA Amazônia Oriental
Trav. Dr. Enéas Pinheiro s/n,
CEP 66.010-080 Belém
Pará, Brazil
E-mail: c.sabogal@cgiar.org
Nick Salafsky
Co-Director
Foundations of Success
4109 Maryland Ave.
Bethesda, MD 20816
E-mail: Nick@FOSonline.org
xxviii Contributors’ List
Daniel W. Salzer
Conservation Measures Manager
The Nature Conservancy
Conservation Measures Group
821 SE 14th Ave.
Portland, OR 97214
E-mail: dsalzer@tnc.org
Jeffrey Sayer
Senior Advisor
WWF International
Av. Mont Blanc
1196 Gland, Switzerland
E-mail: jsayer@wwfint.org
Kirsten Schuyt
Resource Economist
WWF International
Av. Mont Blanc
1196 Gland, Switzerland
E-mail: Kschuyt@wwfint.org
Sue Stolton
Consultant
Equilibrium
47 The Quays, Cumberland Road
Bristol
BS1 6UQ, United Kingdom
E-mail: equilibrium@compuserve.com
Takeshi Toma
Senior Scientist
Environmental Services and Sustainable Use
of Forests Programme
Centre for International Forestry Research
(CIFOR)
P.O. Box 6596 JKPWB,
Jakarta 10065, Indonesia
E-mail: t.toma@cgiar.org
Present address:
Associate Research Coordinator
Research Planning and Coordination Division,
Forestry and Forest Products Research
Institute (FFPRI)
1 Matsunosato, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8687,
Japan
E-mail: toma@affrc.go.jp
Daniel Vallauri
WWF France
6 Rue des Fabres
13001 Marseille, France
E-mail: dvallauri@wwf.fr
Ramon Vallejo
CEAM,
Parque Tecnológico,
Ch. Darwin 14
E-46980 Paterna, Spain
E-mail: vvallejo@ub.edu
Lawrence R. Walker
Professor of Biology
Department of Biological Sciences
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Box 454004
4505 Maryland Parkway
Las Vegas, NV 89154-4004
E-mail: walker@unlv.nevada.edu
Steve Whisenant
Professor and Department Head
Department of Rangeland Ecology and Man-
agement
2126-TAMU
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX 77843-2126
E-mail: rangerider@mac.com
Eva Wollenberg
Senior Scientist
Forests and Governance Programme
Centre for International Forestry Research
(CIFOR)
P.O. Box 6596 JKPWB
Jakarta 10065, Indonesia
E-mail: L.wollenberg@cgiar.org
Zhou Zaizhi
Research Institute of Tropical Forestry
Chinese Academy of Forestry
Longdong, Guangzhou 510520, China
E-mail: zzzhoucn@21cn.com
Part A
Toward a Wider Perspective in
Forest Restoration
Section I
Introducing Forest Landscape
Restoration
1. Background and
Explanation of the Issue
People have been actively using forests since
long before the beginning of history. The oldest
known written story, the Epic of Gilgamesh
recorded on 12 cuneiform tablets in Assyria in
the seventh century b.c., includes reference to
the problems of forest loss. The need for
good tree husbandry was stressed in Virgil’s
pastoral poem The Georgics in 30 b.c., written
to promote rural values within the Roman
Empire. The oldest records of forest manage-
ment in the world have been kept without a
break for 2000 years in Japan,relating to forests
managed to produce timber for Shinto temples.
The need for large-scale restoration has also
been recognised for centuries; for example, the
English pamphleteer John Evelyn wrote a tract
calling for major tree planting during the time
of Queen Elizabeth I in the 1600s. In more
recent times, forest departments around the
world have developed major efforts at refor-
estation in Europe, eastern North America,
Australia, New Zealand, and increasingly in
parts of the tropics.1In the last 20 years,
hundreds of aid and conservation projects
have promoted and carried out tree planting
schemes and the development of tree nurseries,
aimed at both supplying goods such as fuel-
wood and at restoring ecological functions and
protecting biodiversity. Following the Society
for Ecological Restoration International (SERI)
and its chapters around the world, the scientific
knowledge on ecological restoration has been
conceptualised and applied to many different
types of ecosystem, including forest landscapes.
Good books have already been published.2
Why then do we need another book about
restoration?
The arguments for forest restoration are
becoming more compelling. Forest loss and
degradation is a worldwide problem, with net
annual estimates of forest loss being 9.4 million
hectares throughout the 1990s3and those
for degradation uncalculated but universally
agreed to be even higher. The most severe
losses are currently concentrated mainly,
although not exclusively, in the tropics, with
1
Forest Landscape Restoration
in Context
Nigel Dudley, Stephanie Mansourian, and Daniel Vallauri
Key Points to Retain
Forest landscape restoration is grounded in
ecoregion conservation and is defined as a
planned process that aims to regain ecologi-
cal integrity and enhance human well-being
in deforested or degraded landscapes.
Such an approach helps achieve a balance
between human needs and those of biodi-
versity by restoring a range of forest func-
tions within a landscape and accepting the
trade-offs that result.
3
1For an overview see Perlin, 1991.
2Perrow and Davy; 2002, SERI, 2002; Whisenant, 1999.
3FAO, 2001.
4 N. Dudley et al
the temperate countries gradually recovering
forest area if not necessarily quality after severe
deforestation in the past. As well as creating
acute threats to forest dependent biodiversity,
the decline in global forests also has a series of
direct social and economic costs because of the
role of forests in supplying timber and many
important nontimber forest products along
with a wide range of environmental service
such as the stabilisation of soils and climate.
Forest loss and degradation has already led to
the extinction of species, has altered hydro-
logical regimes and damaged the livelihoods
of millions of people—mainly amongst the
poorest on the earth—who rely on forests for
subsistence.In many areas, protecting and man-
aging the remaining forests are no longer suffi-
cient steps in themselves to ensure that forest
functions are maintained, and restoration is
already an essential third component of any
management strategy.
Unfortunately, many existing restoration
projects have partially or completely failed,
often because the trees that they sought to
establish have not survived or have been
rapidly destroyed by the same pressures that
have caused forest loss in the first place.
Anyone working regularly in the tropics
becomes accustomed to finding abandoned tree
nurseries, often with their donor organisations’
signboards still in place, the paint gradually
peeling away. Even when crops of trees have
survived to maturity, they have not necessarily
been welcomed, as evidenced by the wide-
spread controversy over afforestation with
exotic monocultures of conifers in much of
western Europe4and the increasingly bitter
debates about tree plantations in the tropics.5
There has also often been a mismatch
between social and ecological goals of conser-
vation; either restoration has aimed to fulfil
social or economic needs without reference to
its wider ecological impacts, or it has had a
narrow conservation aim without taking into
account people’s needs.
A number of consequent problems can be
identified. Most restoration to date has been
site-based, aiming to produce one or at most a
limited number of goods and services. Projects
have often sought to encourage and sometimes
impose tree planting without understanding
why trees disappeared in the first place and
without attempting to address the immediate or
underlying causes of forest loss.6Projects have
also relied heavily on tree planting, which is
often the most expensive way of reestablishing
tree cover over a large area, frightening off gov-
ernments,donors, and nongovernmental organ-
isations. Because restoration takes time, it is
essential to think and plan long term. Unfortu-
nately, short-term political interests often
supersede longer term priorities, creating sim-
plistic approaches.
The above reservations are not to under-
estimate the major steps that have been made in
understanding the ecological and social aspects
of restoration, many of which are summarised in
this book. Criticising after the event is always
easy, and we also recognise the very real bene-
fits that have accrued from successful restora-
tion projects.Nonetheless, we are far from alone
in believing that some new perspectives are
needed in addressing the current restoration
challenge. Perhaps the most important of these
relates to working on a broader scale,along with
all the implications that this has.
1.1. Taking a Broader Approach
An increasing number of governmental and
nongovernmental conservation institutions
have recognised that in order to achieve lasting
conservation impacts it is necessary to work
on a larger scale than has been the case in the
past. Although there are a number of ways of
defining useful ecological units for planning
conservation, the concept of the ecoregion is
increasingly being adopted, including by WWF,
the global conservation organisation.An ecore-
gion is defined as a large area of land or water
that contains a geographically distinct assem-
blage of natural communities that share a large
majority of their species and ecological dynam-
ics, share similar environmental conditions, and
4Tompkins, 1989.
5Carrere and Lohmann, 1996. 6Eckholm, 1979.
1. Forest Landscape Restoration in Context 5
interact ecologically in ways that are critical
for their long-term persistence. Ecoregions are
suitable for broad-scale planning, which usually
includes the identification of a few smaller pri-
ority landscapes that are particularly important
from a conservation perspective, themselves
composed of numerous sites with different
management regimes or habitats (see chapter
“Restoration as a Strategy to Contribute to
Ecoregion Visions”).
As used here (Fig. 1.1), landscapes are gen-
erally smaller than ecoregions, and typically
a number of important “conservation land-
scapes” have been identified within ecoregions
during planning processes. But the key point
here is that landscapes are bigger than single
sites and therefore almost always encompass a
range of different management approaches.
Coming from a conservation organisation,
this book is biased toward ecological and bio-
diversity issues. However, forests have social
and economic functions as well, and restoration
efforts often need to address many needs at
once. This may not be possible within a single
site; it is, for example, difficult to create a large
harvest of industrial timber or firewood in an
environment that is also suitable for specialised
or sensitive wildlife species. One important
reason for shifting the focus to a landscape
scale is that it is hoped this can provide a broad-
enough area to plan a suite of restoration activ-
ities that could meet multiple needs and to
negotiate the compromises and trade-offs that
such a mosaic entails. The aims of forest land-
scape restoration have therefore always tran-
scended conservation to embrace development
as well, and we have invited a number of
experts to provide a parallel set of social tools
and approaches within the current volume. We
believe that successful restoration on a broad
scale relies on getting the right mix between
social and environmental needs; this is a fun-
damental part of the process and not an
optional extra.
Accordingly, in 2000, WWF and IUCN, the
World Conservation Union,brought together a
range of experts from different organisations,
different regions, and different disciplines to
agree on a definition for forest landscape
restoration7: “A planned process that aims to
regain ecological integrity and enhance human
well-being in deforested or degraded land-
scapes. This definition and approach lies at
the heart of the current book. “Ecological
integrity” is described by Parks Canada as a
state of ecosystem development that is charac-
teristic of its geographic location, containing a
full range of native species and supportive
processes that are present in viable numbers.
“Well-being” embraces the factors that make
Ecoregion
Landscape Landscape Landscape
Site
Site
Site
Site
Site
Site
Site
Site
Site
Figure 1.1. At the ecoregional scale, ecoregion
visioning can help to identify a series of priority land-
scapes.At the landscape level, assessment and nego-
tiation can help to identify agreed forest functions to
7WWF and IUCN, 2000.
be restored, leading to a number of actions at indi-
vidual sites within the landscape. All these fit within
the landscape goals for restoration, which them-
selves contribute to the ecoregion vision.
6 N. Dudley et al
human life comfortable, such as money, peace,
health, stability, and equable governance.
1.2. What Is Special About Forest
Restoration in a Landscape?
Restoring the complexity of a small patch of
forests is in itself an achievement. However, a
greater challenge lies in restoring a matrix of
forests within larger areas—landscapes—to
meet different needs. At this greater spatial
scale, different influences, pressures, stake-
holders, and habitats coexist, which in some
ways increases the challenges of restoration.
However, the landscape scale also provides
enough space to plan and implement restora-
tion to meet multiple needs.
Conservation priorities therefore must be
balanced with other aspects of sustainable
development. Specific uses and priorities may
have to be focussed on part of the forest land-
scape, and the resulting trade-offs negotiated
and agreed to by a wide range of stakeholders.
The resulting task is generally too complex
to be solved solely by site-based approaches
focussing on a narrow range of benefits from
individual forests.Achieving a balance between
the various goods and services required from
restored forest ecosystems requires conceptu-
alisation, planning, and implementation on a
broader scale.
It also requires deciding where forest is and
is not needed. Aiming at restoring forest func-
tions does not necessarily mean restoring forest
across the whole landscape; this is often impos-
sible in a crowded world with many competing
claims on land. Rather, it entails identifying
those areas where forests are most useful, from
a variety of social and ecological perspectives,
and further identifying what type of forest is
likely to be most useful in a particular location.
Whilst from a conservation perspective a high
degree of naturalness is often important, this
may not be the case for social or economic uses.
Even in the parts of the landscape that are “spe-
cialised” in conservation, sometimes cultural
landscapes are desired either because they have
been in place for so long that remaining bio-
diversity has adapted to these conditions or
because there is not sufficient space for a fully
functioning natural system (for instance, with
respect to the way that the forest changes and
regenerates over time).
Forests managed for social needs may have
different priorities. Sometimes these overlap
with conservation requirements—for instance
some forests managed for nontimber forest
products can be extremely rich in biodiver-
sity—in other cases they do not. Seeking a
balance at a landscape scale is more important
than trying to make sure that every scrap of
forest fulfils every possible role. Broad-scale
restoration in most cases, therefore, has to
address multiple, sometimes competing, needs
that will themselves entail different types of
forests (perhaps ranging from natural forests to
plantations) and sometimes also including quite
specific requirements such as particular non-
timber forest products required by local com-
munities or maintenance of water quality in a
certain watershed. Such multifunctional land-
scapes by their nature need to be planned and
implemented on a far broader scale than an
individual forest patch.
2. Conclusion
For foresters, restoration traditionally meant
establishing trees for a number of functions
(wood or pulp production, soil protection). For
many conservationists restoration is either
about restoring original forest cover in
degraded areas or about planting corridors of
forest to link protected areas. For many inter-
ested in social development, the emphasis will
instead be on establishing trees that are useful
for fuelwood, or fruits, or as windbreaks and
livestock enclosures.The sad fact is that all too
many restoration projects do not bother to find
out what local people really want at all; if they
do, then a collection of different and often
opposing or mutually exclusive wants and
desires emerge.There is still a lot to be learned
and disseminated about reconciling nature and
human needs, and about planning restoration
areas within larger scales in order to return as
wide a range of forest functions as possible.This
requires the ability to work across disciplines,
including agriculture, forest-compatible
income-generation activities, forestry, and
addressing water issues as well as specific social
1. Forest Landscape Restoration in Context 7
issues. It also, perhaps even more importantly,
requires finding out how to bring the people
most affected into the debate, not as a matter
of duty or because funding agencies expect it
but because this is vital and necessary for both
nature and human well-being.
Through ecoregion conservation, WWF has
learned that working on a large scale is com-
plex, costly, and time-intensive; however, it is
also a more sustainable way of addressing con-
servation than through small, often unrelated
projects. This approach is also a challenge for
restoration.
References
Carrere, R., and Lohmann, L. 1996. Pulping the
South: Industrial Plantations and the World Paper
Economy. Zed Books and the World Rainforest
Movement, London and Montevideo.
Eckholm, E. 1979. Planting for the Future: Forestry
for Human Needs.Worldwatch Paper number 26.
Worldwatch Institute, Washington, DC.
FAO. 2001. Global Forest Resource Assessment
2000: Main Report.FAO Forestry Paper 140.Food
and Agriculture Organisation of the United
Nations, Rome.
Perlin, J. 1991. A Forest Journey: The Role of Wood
in the Development of Civilisation. Harvard Uni-
versity Press, Cambridge, MA, and London.
Perrow, M.R., and Davy, A.J. 2002. Handbook or
Ecological Restoration, vol. 1 and 2. Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Society for Ecological Restoration International.
Science and Policy Working Group. 2002.The SER
Primer on Ecological Restoration, www.ser.org.
Tompkins, S. 1989. Forestry in Crisis: The Battle for
the Hills. Christopher Helm, London.
Whisenant, S.G. 1999. Repairing Damaged Wild-
lands—a Process-Oriented, Landscape-Scale
Approach. Cambridge University Press.
WWF and IUCN. 2000. Minutes, Restoration work-
shop, Segovia, Spain (unpublished).
1. Background and
Explanation of the Issue
When forests are lost or degraded, we lose far
more than just the trees that they contain.
Forests provide a large number of goods and
services, including habitat for species, home-
land for indigenous peoples, recreational areas,
food, medicines, and environmental services
such as soil stabilisation.And as forest areas are
reduced, pressure on remaining forests
increases.
Efforts at reversing this trend have had only
limited success. For many, restoration signi-
fies large-scale afforestation or reforestation
(mainly using fast growing exotic species),
which have only limited conservation benefits.
This has been the approach taken by many gov-
ernments that are seeking to support a timber
industry or create jobs or, equally, those who
have taken a simplistic approach to flood or
other disaster mitigation. On the other hand,
some have sought to re-create original forests,
a near-impossible feat in areas where millennia
of human intervention have modified the land-
scape and local conditions.
Many different terms are used to describe
these different approaches and can result in
some confusion or misconceptions.8We attempt
here to cover most of the terminology used in
English taken from the Society for Ecological
Restoration International (SERI), which has
2
Overview of Forest Restoration
Strategies and Terms
Stephanie Mansourian
Key Points to Retain
There are numerous terms promoting differ-
ent strategies when dealing with forest
restoration, which could be a source of con-
fusion.
WWF is implementing forest landscape
restoration (FLR) as an integral component
of the conservation of large, biologically
important areas such as ecoregions, along
with protection and good management.
Forest landscape restoration is an approach
to forest restoration that seeks to balance
human needs with those of biodiversity, thus
aiming to restore a range of forest functions
and accepting and negotiating the trade-offs
between them.
While the challenge of restoration on a large
scale is greater than at individual sites, it is
accepted nowadays that the effectiveness of
forest restoration and its chances of sustain-
ability are both much greater on a large
scale.
Forest landscape restoration aims to achieve
a landscape containing valuable forests,
rather than returning forest cover across an
entire landscape.
8
8Ormerod, 2003.
Confusion reigns as the term restoration is used indis-
criminately, with no consensus even among practi-
tioners in its meaning.
Stanturf and Madsen, 2002
2. Overview of Forest Restoration Strategies and Terms 9
made the best attempt at cataloguing and defin-
ing these different terminologies and concepts.
It must be noted that this complexity is also
apparent and sometimes exacerbated when
translating these terms into other languages.
2. Examples
We present below a number of terms that have
been defined recently by SERI in its “The SER
Primer on Ecological Restoration.”9
2.1. Ecological Restoration
Ecological restoration is defined as the process
of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that
has been degraded, damaged,or destroyed. It is
an intentional activity that initiates or acceler-
ates the recovery of an ecosystem with respect
to its health, integrity, and sustainability.
Example 1: In 2000,in an attempt to re-create
a native wild wood, the Scottish nongovern-
mental organisation (NGO), Borders Forest
Trust, together with many partners, bought a
600-hectare plot of land, Carrifran, in the
Southern Uplands of Scotland in order to
restore its original forest. Thanks to fossil
pollen buried deep in peat, it was possible to
identify the nature of the variety of species pre-
viously found on this now near-denuded site
and therefore to develop a restoration plan that
aimed to re-create the species’ mix that had
occurred in the past. Thousands of native tree
seeds from surviving woodland remnants in
the vicinity were collected. A total of 103.13
hectares (165,008 trees) have been planted at
Carrifran since the start of the project. The
upper part of the site is being allowed to regen-
erate naturally.10
2.2. Rehabilitation
Rehabilitation emphasises the reparation of
ecosystem processes, productivity, and services,
whereas the goals of restoration also include
the reestablishment of the preexisting biotic
integrity in terms of species’ composition and
community structure.
Example 2: Bamburi Cement’s quarries in
Mombasa (Kenya) were once woodland
expanses covering 1,200 hectares.11 Starting in
1971, experiments began with the rehabilitation
of the disused quarries. In the face of badly
damaged soils, three tree species proved
capable of withstanding the difficult growing
conditions: Casuarina equisetifolia, Conocarpus
lancifolius, and the coconut palm. The Casuar-
ina is nitrogen fixing and is drought and salt
tolerant, enabling it to colonise areas left
virtually without soil. The Conocarpus is also a
drought-, flood-, and salt-tolerant swamp tree.
The decomposition of the Casuarina leaf litter
was initially very slow due to a high protein
content, thus impeding the nutrient cycling
process, although this problem was overcome
by introducing a local red-legged millipede that
feeds on the dry leaves and starts the decom-
position process.Today this area contains more
than 200 coastal forest species and a famous
nature trail, attracting 100,000 visitors a year
since opening in 1984.
2.3. Reclamation
Reclamation is a term commonly used in the
context of mined lands in North America and
the United Kingdom. It has as its main objec-
tives the stabilisation of the terrain, assurance
of public safety, aesthetic improvement, and
usually a return of the land to what, within the
regional context, is considered to be a useful
purpose.
Example 3: A large open-cut bauxite mine at
Trombetas in Pará state in central Amazonia
is located in an area of relatively undisturbed
evergreen equatorial moist forest. A reclama-
tion programme has been developed to restore
the original forest cover as far as possible. The
project has treated about 100 hectares of mined
land per year for the last 15 years. First, the
mined site was levelled and topsoil replaced to
a depth of about 15cm using topsoil from the
site that was removed and stockpiled (for less
9SERI, 2002.
10 www.carrifran.com. 11 Baer, 1996.
10 S. Mansourian
than 6 months) prior to mining. Next, the site
was deep-ripped to a depth of 90cm (1-m
spacing between rows). Trees were planted
along alternate rip lines at 2-m spacings (2500
trees per hectare) using direct seeding, stumped
saplings, or potted seedlings. Some 160 local
tree species were tested for their suitability in
the programme, and more than 70 species from
the local natural forests are now routinely used.
After 13 years most sites have many more tree
and shrub species than those initially planted
because of seeds stored in the topsoil or coloni-
sation from the surrounding forest. Not sur-
prisingly, the density of these new colonists is
greater at sites near intact forest, but dispersal
was evident up to 640m away from old-growth
forest. The new species, most of which have
small seed, have been brought to the site by
birds, bats, or terrestrial mammals.12
2.4. Afforestation/Reforestation
Afforestation and reforestation refer to the
artificial establishment of trees, in the former
case where no trees existed before. In addition,
in the context of the U.N.’s Framework Con-
vention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and
the Kyoto protocol, specific definitions have
been agreed on reforestation and afforesta-
tion.13 Afforestation is defined by the UNFCCC
as “the direct human-induced conversion of
land that has not been forested for a period of
at least 50 years to forested land through plant-
ing, seeding, and/or human induced promotion
of natural seed sources.
Example 4: During the middle years of the
20th century, very large areas of long-
deforested land were planted in Scotland by
the state forestry body, initially as a strategic
resource.In contrast to the Borders Forest Trust
project described above, these efforts made no
attempt to re-create the original forest, instead
using exotic monocultures, mainly of Sitka
spruce from Alaska (Picea sitchensis) or Norway
spruce (Picea abies) from mainland Europe.
Planting was generally so dense that virtually no
understorey plant species developed.
Reforestation is defined by the UNFCCC as
“the direct human-induced conversion of non-
forested land to forested land through planting,
seeding, and/or the human-induced promotion
of natural seed sources, on land that was
forested but that has been converted to non-
forested land.”
Example 5: In Madagascar, large plantation
projects were planned in the early 1970s to
supply a paper mill on the “Haut Mangoro.”By
1990 about 80,000 hectares had been planted,
97 percent of which was Pinus spp. This project
created significant social and political tensions,
as the local population systematically opposed
a project that it felt was not providing much
benefit.14
2.5. What Is WWF’s Definition?
In 2000 WWF and IUCN, the World Conserva-
tion Union, were asking the questions: What
is meant by forest restoration? How can we
achieve lasting and successful forest restoration
in our ecoregional programmes? The two
organisations felt that a suitable definition and
typology of restoration were needed. In partic-
ular, given the large-scale conservation work
that the organisations were engaging in, it was
felt that there was still a gap in knowledge and
in approaches to forest restoration. Notably,
how does forest restoration relate to planta-
tions, agroforestry, secondary forests, biological
corridors, and single trees in the landscape?
In July 2000 WWF and IUCN brought
together a number of regional conservation
staff, foresters, economists, and other profes-
sionals to help them take restoration forward.
They defined the term forest landscape restora-
tion as “a planned process that aims to
regain ecological integrity15 and enhance
human well-being16 in deforested or degraded
landscapes.
12 Lamb and Gilmour, 2003.
13 UNFCC, 2003.
14 Faralala, 2003.
15 Ecological Integrity, for WWF and IUCN, is “maintain-
ing the diversity and quality of ecosystems, and enhancing
their capacity to adapt to change and provide for the needs
of future generations.
16 Human well-being, for WWF and IUCN,is “ensuring that
all people have a role in shaping decisions that affect their
ability to meet their needs, safeguard their livelihoods, and
realise their full potential.”
2. Overview of Forest Restoration Strategies and Terms 11
what may seem like a less than optimal solu-
tion if taken from one perspective,but a solu-
tion that when taken from the whole group’s
perspective can be acceptable to all.
• It places the emphasis not only on forest
quantity but also on forest quality. Decision
makers often think predominantly about the
area of trees to be planted when considering
restoration, yet often improving the quality
of existing forests can yield bigger benefits
for a lower cost.
• It aims to restore a range of forest goods,
services, and processes, rather than forest
cover per se.It is not just the trees themselves
that are important, but often all of the
accompanying elements that go with healthy
forests, such as nutrient cycling, soil stabilisa-
tion, medicinal and food plants, forest-
dwelling animal species, etc. Including the
full range of potential benefits in the plan-
ning process makes the choice of restoration
technique, locations, and tree species much
more focussed. It also allows more flexibility
for discussions on trade-offs with different
stakeholders, by providing a diversity of
values rather than just one or two.
Forest landscape restoration goes beyond
establishing forest cover per se. Its aim is to
achieve a landscape containing valuable forests,
for instance partly to provide timber, partly
mixed with subsistence crops to raise yields and
protect the soils, as well as partly improving
biodiversity habitat and increasing the avail-
ability of subsistence goods. By balancing these
within a landscape,WWF believes that it is pos-
sible to enhance the overall benefits to people
and biodiversity at that scale.
3. Outline of Tools
Broad definitions and explanations of what
restoration entails can be found in most con-
servation and forestry institutions.Nonetheless,
little of this has reached the field. Because of its
complexity, large-scale restoration requires a
mixture of responses from practical to political
and many practitioners are at a loss as to where
to begin.
Some practical guidance is available:
The key elements of FLR are as follows:
It is implemented at a landscape scale rather
than a single site—that is to say, planning for
forest restoration is done in the context of
other elements: social, economic, and biolog-
ical, in the landscape. This does not necessar-
ily imply planting trees across an entire
landscape but rather strategically locating
forests and woodlands in areas that are nec-
essary to achieve an agreed set of functions
(e.g., habitat for a specific species, soil stabil-
isation, provision of building materials for
local communities).
It has both a socioeconomic and an ecologi-
cal dimension. People who have a stake in
the state of the landscape are more likely to
engage positively in its restoration.
It implies addressing the root causes of forest
loss and degradation. Restoration can some-
times be achieved simply by removing what-
ever caused the loss of forest, (such as
perverse incentives and grazing animals).
This also means that without removing the
cause of forest loss and degradation, any
restoration effort is likely to be in vain.
• It opts for a package of solutions. There is
no single restoration technique that can be
applied to all situations. In each case a
number of elements need to be covered, but
how to do that depends on the local condi-
tions. The package may include practical
techniques, such as agro-forestry, enrichment
planting, and natural regeneration at a land-
scape scale, but also embraces policy analy-
sis, training, and research.
It involves a range of stakeholders in plan-
ning and decision making to achieve a
solution that is acceptable and therefore sus-
tainable. The decision of what to aim for in
the long term when restoring a landscape
should ideally be made through a process
that includes representatives of different
interest groups in the landscape in order to
reach, if not a consensus, at least a compro-
mise that is acceptable to all.
It involves identifying and negotiating trade-
offs. In relation to the above point, when a
consensus cannot be reached, different inter-
est groups need to negotiate and agree on
12 S. Mansourian
4. Future Needs
In the context of terminology related to restora-
tion, given the flurry of interest, concepts, and
definitions being touted, there is a need for
a set of widely accepted definitions (such as
those of SERI) to be used more systemati-
cally and rigorously;
efforts and resources to be more focussed on
the “doing” than on the “defining”;
• greater exchanges, debates, and sharing of
experiences in order to disseminate the
accepted concepts and the positive experi-
ences; and
• the accepted definitions in the restoration
field to be shared with other relevant expert
groups, such as development workers,
foresters, extension officers, etc.
References
Baer, S. 1996. Rehabilitation of Disused Limestone
Quarries Through Reafforestation (Baobab Farm,
Mombasa, Kenya). World Bank/Unep Africa
Forestry Policy Forum, Nairobi, August 29–30,
1996.
Faralala. 2003. Rapport de Reconnaissance dans
Cinq Paysages Forestiers. WWF, Madagascar.
ITTO Policy Series No. 13. 2002. Guidelines on
the Restoration, Management and Rehabilitation
of Degraded and Secondary Tropical Forest.
Yokohama, Japan.
Lamb, D., and Gilmour, D. 2003. Rehabilitation
and Restoration of Degraded Forests. IUCN,
Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge, UK, and
WWF, Gland, Switzerland.
Ormerod, S.J. 2003. Restoration in applied ecology:
editor’s introduction. Journal of Applied Ecology
40:44–50.
Perrow, M., and Davy A., eds. 2002. Handbook of
Ecological Restoration. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, England.
Society for Ecological Restoration International.
Science and Policy Working Group. 2002.The SER
Primer on Ecological Restoration, www.ser.org/.
Stanturf, J.A., and Madsen, P. 2002. Restoration con-
cepts for temperate and boreal forests of North
America and Western Europe. Plant Biosystems
136(2):143–158.
The Society for Ecological Restoration
(SERI) have developed guidelines for
restoration (see Guidelines for Developing
and Managing Ecological Restoration Pro-
jects, 2000, at www.ser.org).
The International Tropical Timber Organisa-
tion (ITTO) developed some guidelines17on
the restoration, management, and rehabilita-
tion of degraded and secondary tropical
forests.
The International Union of Forest Research
Organisations (IUFRO) runs a special pro-
gramme on correct usage of technical terms in
forestry called SilvaVoc, available on its Web
site: www.iufro.org/science/special/silvavoc/.
The Nature Conservancy (TNC)18 has identi-
fied some guidance on when and where to re-
store (see Geography of Hope Update, When
and Where to Consider Restoration in Ecore-
gional Planning at www.conserveonline.org).
In 2003, IUCN and WWF published a book,
by David Lamb and Don Gilmour,19 Reha-
bilitation and Restoration of Degraded
Forests, which covers site-based techniques
to restoration (summarised in a paper in this
manual) but also highlights some of the
gaps.
Cambridge Press has produced a Handbook
of Ecological Restoration,20 which is a
two-volume handbook containing a large
amount of material on the diverse aspects of
restoration.
It should also be noted that a number of
state forest services and the U.S. Department
of Agriculture have produced guidelines for
planting trees. However, while these guidelines
may have some applicability for very specific
cases (issues dealing with one or another
specific species), they are of limited value for
restoration within ecoregions or large and bio-
logically and structurally complex areas.
Tools available to address specific elements
of restoration are summarised in other chapters
of this manual.
17 ITTO, 2002.
18 TNC, 2002.
19 Lamb and Gilmour, 2003.
20 Perrow and Davy, 2002.
2. Overview of Forest Restoration Strategies and Terms 13
and Technological Advice. 2003. Land Use,
Land-Use Change and Forestry: Definitions and
Modalities for Including Afforestation and Refor-
estation Activities Under Article 12 of the Kyoto
Protocol. Eighteenth session, Bonn, June 4–13,
2003.
The Nature Conservancy (TNC).2002. Geography of
Hope Update: When and Where to Consider
Restoration in Ecoregional Planning. www.con-
serveonline.org.
United Nations Framework Conference on Climate
Change (UNFCCC) Subsidiary Body for Scientific
Section II
The Challenging Context of Forest
Restoration Today
1. Background and
Explanation of the Issue
1.1. The Need for Assessment and
Likely Impacts of Forest Loss
Assessment of forest condition is an important
precursor to the planning and implementation
of restoration programmes. Restoration is a
process that in the case of forests generally aims
at rebuilding the ecosystem to some earlier or
more desirable stage. There is widespread
recognition of the need for restoration; for
example, in its Programme of Work on Pro-
tected Areas the Convention on Biological
Diversity advises governments to “rehabilitate
and restore habitats and degraded ecosystems,
as appropriate, as a contribution to building
ecological networks,ecological corridors and/or
buffer zones.” Given limited time and resources,
restoration must be strategic, focussing on
forests that have the highest importance to bio-
diversity or to society, and considering the four
goals of conservation biology: representation,
maintenance of evolutionary/ecological proces-
ses, maintenance of species, and conservation
of large habitat blocks. Reasonably fine-scale
analyses are needed to choose specific sites
where restoration might bring the highest ben-
efits. From a conservation perspective, this
means evaluating the impacts of forest loss,
including analysis of biodiversity, authenticity,
and ecological integrity.
Impacts on biodiversity: Complete forest loss
has the clearest impact on biodiversity, with
most forest-dwelling species unable to live in
habitats that replace forests. However, it is
harder to measure the impacts of changes such
as fragmentation and loss of microhabitats.
Management often simplifies forests, reducing
biodiversity and age range; as older and dead
trees disappear, so do many associated species.
Conversely, pioneer or weed species may
increase. Biodiversity monitoring is costly, and
our knowledge of many forest ecosystems is
still incomplete. One concept that has gained
increasing recognition in the last few years is
that of critical thresholds for particular species,
that is,the population level below which further
decline and eventual extirpation or extinction
3
Impact of Forest Loss and
Degradation on Biodiversity
Nigel Dudley
Key Points to Retain
Assessment of current forest condition is a
necessary precursor to restoration.
Ecological assessments should consider
issues related to biodiversity, level of natu-
ralness, and more generally ecological
integrity.
A number of assessment tools exist, for
national, landscape, and site-level assess-
ments. They include: at national scale, fron-
tier forests; at landscape scale, forest quality
assessment; and a number of site-level tools
including High Conservation Value Forest
assessments.
17
18 N. Dudley
is likely, and where these thresholds are known
they can play a key role in monitoring impacts
and planning restoration strategies.
Impacts on authenticity or naturalness: On an
ecosystem scale, measuring impacts on overall
naturalness of forests is easier than surveying
biodiversity and acts as a partial surrogate; gen-
erally the greater the naturalness of a forest, the
more of its original constituent species are likely
to survive. Worldwide forest authenticity is
declining fast. In most West European countries
less than 1 percent of forests are classified by the
United Nations as “undisturbed.21 A growing
proportion of forests in Africa, the Pacific, and
the Amazon have been logged at least once.
Ecological integrity: This concept covers
many of the above issues. It is defined by Parks
Canada as “a condition that is determined to be
characteristic of its natural region and likely to
persist, including abiotic components and the
composition and abundance of native species
and biological communities, rates of change,
and supporting processes.22
Evaluation of options for restoration should
also consider the reasons why forest loss or
degradation have occurred. Many restoration
programmes fail because the pressures that
caused deforestation are not addressed, and
restored forests suffer the same fate as the orig-
inal forests. If population or economic pres-
sures mean that there is insufficient fuelwood,
then planted trees will be burned long before
they have a chance to mature and reach a useful
size. On the other hand, understanding the
nature of the pressures and working with local
communities to plan restoration in ways that
are mutually beneficial increases the chances of
restoration succeeding. Assessment needs to
address several different aspects:
• Impacts of forest loss and degradation on
biodiversity, naturalness, and ecological
integrity;
Some of the key factors causing change;
Changes in biodiversity, naturalness, and
ecological integrity following restoration
interventions.
Whilst the first two can be assessed through
single surveys, assessment of trends implies the
need for a monitoring system.
2. Examples
2.1. New Caledonia
In New Caledonia the overall loss of forests
creates a critical threat to biodiversity and eco-
logical integrity. Today only 2 percent of the
dry forest remains in the island, in scattered
fragments of 300 hectares or less, leading to
extreme threats to the remaining biodiversity.
Over half of the 117 dry forest plant species
assessed by the IUCN Species Survival Com-
mission are threatened, and it is likely that
several have already gone extinct. For example,
the tree Pittosporum tanianum was discovered
in 1988 on Leprédour Island in an area that has
been devastated by introduced rabbits and
deer, declared extinct in 1994,and rediscovered
in 2002.This level of damage suggests an urgent
need for both restoration of forest cover and a
carefully designed series of interventions to
protect and allow the spread of species that
may already be at critically low levels.23
2.2. Western Europe
Changes in management and human distur-
bance have reduced near-natural forests to less
than 1 percent of their original area in most
western European countries, despite an expan-
ding forest estate. In Europe as a whole, almost
nine million hectares are defined as “undis-
turbed by man,” but most of this exists in the
Russian Federation and Scandinavia; Sweden
records 16 percent of its forest as natural,
Finland 5 percent, and Norway 2 percent. In
most of Europe the proportion is usually from
zero to less than 1 percent; for instance, Switzer-
land records 0.6 percent.24 Even in forest-rich
countries like Finland and Sweden, many
forestd-welling species are threatened because
the forests contain only a proportion of the
21 UNECE and FAO, 2000.
22 Parks Canada, undated.
23 Vallauri and Géraux, 2004.
24 UNECE and FAO, 2000.
3. Impact of Forest Loss and Degradation on Biodiversity 19
expected habitats and ecosystem functions.
Here the challenge is less to recover forest area
(although this may sometimes be important)
than to restore natural ecosystem processes and
microhabitats. Specific monitoring criteria are
needed and these have started to be developed,
for instance by the Ministerial Conference on
the Protection of Forests in Europe.25
2.3. Brazilian Atlantic Forests
In the Atlantic forest of Brazil, forest loss
and fragmentation are combining to threaten
endemic species. Although international atten-
tion tends to focus on threats to the Amazon,
the Atlantic forests of Brazil have undergone
far more dramatic losses. The forests have
already been reduced to just 7 percent of their
original size, and the associated threats to bio-
diversity are increased because the remaining
areas are fragmented and the populations are
genetically isolated. The area is home to many
endemic species, including some of the 19 resi-
dent primates and 92 percent of amphibian
species found there.Attention has focussed par-
ticularly on the golden lion tamarins (Leontop-
ithecus rosalia), which now inhabit less than 2
percent of their original range.Their population
is currently around 1000, up from little more
than 200 twenty years ago following a major
conservation effort. However,population is still
believed to be below long-term viability, and
subpopulations are isolated in remaining forest
fragments. Restoration efforts, therefore, focus
particularly in reconnecting the remaining
forest fragments of high biological importance.
2.4. Uganda
In Uganda loss of connectivity is separating
populations of mountain gorillas even in areas
with relatively high forest cover. The world’s
remaining mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei
beringei) live in isolated rain forests in the
mountains on the borders of Uganda, Rwanda,
and the Democratic Republic of Congo, with
half of the world’s known population, 350 indi-
viduals,in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest Reserve
in Uganda. Another major population is in the
Virunga volcanoes area, some of which is in
Mgahinga National Park. Neither of these pop-
ulations is considered large enough to be genet-
ically secure over time, but both reserves are
also thought to be reaching their natural carry-
ing capacity. Linking the two populations is
important for their long-term survival, but the
intervening land has all been converted to agri-
culture, and any restoration efforts will need a
long period of planning and negotiation (infor-
mation from park staff in Bwindi).
Understanding of what has been lost, and
what is at risk of being lost, should be the basis
for any forest restoration that has biodiversity
conservation amongst its aims.This needs to be
augmented with an understanding of what type
or quality of forest is needed to maintain biodi-
versity. If the key issue is connectivity for large
mammals and birds, for example, managed sec-
ondary forests or even plantations or shade-
grown coffee may be suitable. If the threats are
more generally to forest biodiversity, restora-
tion efforts should probably be aimed at creat-
ing a forest as near to natural as possible.
3. Outline of Tools
Detailed biodiversity surveys are expensive and
rely on a high level of expertise. Methodologies
for achieving these have become increasingly
sophisticated, and a number of short cuts have
been developed where time and money are
limited.
3.1. National Level Surveys
National level surveys can help identify the
scale of the problems and the locations of valu-
able remaining forest habitat, which should
usually serve as the starting point for restora-
tion efforts. The U.N. Economic Commission
for Europe and the Food and Agriculture
Organisation asked countries to report on the
proportion of their forest that was “undisturbed
by man,” taken here to mean left without man-
agement interventions for at least 200 years.
This has created a fairly crude but effective
25 Ministerial Conference on the Protection of Forests in
Europe, 2002.
20 N. Dudley
international database for many of the temper-
ate countries, but as yet no similar exercise has
been attempted in the tropics. It also does not
create a very useful way of measuring progress
in restoration. Some individual countries (e.g.,
Austria,France,and the U.K.) have also carried
out detailed surveys of ancient forest.
3.2. High Conservation Value
Forests (HCVF)
This is a WWF/ProForest methodology for iden-
tifying the forests of the highest conservation
and social value in a landscape, drawing on six
different types of HCVF: (1) forest areas con-
taining globally, regionally, or nationally signifi-
cant concentrations of biodiversity values (e.g.,
endemism, endangered species, refugia); (2)
forest areas containing globally, regionally, or
nationally significant large landscape level
forests, where viable populations of most if not
all naturally occurring species exist in natural
patterns of distribution and abundance; (3)
forest areas that are in or contain rare, threat-
ened, or endangered ecosystems;(4) forest areas
that provide basic services of nature in critical
situations; (5) forest areas fundamental to
meeting basic needs of local communities; and
(6) forest areas critical to local communities’ tra-
ditional cultural identity.26 Although designed
initially for site-level assessments, a landscape-
scale methodology is being developed.
3.3. Forest Quality Assessment
WWF and IUCN have developed an approach
to landscape assessment of forest quality using
indicators to map social and ecological values,
including identifying different elements of
naturalness or authenticity, drawing on the
following: composition, pattern, ecological
functioning, process, resilience, and area (also
see “Restoring Quality in Existing Native
Forest Landscapes”). Assessment is based on
a seven-stage process: identification of aims,
selection of the landscape, selection of a toolkit
(relevant indicators), collection of information
about each indicator, assessment, presentation
of results, and incorporation into management.
Information is collected through primary
research, literature review, and interviews. The
extent to which assessment is a participatory
process can change depending on the situation
and aims.27
3.4. Frontier Forest Analysis
Frontier forest analysis is a World Resources
Institute/Global Forest Watch approach28 that
defines frontier forests as free from substantial
anthropogenic fragmentation (settlements,
roads, clearcuts, pipelines, power lines, mines,
etc.); free from detectable human influence for
periods that are long enough to ensure that it
is formed by naturally occurring ecological
processes (including fires, wind, and pest
species); large enough to be resilient to edge
effects and to survive most natural disturbance
events; containing only naturally seeded indige-
nous plant species; and supporting viable pop-
ulations of most native species associated with
the ecosystem.29 It is mainly used at a national
scale.
3.5. Site-Scale Survey Methods
A wide range of survey methods exist including
some that have specifically been developed to
facilitate rapid surveys for conservation practi-
tioners, amongst these are the Rapid Ecologi-
cal Assessment methodology developed by The
Nature Conservancy.30 Increasingly surveys by
outside experts are being augmented by inter-
views and collaboration with local communi-
ties, which often have great understanding of
population levels of key plants and animals;
these sources are usually referred to as tradi-
tional ecological knowledge.
4. Future Needs
Despite expertise in survey methods, there is
still much to be learned about accurate ways
26 Jennings et al, 2003.
27 Dudley et al, in press.
28 Bryant et al, 1997.
29 Smith et al, 2000.
30 Sayre et al, 2002.
3. Impact of Forest Loss and Degradation on Biodiversity 21
of monitoring of both biodiversity and, more
critically, ecological integrity that would allow
proper assessment of restoration outcomes
over time and thus help set realistic goals for
restoration. In general, quick and cost-effective
methods of monitoring the impacts of restora-
tion on biodiversity and ecology are still
required in many ecosystems.
References
Bryant, D., Nielsen, D., and Tangley, L. 1997. The Last
Frontier Forests: Ecosystems and Economies on
the Edge. World Resources Institute,Washington,
DC.
Dudley, N., Schlaepfer, R., Jackson, W., and
Jeanrenaud, J. P. In press. A Manual on Forest
Quality.
ECE and FAO. 2000. Forest Resources of Europe,
CIS, North America, Australia, Japan and New
Zealand. U.N. Regional Economic Commissions
for Europe and the Food and Agriculture Organ-
isation, Geneva and Rome.
Jennings, S., Nussbaum, R., Judd, N., et al. 2003. The
High Conservation Value Toolkit. Proforest,
Oxford (three-part document).
Ministerial Conference on the Protection of Forests
in Europe. 2002. Improved Pan-European Indica-
tors for Sustainable Forest Management: as
adopted by the MCPFE expert level meeting,
October 7–8, 2002,Vienna, Austria.
Parks Canada. Undated. http://www.pc.gc.ca/progs/
np-pn/eco_integ/index_e.asp.
Sayre, R., et al. 2002. Nature in Focus: Rapid Eco-
logical Assessment. The Nature Conservancy and
the Island Press, Covelo and Washington, DC.
Smith, W., et al. 2000. Canada’s Forests at a Cross-
roads: An Assessment in the Year 2000. Global
Forest Watch, World Resources Institute,
Washington, DC. See also the Global Forest
Watch Web site: http://www.globalforestwatch.org.
Vallauri, D., and Géraux,H. 2004. Recréer des forêts
tropicales sèches en Nouvelle Calédonie. WWF
France, Paris.
1. Background and
Explanation of the Issue
For many millions of people forests and forest
products and services supply both direct and
indirect sources of livelihood, providing a major
part of their physical, material, economic, and
spiritual lives31).The World Bank has estimated
that 90 percent of the world’s 1.2 billion poorest
people depend on forests in some way or
another. Forest areas often coincide with areas
of high poverty incidence and livelihood
dependence on forests. They often occur in
remote rural areas with poor infrastructure and
limited access to markets and other basic serv-
ices; the livelihood options in such areas are
highly circumscribed. The challenge facing
many communities is not just the restoration of
trees in their landscape but the growth of a
political and social landscape that facilitates
their ability to make choices to secure their
livelihoods.
In this section we consider the impacts of
forest loss and degradation on human well-
being. At the most simple level the first ques-
tion must be: impact on whom? This is an
important point because degradation and loss
of resources affects people in different ways.To
explore this question we need to unpick the
concept of well-being and then look at the ways
in which forests and people are intertwined.
The major focus of this section, however, is
on those who are most adversely affected by
changes in forest cover and quality—the poor,
and in particular those living in forest areas.The
second question to ask is why deforestation and
degradation happen, since understanding the
4
The Impacts of Degradation and
Forest Loss on Human Well-Being
and Its Social and Political Relevance
for Restoration
Mary Hobley
Key Points to Retain
Poor people rely on forests as a safety net to
avoid or mitigate poverty and sometimes as
a way to lift themselves out of poverty.
It is important to recognise different levels of
poverty and different types of dependence on
forests when trying to understand the likely
social implications of forest restoration.
A series of tools and questions exist that can
help to identify potential benefits from
restoration, although these need to be used
with care to avoid overlooking some of the
poorest members of society.
22
31 Byron and Arnold, 1997.
Forests: “the poor man’s overcoat” (Westoby, 1989).
Forests have an important role to play in alleviating
poverty worldwide in two senses. First, they serve a
vital safety net function, helping rural people avoid
poverty, or helping those who are poor to mitigate
their plight. Second, forests have untapped potential
to actually lift some rural people out of poverty
(Sunderlin et al, 2004).
4. The Impacts of Degradation and Forest Loss on Human Well-Being 23
answers to this question provides answers to
whom it impacts on. As part of this process we
need to set out the major concepts and terms
that support this understanding. These are
deforestation and degradation,well-being,liveli-
hoods,people, and impact.
The drivers of forest loss and degradation are
complex and variable, moving from the
extreme of deforestation for other land uses to
more subtle forms of degradation through
multiple overuse, either happening slowly or
more rapidly depending on the pressures
driving change. Who drives the changes in the
forests and who benefits from them also helps
to determine the impacts.These are not simple
events and do not have simple causal conse-
quences. For example, one person’s loss as a
result of forest degradation may be another
person’s gain if for instance opportunities to
farm land are opened up. Timber companies
benefit from timber extraction but generally
the capture of benefits at the local level is very
weak and the local social and environmental
costs of logging are high.
Following Wunder32 and the U.N. Food and
Agricultural Organisation, deforestation (or
forest loss) is defined as a radical removal of
vegetation to less than 10 percent crown cover.
For local people deforestation can be cata-
strophic, as in the case of large-scale clear-
felling by an outside agency that destroys
resources without offering any alternatives, or
in other cases it can be the planned precursor
to an alternative land use system such as
farming, which in terms of livelihood outcomes
may provide more secure alternatives than that
offered by the forest.
Degradation is taken to mean a loss of forest
structure, productivity, and native species’
diversity.A degraded site may still contain trees
or forest but it will have lost its former ecolog-
ical integrity.33 Degradation is a process of loss
of forest quality that is in practice often part
of the chain of events that eventually leads to
deforestation.
Impact: “Impact concerns the long-term and
sustainable changes introduced by a given
intervention in the lives of beneficiaries.Impact
can be related either to the specific objectives
of an intervention or to unanticipated changes
caused by an intervention; such unanticipated
changes may also occur in the lives of people
not belonging to the beneficiary group. Impact
can be either positive or negative, the latter
being equally important to be aware of.34
Well-being is a concept used to describe all
elements of how individuals experience the
world and their capacities to interact, and
includes the degree of access to material
income or consumption, levels of education and
health, vulnerability and exposure to risk,
opportunity to be heard, and ability to exercise
power, particularly over decisions relating to
securing livelihoods.35 When used in connection
with livelihoods it becomes a powerful concept
for considering the effects of change on all
aspects of the lived experience of an individual.
A useful definition of livelihoods is as
follows: “People’s capacity to generate and
maintain their means of living, enhance their
well-being and that of future generations.These
capacities are contingent upon the availability
and accessibility of options which are ecologi-
cal, economic, and political and which are
predicated on equity, ownership of resources,
and participatory decision making.”36
The individual experience of well-being
varies along a continuum, with ill-being at one
end and well-being at the other, and is not
static; it can vary during an individual’s life
cycle. Those classified as extreme poor often
suffer ill-being, particularly expressed through
high degrees of exposure to vulnerability and
risk, whereas those who can be classified as
improving poor generally experience higher
levels of well-being. It is important to be able
to differentiate among people’s vulnerabilities
in order to understand the differential effects
that forest loss and degradation may have.
One of the most important issues to consider
when looking at the effects of a change in
access to or availability of forest products and
services is a household’s exposure to vulnera-
32 Wunder, 2001.
33 Lamb and Gilmour, 2003: 4.
34 Blankenberg, 1995.
35 World Bank, 2001:15.
36 de Satgé, 2002:4.
24 M. Hobley
bility and risk. It is clear that households and
individuals within households experience dif-
ferent levels of vulnerability and exposure to
risk.This is particularly important in the assess-
ment of the effects of forest quality change, as
it has differential impacts within and between
households.
There are two main ways in which forests
impact on livelihoods and reduce vulnerability:
• as a safety net helping rural people avoid
poverty and helping those who are poor to
mitigate their poverty;
• through their potential to lift some people
out of poverty.
For the sake of understanding the likely
impacts of forest loss or restoration, it is useful
to define people in terms of their vulnerability
and their relationships with forests and forest
products (see Table 4.1 for examples of impacts
of degradation and deforestation on these
different groups):
Extreme poor with very little or no capabil-
ity for social mobilisation
Coping poor with little capability for social
mobilisation
Improving poor with some capability for
social mobilisation
This typology helps to underline the impor-
tance of understanding the social situation of
households and individuals. Attempts to
address restoration in a social context, without
recognising the differences that degrees of
poverty have on people’s relative vulnerability
and opportunities, most often at best ignore
those in extreme poverty and at worst exacer-
bate their condition.
Also important in this context are the differ-
ent relationships that people have with forests
which can usefully be categorised as37:
hunters and gatherers,
shifting cultivators,
• farming communities with inputs from the
forest, and
livelihoods based on commercial forest pro-
duct activities.
Poverty is not a uniform experience for these
four types of forest-related people, and neither
is it possible to say, for example, that all shift-
ing cultivators are extremely poor or that all
farming communities are “improving poor.
This makes it even more difficult to generalise
about the impacts that forest change will have
on individual livelihoods.Within the same com-
munity, dependence on forests and wildlands
will vary, although generally the extremely poor
will be the most dependent on the resources
from natural habitats and the improving poor
will be less dependent. However, those whose
livelihoods are most interlinked with the forest
resource, such as hunter-gatherer groups and
shifting cultivators, are those who are the most
vulnerable to any changes in that resource and
are also the least able to move into other liveli-
hood options.
It should be noted that these are by no means
static categories; they change as the local and
national environment changes. For example,
increasing market penetration has profound
effects on the choices or enforced changes that
people have to make in their livelihood base.
The key point to recognise here is the diversity
of the types of relationships that people have
with forests and therefore the diversity of
impacts that changes in forests and associated
landscapes might have on the livelihoods of
those living in and around them.
1.1. Relationships to the Forest
It is also important to move away from a
broad-brush consideration of communities to
recognition of differences between individual
households and categories of well-being.38
Many people assume that communities have
common interests or, where they are conflict-
ing, that disagreements could be resolved by
working with the different interest groups, but
this is not always the case. This becomes
particularly important when considering the
impacts of changes in forest cover and quality
and how this is experienced by different house-
holds. For some of the most dependent people,
37 Byron and Arnold, 1997. 38 de Satgé, 2002.
4. The Impacts of Degradation and Forest Loss on Human Well-Being 25
Table 4.1. Examples of impacts of deforestation and degradation.
Impacts on people
Process Product Extreme poor Coping poor Improving poor
Deforestation Conversion of forests to Lose access to forest resources Lose access to safety net functions Lose access to safety net functions of
agriculture Will not obtain land for agriculture of forest resources forest resources; may acquire land
as generally do not have the May become labourers for others under clearance as have better
power to acquire the land on converted forest land access to influence local decision
May be labourers for others but making
generally too marginalised
Degradation Foods: variety to diets, Diminishing access to foods, fuels, The importance of this range of With a more diverse livelihood
palatability, meet and medicines make their products to the coping poor is portfolio with more assets and
seasonal dietary livelihoods even more insecure two fold: (1) as a safety net, and opportunities for diversifying, this
shortfalls, snack food, and more vulnerable to hazards; (2) as an income earner group is not so vulnerable to
emergency foods in areas of high forest cover this to contributing household changes in forest condition; it is
during flood, famine, group in particular is highly forest economies; for women, these more able to access alternatives
war, etc. resource dependent and most are often the only source of to the forest products; nonetheless,
Fuels: firewood, charcoal particularly affected by changes income that they are allowed its need for the safety net functions
growing importance in access or reduction in quality to access and so although a of the forest remains, and without
for urban as well as of forest; this range of products small proportion of overall it these households could become
rural energy needs needs little or no capital household income, they are more vulnerable and less resilient
Medicines: range of investment and is therefore of high gender significance to shocks
traditional plant more readily accessible to the
medicines essential to extreme poor
those in remote rural
areas distant from
other medical services
Timber Reduced access to timber usually This group, as for the extreme poor, With greater ability to take risk
has little impact on this group is unlikely to benefit in any direct and invest in some relatively
because they have little power way from the economic benefits low-cost technology such as
to control access to high value of timber harvesting; although chain saws, this group can
resources; benefits of timber because of their better social access some limited benefits
are mostly captured by the networks and levels of well-being from timber harvesting; being
elites often in urban centres they may have more opportunity better socially networked, this
to be labourers for timber group is more likely to be
contractors engaged as timber harvesters
Environmental services Across all groups the environmental functions of forests are important for maintaining water supplies, inputs to
agricultural productivity through improving soil fertility, and providing the range of biodiversity necessary
to maintain a robust local ecosystem
Degradation of environmental services is again most acutely felt by those For this group their more diverse
who have no other options portfolio and higher levels of risk-
taking capacity means that they are
more resilient to minor changes in
environmental services.
Adapted from work by Brocklesby (2004) and Hobley (2004) differentiating between forms of poverty dependent on vulnerability and capability to have a voice.
26 M. Hobley
forest change can be devastating, whereas
for others with a broader livelihood portfolio
that includes only limited dependence on the
forests,changes in forest quality and extent may
only have relatively minor effects.In such cases,
responses to forest restoration will also be
different between individual households in a
community. The importance of a broad-based
and carefully structured participatory process,
linked to social mobilisation and including
attempts to build the capacity of different
social groups to have a voice, cannot be
underestimated.
For some of the poorest rural peoples there
is extreme forest dependence, but for others
who are not so poor (the “coping” poor), the
use of forests is indirect and more often is a
means of poverty prevention, providing impor-
tant seasonal safety nets.This latter role is often
transitory as poor people build other assets to
move out of poverty. It is rarely the case that
forests themselves are the means to poverty
reduction. However, what happens to the
forests, their products and services, does have a
profound impact on people’s livelihoods, par-
ticularly when this is linked with the effects on
other land uses such as grazing and agriculture.
Risk and uncertainty are universal charac-
teristics of life in rural areas. Sources of risk
include natural hazards like drought and flood,
commodity price fluctuations,illness and death,
changing social relationships, unstable govern-
ments, and armed conflicts. Some risky events
like drought or flood simultaneously affect
many households in a community or region.
Other risky events,like illnesses,are household-
specific and again have differential effects
depending on the overall robustness of a par-
ticular household and its livelihood strategies.
Catastrophic forest loss, for example through
fire or clear-felling, thus affects whole commu-
nities, but the intensity of the effects are not
necessarily uniform.
It is not only total forest loss that leads to
negative impacts on well-being. For example,
loss of particular nontimber forest products
(NTFPs) from a surviving forest can be equally
catastrophic to those households who have
based their livelihoods around the use and sale
of these products. Changes in market condi-
tions, including in particular the recognition of
the value of an NTFP on national and interna-
tional markets, can disadvantage the very poor
as the elites seize control of valuable natural
resources and dominate market access.
1.2. Implications of Differential
Social Impacts for Forest
Restoration
1.2.1. Guiding Questions for
Restoration
Forests can affect livelihoods in two principal
ways that must be considered when any land-
scape restoration is under consideration39:
Poverty avoidance or mitigation, that is,
where forest resources serve a safety net
function, or as a gap filler, including as a
source of petty cash
Poverty elimination, that is, where forest
resources help lift a household out of poverty
by functioning as a source of savings, invest-
ment, accumulation, asset building, and
permanent increases in wealth and income
When restoration is planned to ameliorate
the impacts of forest changes on the well-being
of target groups a set of questions can help to
guide responses as to the nature and extent of
restoration required.40 The usefulness of such
questions depends to a large extent on the way
in which they are asked. It is important to use
participatory processes that lead to people
being able to influence decisions about land use
and control the outcomes of these decisions,but
processes must also allow space for the voices
of the extreme poor to be heard as well as those
of the more articulate and much less vulnera-
ble poor and wealthier groups:
What is the frequency or timing of use of forest
products and the extent to which a house-
hold’s labour is allocated to these activities?
What is the role of forest products in household
livelihood systems? What is their importance
as a share of household inputs, and in
39 Sunderlin et al, 2004:1.
40 Byron and Arnold, 1997.
4. The Impacts of Degradation and Forest Loss on Human Well-Being 27
meeting household livelihood strategy
objectives?
What is the impact of reduced access to forests?
Does the forest serve as a (critical) economic
and ecological buffer for its users, or are
there alternatives, such as trees outside
forests or non–forest/tree sources of needed
inputs and income?
What is the likely future importance of forest
products? Do users face a growing or declin-
ing demand for forest products,or the poten-
tial for expanded or decreased involvement
in production and trade in forest products?
2. Examples
Undoubtedly forest degradation and loss has
major livelihood and well-being impacts for
many people, from those with secure liveli-
hoods to the extreme poor. It is therefore
particularly important to understand the
differential effects of forest change and the
implications for livelihoods and livelihood
options.
Byron and Arnold41 provide a useful cate-
gorisation that aids this understanding and
directs practical intervention. Clearly there is
no general solution that can be applied across
all situations. Any support to forest landscape
restoration must be based on a careful assess-
ment that “covers the range of the relationships
between the people and the forests which they
use and/or manage, the current limitations to
their livelihoods, and the potentials and desires
for change. They outline five generalised (and
potentially overlapping) situations:
1. Forests continue to be central to livelihood
systems. Local people are or should be the prin-
cipal stakeholders in these forest areas.Meeting
their needs is likely to be the principal objec-
tive of forest management and restoration, and
this should be reflected in control and tenure
arrangements (also see “Land Ownership and
Forest Restoration”).
2. Forest products play an important supple-
mentary and safety net role. Users need security
of access to the resources from which they
source these products, but are often not the
only users in that forest area. Forest manage-
ment and control is likely to be best based on
resource-sharing arrangements among several
stakeholder groups. Successful restoration
activities need to recognise and be planned
with respect to these roles.Examples across the
world include joint forest management in India
and collaborative management in Ghana,
where the state and local forest users share
both in management decisions and in the ben-
efits of forest products, which provide incen-
tives to both partners to manage the forests for
a range of benefits.However, in many cases the
state is still reluctant to allow these agreements
to cover high value forests, retaining control
and access to the benefits and restricting local
access to the forests and its products.42 Com-
munity forestry in the hills of Nepal is widely
cited as a successful example of transfer of
control of management and benefits to local
communities; again, however, the government
has demonstrated its reluctance to extend man-
agement authority to the high value forests of
the lowlands.
3. Forest products play an important role but
are more effectively supplied from nonforest
sources. Management of a proportion of the
forests needs to be geared towards agro-forest
structures, and control and tenure need to be
consistent with the individual rather than the
collective forms of governance that this shift is
likely to require. Examples of these situations
abound: PASOLAC (Programa para la Agri-
cultura Sostenible en las Laderas de América
Central) in Central America has been working
with communities living in areas of high envi-
ronmental degradation and insecurity to reduce
their vulnerability to extreme natural events.
This programme supports farmers to identify
their own training requirements, provides
financial and in-kind compensation for the
management and maintenance of natural
resources and their services and works to
develop the integration of farmers and forest
products into local markets. This integrated
41 Byron and Arnold, 1997. 42 Arnold, 2001; Molnar et al, 2004.
28 M. Hobley
approach “combining improvements in human
and social capital with advances in locally
adapted resource management techniques and
the creation of financial instruments”43 is an
important combination and an interesting pro-
gression away from approaches that have gen-
erally limited their support to more technically
based interventions.
4. Participants need help in exploiting oppor-
tunities to increase the benefits they obtain from
forest product activities. Constraints in the way
of smallholders’ access to markets need to be
removed. Improved access to credit,skills, mar-
keting services etc., may be required. A good
example of the increasing experience with this
type of support is provided by the PROCY-
MAF project (Proyecto de Conservación y
Manejo Sostenible de Recursos Forestales) in
Mexico. It has focussed on strengthening pro-
ducer organisations and overcoming value
chain “gaps.44 This support is packaged with
the supply of business services, which develop
the skills of producer organisation leaders and
members.A range of other programmes across
the world are focussing on the better harvest-
ing and marketing of a wide variety of NTFPs
through understanding value chains and devel-
oping producer skills at entering markets in a
more informed and secure environment.
5. Participants need help in moving out of
dead-end forest product activities.An important
example of this is firewood collection for sale
in the market, often conducted by women who
say they would rather be employed in other
easier activities that are not so physically
burdensome and poorly paid. It is often an
activity of last resort and does not lead to
opportunity to move out of these poverty con-
fining conditions.
3. Outline of Tools
Baseline assessment: To build understanding of
people’s livelihoods and well-being, exposure
to risk, and vulnerability, there are a range of
tools that have been gathered under the
umbrella of livelihoods analysis. These include
survey methodologies and participatory
appraisal approaches and are discussed in
other chapters in this book. A useful guide to
the range of tools and their applications can be
found on Web sites including www.liveli-
hoods.org. With this baseline assessment, it is
then possible to begin to work with local people
to identify different approaches to support
their relationships with forests and forest prod-
ucts. It can be used as the basis for implemen-
tation and for later evaluation to assess the
degree of change in exposure to risk and reduc-
tion in vulnerability as a result of livelihood
interventions.
Tools for engagement: Voice, as has
already been discussed, is an essential
element of changing relationships and shifting
power. Building poor people’s capabilities
to be able to influence decisions and policy
is a key part of any restoration effort.
Participatory tools and social mobilisation
approaches are all used to build people’s capa-
bilities, but often voice is most strongly devel-
oped as poor people’s livelihoods become more
secure.
Community-based cost-benefit analysis:
For communities, changing their use of
forests and forest lands depends very much
on individual and collective cost-benefit
analyses. Communities are likely to be pre-
pared to manage forests only if they offer
greater benefit than under other uses of
the land on which the forests grow. Such
analyses are an essential part of any landscape
restoration initiative because unless these
costs and benefits are understood and factored
into the process, initiatives will fail where
perceived costs of maintaining the forest
outweigh the tentative benefits. This is where
ecosystem service payment schemes become an
important part of the analysis and where it will
be important to change local incentives and
attitudes toward forests.45 Additionally, focus
on market access is critical where poor access
and low values for forest products act as major
barriers and disincentives.
43 IISD et al, 2003.
44 Scherr et al, 2003. 45 Arnold, 2001.
4. The Impacts of Degradation and Forest Loss on Human Well-Being 29
Facilitating access to green markets: Providing
mechanisms and funds that allow local people
to access markets for ecosystem services such
as watershed protection, biodiversity pro-
tection, etc., is another important element of
changing the relationship between people’s
livelihoods and the forest resource. Forest cer-
tification can also be used to help forest man-
agers to access higher value markets.There are
some successful experiences with community-
based certification in Latin America,46 although
the certification costs are often very high for
small community groups and much more still
needs to be done to provide standards that
facilitate access of community managed natural
timber into the green markets.
Securing tenure and management rights:
Clearly tenure or at least long-term manage-
ment rights are important elements in any
forest restoration effort. There are now many
models of communities that own forests with
evidence of the incentives this creates for wise
management. Tenure is often highly contested
and requires careful work with governments to
build an environment in which it is possible to
shift tenure patterns.Often this requires signifi-
cant evidence that changing tenure arrange-
ments does lead to fundamental environmental
and social benefits.
4. Future Needs
In any process of restoration, and perhaps par-
ticularly restoration projects driven by conser-
vation concerns, some key messages need to be
incorporated into the planning and implemen-
tation of any programme:
Recognition of the differential importance of
forests, products, and services on different
people and therefore the differential impacts
of changes in forest quality and extent;
Recognition of the role of forests in poverty
prevention as well as poverty reduction;
The need to involve people in the decision-
making process to build voice and capacity to
articulate voice in an institutional and politi-
cal environment that is able to respond to
these voices;
Recognition of the need to support the build-
ing of livelihoods that reduce people’s expo-
sure to risk and remove vulnerabilities;
Recognition that forests alone do not neces-
sarily move people out of poverty but actu-
ally can secure them in poverty;
• Support to decentralised service provision
that can be socially responsive and tailored
to particular ecological and economic
conditions47;
Impacts of restoration also need to be
carefully considered. Just as the impacts of
degradation are not equally felt across liveli-
hood groups, it is the case with restoration.
Restoration of forest cover for some may
have negative livelihood implications. Often
the beneficiaries of restoration are not those
living locally to the forest but are down-
stream users of services, therefore, the distri-
bution of costs and benefits of restoration
need to be carefully considered.
References
Arnold, M. 2001. 25 Years of Community Forestry.
FAO, Rome.
Blankenberg, F. 1995. Methods of Impact Assess-
ment Research Programme, Resource Pack
and Discussion. Oxfam UK/I and Novib, the
Hague.
Brocklesby, M.A. 2004. Planning against risk: tools
for analysing vulnerability in remote rural areas.
Chars Organisational Learning Paper 2, DFID,
London, www.livelihoods.org.
Byron, N., and Arnold, M.1997. What futures for the
people of the tropical forests? CIFOR working
paper No 19. CIFOR, Bogor, www.cifor.cgiar.org.
de Satgé, R. 2002. Learning about livelihoods:
insights from Southern Africa. Periperi Publica-
tions,South Africa and Oxfam Publishing,Oxford.
Hobley, M. 2004. The Voice-responsiveness frame-
work: creating political space for the extreme
poor. Chars Organisational Learning Paper 3,
DFID, London, www.livelihoods.org.
IISD, SEI, IUCN, and Intercooperation. 2003.
Livelihoods and climate change: increasing the
46 Molnar et al, 2004. 47 Ribot, 2002.
30 M. Hobley
resilience of tropical hillside communities through
forest landscape restoration. Information Paper 2
IUCN and SDC, www.iucn.org/themes/ceesp/
index.html.
Lamb, D., and Gilmour, D. 2003. Rehabilitation and
Restoration of Degraded Forests. IUCN and
WWF, Gland Switzerland and Cambridge, UK.
Molnar, A., Scherr, S.J., and Khare, A. 2004. Who
conserves the world’s forests? Community-driven
strategies to protect forests and respect rights.
Forest Trends, and Ecoagriculture Partners,
Washington, DC, www.forest-trends.org.
Ribot, J.C. 2002. Democratic Decentralisation of
Natural Resources: Institutionalising Popular Par-
ticipation. World Resources Institute,Washington,
DC.
Scherr, S.J., White, A., and Kaimowitz, D. 2003.
Making markets work for forest communities.
International Forestry Review 5(1):67–73.
Sunderlin, W.D., Angelsen, A., and Wunder, S. 2004.
Forests and poverty alleviation. CIFOR, Bogor,
www.cifor.cgiar.org.
Westoby, J. 1989. Introduction to World Forestry.
Basil Blackwell, Oxford.
World Bank. 2001. World Development Report
2000–2001. World Bank, Washington.
Wunder, S. 2001. Poverty alleviation and tropical
forests—what scope for synergies? World Devel-
opment 29(11):1817–1833.
Additional Reading
Forestry Research Programme (FRP). 2004. Com-
munity forestry gets the credit. Forestry Research
Programme Research Summary 006, FRP,
Kent.
1. Background and
Explanation of the Issue
Climate change is arguably the greatest con-
temporary threat to biodiversity. It is already
affecting ecosystems of all kinds and these
impacts are expected to become more drama-
tic as the climate continues to change due to
anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions into
the atmosphere, mostly from fossil fuel com-
bustion. While restoration is made more diffi-
cult by climate change,it can conversely be seen
as a possible adaptive management approach
for enhancing the resilience of ecosystems to
these changes.
Climate change will result in added physical
and biological stresses to forest ecosystems,
including drought, heat, increased evapotran-
spiration, altered seasonality of hydrology,
pests,disease,and competition; the strength and
type of effect will depend on the location. Such
stresses will compound existing nonclimatic
threats to forest biodiversity, including overhar-
vesting, invasive species, pollution, and land con-
version. This will result in forest ecosystems
changing in composition and location. There-
fore, in order to increase the potential for
success, it will be necessary to consider these
changes when designing restoration projects.
On the other hand, restoration projects can
also be viewed as a key aspect of enhancing
ecosystem resilience to climate change. Human
development has resulted in habitat loss, frag-
mentation, and degradation. A first step in
increasing resilience to the effects of climate
change is enhancing or protecting the ecosys-
tem’s natural ability to respond to stress and
change. Research suggests that this is best
achieved with “healthy” and intact systems as a
starting point, which can draw on their own
internal diversity to have natural adaptation or
acclimation potential,48 and therefore greater
resilience. Any restoration activities that
enhance the ecological health of a system can
5
Restoring Forest Landscapes in the
Face of Climate Change
Jennifer Biringer and Lara J. Hansen
Key Points to Retain
Climate change increases the need for
restoration, both to help forest systems to
manage existing changes and to buffer them
against likely changes in the future by
increasing areas of natural, healthy forest
systems.
Care needs to be taken to avoid oversim-
plistic reliance on forests for carbon seques-
tration, and attempts at restoration to
increase carbon storage must be assessed
carefully to judge their true worth.
Tools such as vulnerability analyses can help
to design effective restoration strategies,
which are likely to include reduction of
fragmentation, increasing connectivity,
development of effective buffer zones, and
maintenance of genetic diversity.
31
48 Kumaraguru and Beamish, 1981; McLusky et al, 1986.
32 J. Biringer and L.J. Hansen
thus be seen as creating or increasing the poten-
tial buffering capacity against negative impacts
of climate change. It should be mentioned that
there are obvious limits to the rate and extent
of change that even a robust system can toler-
ate. As a result it is only prudent to conduct
restoration for enhancing resilience in tandem
with efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emis-
sions, the root cause of climate change.
For many with a forestry background,carbon
dioxide sequestration might seem a concomi-
tant advantage to restoration projects, which
can aid in reduction of atmospheric concentra-
tions of greenhouse gases.While forests do hold
carbon, and their loss does release carbon,their
long-term capacity to act as a reliable sink in
the face of climate change, especially for effec-
tive mitigation, is not a foolproof strategy (for
more on carbon sequestration projects, see
“Carbon Knowledge Projects and Forest Land-
scape Restoration”). Where restoration is pro-
moted with a focus on capturing carbon, an
analysis of climate change impacts should be
integrated into project planning to determine
whether there really are net sequestration
benefits. Increased incidence of forest fires
as a result of warming and drying trends, for
example, could outweigh any efforts to reduce
carbon emissions. Case studies of successful
resilience-building efforts are not yet plentiful,
due to relatively recent revelations about
the scale and impact that climate change will
have on ecosystems. However, the global tem-
perature has risen 0.7°C as atmospheric con-
centrations have risen49 and extinctions and
large-scale ecosystem changes are expected. A
number of forest types are already being nega-
tively impacted, including tropical montane
cloud forests, dry forests, and forests in the
boreal zone,and climate-related extinctions are
already thought to have occurred, for example
amongst amphibians. Along the coasts, the
rising sea level is increasing the vulnerability of
mangroves. Restoration as a means to ensure
healthy ecosystem structure and function will
have a large part to play in adapting ecosystems
to these broad-scale changes. See Box 5.1 for
more in-depth exploration of these topics.
2. Example: Mangrove
Restoration as an Adaptive
Management Strategy
Mangroves provide a concrete example of how
restoration can be used as a tool to help
enhance resistance and resilience to climate
change. Mangroves are clearly vulnerable to
rising sea levels, which will change sediment
dynamics, cause erosion, and change salinity
levels. The rate of sediment buildup, which is
the backbone of mangrove survival, is expected
to take place at only half the pace of sea-level
rise in many places, and mangrove survival will
therefore require active restoration. Another
aspect of mangroves that makes them an ideal
testing ground for restoration is their relative
ecological simplicity. Furthermore, the relation-
ship between human and ecological vulner-
ability to climate change is relatively clear.
Low-lying coastal areas, particularly those in
tropical Africa, South Asia, and the South
Pacific, are predicted to experience among the
most severe consequences of global climate
change.50 As these are among the most popu-
lous areas across the globe, the livelihoods
of many coastal communities that depend on
mangrove resources for wood and shrimp
farming, will be increasingly tied to their vul-
nerability to climate change.
Mangrove restoration can do much to limit
or delay the negative effects of climate change
on associated human and natural communities.
Mangroves play an integral role in coastal
ecosystems as the interface among terrestrial,
freshwater, and marine systems. They are exten-
sively developed on sedimentary shorelines
such as deltas, where sediment supply deter-
mines their ability to keep up with sea-level
rise. They afford protection from dynamic
marine processes to both terrestrial and estu-
arine systems, preventing erosion and chaotic
mixing. They also act locally to filter water.
Mangrove forests protect sea grass beds and
coral reefs from deposition of suspended
matter that is transported seaward by rivers and
49 Hansen et al, 2003. 50 IPCC, 2001.
5. Restoring Forest Landscapes in the Face of Climate Change 33
Box 5.1. Framework for Understanding Intersection of Resilience-Building and Forest
Restoration and Protection
1. Protection: For some forests protection
alone will not increase resilience to climate
change.Many tropical montane cloud forests
provide a case in point. Australia’s Wet
Tropics World Heritage Area is expected to
experience a 50% reduction in habitat with
warming of 1 degree Celsius,which will leave
amphibians and other cool-adapted species
no upland migration options as conditions
become warmer and drier.
2. Sequestration via restoration: Many
examples exist where the planting of trees
stores carbon but is not coordinated with
conservation or resilience-raising advan-
tages. Nonnative trees, such as Eucalyptus,
are often planted solely for the carbon
benefit, though the planting may cause
degradation of the landscape, and thus not
provide a buffer against climate change.
3. Resilience/adaptation: Restoration is
but one of the many types of management
options that increase resilience.For example,
actions that respond to changing dynamics
such as insect infestations and changing fire
patterns are aspects of good forestry that will
receive special attention with the advent of
climate change. Activities that increase the
efficiency of resource use will also increase
resilience. In Cameroon, mangroves are
being aided by increasing the efficiency of
wood-burning stoves so that 75 percent less
mangrove wood is needed for cooking,
thereby increasing the resilience of the
system by reducing harvest levels. Such
actions decrease degradation of the man-
grove and raise the probability that it will be
equipped to respond to the effects of climate
change.
4. Sequestration and resilience/adapta-
tion: Restoration and resilience go hand in
hand when the impacts of climate change
are taken into account in project planning.
Whether passive or active restoration, activ-
ities target those areas that will be more suit-
able to climate change,and encourage use of
species that will be hardier under new cli-
matic conditions (successful seed dispersers,
for example).
5. Intersection of protection, sequestra-
tion, and resilience/adaptation: Creating
buffer zones through restoration can
increase the resilience of protected areas to
the impacts of climate change while at the
same time sequestering carbon. This sce-
nario is similar to the one above, except that
restoration is focussed on increasing the
resilience of protected areas by expanding
boundaries to increase suitable habitat
under changing climatic conditions.
6. Protection and adaptation: Protection
can lead to increased resilience to the
impacts of climate change, where suitable
habitat is intact, and the expansion of bound-
aries is possible to accommodate species’
needs with a changing climate. A successful
protected area system includes identification
and conservation of mature forest stands,
functional groups and keystone species, and
climate refugia.
34 J. Biringer and L.J. Hansen
provide nursery habitat for many fish species.
Deteriorating water quality and coastal degra-
dation are anticipated to be magnified by
climate change. Globally, however, many man-
grove systems have already been degraded and
destroyed. Loss of these buffering systems pre-
cludes any protection they might afford. This
has been recognised for some time, and many
individual projects have attempted to rebuild
mangrove systems. However, in the past, the
emphasis of mangrove restoration projects has
been on planting trees, and this has led to poor
survival rates, such as in West Bengal, India,
where survival rates in some projects were
reported as low as less than 2 percent.51
New approaches are therefore required. In
addition, simply restoring a mangrove where it
has been degraded will not necessarily be
enough in the face of climate change. Restora-
tion in an environment where the climate is
rapidly changing will require taking into
account a few additional elements as opposed
to restoration in a stable context. Before start-
ing a restoration programme, two additional
steps are required: (1) assess the cause of man-
grove loss and evaluate how to remove those
causes if possible; and (2) take into account the
added complexity relating to how climate
change will affect the system: in this case pri-
marily through sea-level rise.
A large-scale mangrove restoration effort in
Vietnam has demonstrated that this approach
to mangrove management can benefit local
resource users and enhance protection from
storm surge and sea-level rise.52 The restoration
project in this region has planted more than
18,000 hectares of mangrove along 100 kilome-
tres of coastline. In addition to creating a more
stable coastline capable of surviving chang-
ing marine conditions, harvestable marine re-
sources are also increasing in number.
Understanding the hydrology (both fre-
quency and duration of tidal flooding) is the
single most important factor in designing suc-
cessful mangrove restoration projects.53 Incor-
porating projections of sea-level rise into
project design will be necessary so that man-
groves are planted or are allowed to colonise
naturally or regenerate (this takes 15 to 30
years where stresses leading to degradation are
no longer present) in areas that will be more
hospitable in the future. If the shoreline is
moving, for instance, mangroves may need to
be restored some distance from their original
location.
3. Outline of Tools
This section offers a framework for integrating
knowledge about climate change to forest man-
agers who are considering restoration. It is
based on an understanding of how adaptation
(in this case to climate change) needs to be inte-
grated with both restoration and protection, as
outlined in Box 5.1 above.
3.1 Vulnerability Analysis
To understand how climate change will affect
an existing forest system, an analysis of the vul-
nerability of the defined area can be under-
taken.As a first stop, climate change impacts on
the major forest types are presented in WWF’s
Buying Time: A User’s Manual for Building
Resistance and Resilience to Climate Change in
Natural Systems,54 with examples from many
different regions collected from the literature.
For more specific information on a particular
site, a literature search may identify whether a
vulnerability analysis has been made of the
project area in question.
If limited information on climate change
impacts exists for the selected site, a vulnera-
bility analysis can be commissioned to feed into
project design activities. An expert conversant
in climate change science as well as biological
science for the region can piece together a
picture of regional vulnerability that will help
to guide project activities so that they can take
account of likely alterations in environmental
conditions as the climate changes. At a large
51 Sanyal, 1998.
52 Tri et al, 1998.
53 Lewis and Streever, 2000. 54 Hansen et al, 2003 (available on www.panda.org).
5. Restoring Forest Landscapes in the Face of Climate Change 35
scale, major shifts in biome types can be pro-
jected by combining biogeography models such
as the Holdridge Life Zone Classification
Model with general circulation models (GCMs)
that project changes under a doubled CO2sce-
nario. Biogeochemistry models simulate the
gain, loss, and internal cycling of carbon, nutri-
ents, and water-impact of changes in tempera-
ture, precipitation, soil moisture, and other
climatic factors that give clues to ecosys-
tem productivity. Dynamic global vegetation
models integrate biogeochemical processes
with dynamic changes in vegetation composi-
tion and distribution. Studies on particular
species comparing present trends with paleo-
ecological data also provide indications for how
species will adapt to climate change.55
A vulnerability analysis can help to assess
what systems or aspects of the systems have
greater resilience and resistance to climate
change impacts. This type of information can
help to identify sites that have greater long-
term potential as ecosystem “refugia” from
climate change impacts. Some refugia exist due
to their unique situational characteristics, but
their resilience could be enhanced by manage-
ment and restoration.
3.2 Restoration as a Resilience/
Adaptation Strategy
After completing a vulnerability analysis to
determine how a forest system may be im-
pacted by changing climatic conditions,the next
step is to look at the range of adaptation
options available in order to promote resi-
lience. An effective vulnerability analysis will
determine which components of the system—
species or functions, for example—will be most
vulnerable to change, together with considera-
tion of which parts of the system are crucial for
ecosystem health.An array of options pertinent
to adapting forests to climate change are avail-
able, both to apply to forest communities at
high risk from climate change impacts as well
as for those whose protection should be priori-
tised given existing resilience. Long-term
resilience of species will be enabled where
natural adaptation processes such as migration,
selection, and change in structure are allowed
to take place due to sufficient connectivity and
habitat size within the landscape.
Restoration can provide a series of critical
interventions to reduce climate change im-
pacts.56 Basic tenets of restoration for adapta-
tion include working on a larger scale to
increase the amount of available options for
ecosystems, inclusion of corridors for connec-
tivity between sites, inclusion of buffers, and
provision of heterogeneity within the restora-
tion approach. Key approaches are as follows:
Reduce fragmentation and provide connectivity:
Noss57 provides an overview of the negative
effects of ecosystem fragmentation, which
are abundantly documented worldwide.
“Edge effects” threaten the microclimate and
stability of a forest as the ratio of edge to
interior habitat increases. Eventually, the
ability of a forest to withstand debilitating
impacts is broken. Fragmentation of forest
ecosystems also contributes to a loss of bio-
diversity as exotic, weedy species with high
dispersal capacities are favoured and many
native species are inhibited by isolation.
Restoration strategies should therefore often
focus first on those areas where intervention
can connect existing forest fragments into a
more coherent whole.
Provide buffer zones and flexibility of land uses:
The fixed boundaries of protected areas are
not well suited to a dynamic environment
unless individual areas are extremely large.
With changing climate, buffer zones might
provide suitable conditions for species if con-
ditions inside reserves become unsuitable.58
Buffer zones increase the patch size of the
interior of the protected area and overlap-
ping buffers provide migratory possibili-
ties for some species.59 Buffer zones should
ideally be large, and managers of protected
areas and surrounding lands must demon-
strate considerable flexibility by adjusting
55 Hansen et al, 2001.
56 Biringer, 2003; Noss, 2001.
57 Noss, 2000.
58 Noss, 2000.
59 Sekula, 2000.
36 J. Biringer and L.J. Hansen
land management activities across the land-
scape in response to changing habitat suit-
ability. A specific case for a buffer zone
surrounding tropical montane cloud forests
can be made based on research that shows
that the upwind effects to deforestation of
lowland forests causes the cloud base to
rise.60 Restoring forest around protected
areas, for example to supply timber through
continuous cover forestry, or for nontimber
forest products, watershed protection, or as
recreational areas, could help maintain the
quality of the protected area in the face of
climate change.
Maintain genetic diversity and promote ecosys-
tem health via restoration: Adaptation to
climate change via selection of resilient spe-
cies depends on genetic variation. Efforts to
maintain genetic diversity should be applied,
particularly in degraded landscapes or within
populations of commercially important trees
(where genetic diversity is often low due to
selective harvesting). In such places where
genetic diversity has been reduced, restora-
tion, especially using seed sources from lower
elevations or latitudes,can play a vital role in
maintaining ecosystem resilience.61 Hogg and
Schwarz62 suggest that assisted regeneration
could be used in southern boreal forests in
Canada where drier conditions may decrease
natural regeneration of conifer species. Sim-
ilarly, genotypes of beach pine forests in
British Columbia may need assistance in
redistributing across the landscape in order
to maintain long-term productivity.63 In addi-
tion, species that are known to be more
resilient to impacts in a given landscape can
be specifically selected for replanting. For
example,trees with thick bark can be planted
in areas prone to fire to increase tree survival
during increased frequency and severity of
fires.64
4. Future Needs
Documentation of the role restoration plays in
building resilience to climate change is in its
infancy. Although field projects are beginning
to test restoration as a resilience-building tool,
we are far from definitive guidance. Unfortu-
nately, this is the nature of the practice of con-
servation; decisions based on best knowledge
need to be made now while we continue to
gather more information. Otherwise, opportu-
nities will be lost.
To meet these needs we propose additional
field projects to test, confirm, and develop
restoration’s role in building resilience to
climate change. This needs to be conducted
across different forest types with as much repli-
cation as possible. A strong monitoring com-
ponent is necessary for any such project,
especially given the complex relationships
between species’ structure, composition, and
functioning on which climate change is unfold-
ing. The results of monitoring will also enable
lessons to be drawn from resilience-building
efforts, and to compare these with similar
“control” landscapes or other resilience-
building projects in different regions with
similar habitat type.
Ideally, resilience-building management
strategies will serve as another layer in a com-
prehensive forest management plan that has as
its objective the overall health of the forest
ecosystem. For example, many WWF eco-
regional visions are adding vulnerability to
climate change as another component that
will drive conservation decisions. Such antici-
patory resilience-building plans take climate
change into account during the planning
process, and will better ensure synergies with
other management priorities. A number of sci-
entific, governmental institutions and non-
governmental organisations (NGO) are
acquiring expertise in the area of climate
change impacts and adaptation/resilience. It
will be fruitful to seek partnerships with these
institutions at the beginning of any restoration
project to analyse climate impacts and pro-
posed restoration activities.
60 Lawton et al, 2001.
61 Noss, 2000.
62 Hogg and Schwarz, 1997.
63 Rehfeldt et al, 1999.
64 Dale et al, 2001.
5. Restoring Forest Landscapes in the Face of Climate Change 37
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Additional Reading
Krankina, O., Dixon,R., Kirilenko,A., and Kobak, K.
1997. Global climate change adaptation: examples
from Russian boreal forests. Climatic Change
36(1–2):197–215.
Section III
Forest Restoration in Modern
Broad-Scale Conservation
1. Background and
Explanation of the Issue
Most people are aware of the global reduction
in forest cover as a result of ever-increasing
human domination of the planet. The impacts
are felt on biodiversity and on people as shown
in the previous chapters of this book.A natural
reaction to this forest loss is to engage in forest
restoration activities.
Across the planet, conservationists are
working to increase overall forest coverage
using a variety of strategies. In some cases this
includes attempting to intensify agriculture
so that it requires less land, focussing on value
over volume in wood products, and concentrat-
ing production in (native) plantation forests.
Another strategy is to de-intensify agricultural
uses and promote a mosaic of natural and
anthropogenic elements, allowing native
species and communities to fill in around our
use of the landscape, and provide necessary
ecosystem services to operate more freely.
In any case, the competition for land among
a range of interests and stakeholders necessi-
tates that all forest conservation activities,
including forest restoration, be strategic and for
a specific purpose(s), be it conservation or oth-
erwise. This strategic focus should ideally be
identified through a participatory process that
leads to a long-term “vision” for the desired
future state of the area. Increasing the quality
and quantity of forest cover is an important
general goal for conservation, both for ecosys-
tem services (watershed protection, climate
regulation, etc.) and for the needs of those
species that depend on forests. However, due
to the intense competition for land between
the forces of development and conservation,
efficiency in how and where forest restora-
tion occurs is critical. In other words, while
increased tree cover will nearly always be ben-
eficial from a conservation perspective, if pos-
sible, restoration efforts should be focussed in
such a way that multiple conservation and
social goals are reached (also see sections
“Restoring Ecological Functions” and “Restor-
ing Socioeconomic Values”). Meeting both
6
Restoration as a Strategy to
Contribute to Ecoregion Visions
John Morrison, Jeff Sayer, and Colby Loucks
Key Points to Retain
Ecoregion conservation is a large-scale,long-
term, and flexible concept whose purpose
is to meet the four goals of biodiversity
conservation: representation, maintenance
of evolutionary processes, maintenance of
viable populations, and resilience.
In degraded landscapes and ecoregions res-
toration goals and strategies will be critical
to the success of an ecoregion vision.
But as restoration can be energy intensive,
its role must be defined in the context of
quantifiable goals related to the four larger
goals of biodiversity conservation.
41
42 J. Morrison et al
conservation and social goals simultaneously
maximises the chances that the activities will
be sustainable and that they will have local
support. An example of this integration is pro-
vided by the activities in the Upper Paraná
Atlantic Forest. Within this ecoregion forest
patch connectivity is being improved through
the incorporation of native plants that can also
be sustainably used by local people (see case
study “Finding Economically Sustainable
Means of Preserving and Restoring the Atlantic
Forest in Argentina”).
What are the primary conservation goals that
we should be trying to achieve?
1.1. The Four Goals of Biodiversity
Conservation and Ecoregion
Conservation65
The goals of biodiversity conservation and eco-
region conservation are as follows:
1. Representation of all distinct natural com-
munities within conservation landscapes and
protected areas’ networks
2. Maintenance of ecological and evolution-
ary processes that create and sustain
biodiversity
3. Maintenance of viable populations of
species
4. Conservation of blocks of natural habitat
large enough to be resilient to large-scale
disturbances and long-term changes
Because these conservation goals often
operate over large spatial and temporal scales,
the design of conservation programmes
“requires a perspective that spans nations and
centuries.66 Large-scale conservation initia-
tives have become standard in a number of con-
servation organisations over the last decade.
This evolution is seen as a reaction to the often
disjointed, isolated, and nonstrategic activities
that once characterised site-level conservation.
While site-level conservation will always be
an important and, many would argue, the most
important scale of conservation intervention,
site-level activities can be planned in the
context of larger scale (landscape and ecore-
gion) visions. The thinking behind using large
biogeographic units as the framework in which
to achieve conservation goals is that natural
communities, species, and even human threats
to biodiversity move and operate at large
scales,often irrespective of political boundaries.
Actions conceived at the same scale as the eco-
logical entities and processes that the actions
are trying to protect should be more robust and
efficient than uncoordinated efforts at a site
scale. At WWF, the global conservation organ-
isation, this evolution has taken the form of
Ecoregional Conservation (ERC). Ecoregion
conservation is really a philosophy that
espouses using large, biogeographically defined
units as an arena within which to achieve the
four goals of conservation outlined above. The
actual process of ecoregion conservation plan-
ning has followed a number of paths, generally
relying on experts, computer algorithms, or
even a mixture of the two to identify conserva-
tion priorities.
A range of spatial scales has been addressed
to date, under the heading of “ecoregion con-
servation.”A system of ecoregional boundaries
of the world has been stitched together by
WWF.67 This system is also used by the Nature
Conservancy. Conservation effort is not applied
equally across this system. WWF has defined
825 terrestrial ecoregions (Fig. 6.1), of which a
large proportion is forest ecoregions of various
subtypes (tropical dry, tropical moist, temper-
ate moist, etc.). A further analysis by WWF
identified 237 groupings of these terrestrial
ecoregions as being of particular importance
to conservation and named these the Global
200 Ecoregions—it is usually these Global 200
ecoregions that are the focus of WWF Ecore-
gion Action Programmes.68 In the process of
analysing ecoregions,“priority areas” or “prior-
ity landscapes” are often identified that become
the subject of further conservation planning
and initiatives. Thus the general hierarchical
spatial scale, from largest to smallest, is Global
200 ecoregion, terrestrial ecoregion, and prior-
ity landscape—but this is not a steadfast rule,
65 Noss, 1992.
66 Scott et al, 1999.
67 Olson et al, 2001.
68 Olson and Dinerstein, 1998.
6. Restoration as a Strategy to Contribute to Ecoregion Visions 43
Figure 6.1. Terrestrial ecoregions of the world. (Source: WWF.)
44 J. Morrison et al
and there are very small ecoregions (tens of
km2) and very large priority landscapes (thou-
sands of km2). Most of the principles discussed
below hold for a range of scales, from the land-
scape to the ecoregion.
1.2. Protect, Manage, and Restore
More than likely, any comprehensive conserva-
tion strategy in an ecoregion will involve a
combination of protection, management, and
restoration, plus the abatement/amelioration of
threats.The relative proportion of each strategy
that is appropriate is a function of both the
overall conservation status of the ecoregion,
and the location in the ecoregion—and this will
change over time. For example, restoration is
not necessarily an appropriate strategy in all
ecoregions or landscapes.One can imagine that
restoration may not currently be the highest pri-
ority in those ecoregions that are composed
mostly of wilderness or large forest blocks,such
as in the Amazon. A primary output of many
ecoregional visions is a map of priority areas,
where conservation activities are more focussed
than in the surrounding matrix of the ecoregion.
Yet even in the matrix, some proportion of pro-
tection, management, and restoration activities
will be appropriate, and in the case of the
wilderness ecoregions mentioned above, over
the long-term, restoration may rise in priority in
those ecoregions as more comprehensive pro-
tection and better management are instituted.
From a conservation standpoint, the deci-
sions about how much protection, manage-
ment, and restoration will be a natural
consequence of attempting to achieve the
above four conservation goals in a strategic
fashion in an ecoregion or a landscape within
that ecoregion. Is there enough of a given target
habitat present in the ecoregion or landscape
to meet representation objectives that we can
simply protect a (greater) proportion of it? Or
will some areas containing that habitat need
active or passive restoration in order to meet
the prescribed target for that habitat? Can
existing multiuse buffer zones of forest simply
be managed in their current state to provide
landscape connectivity, or will some areas need
to be rehabilitated to restore connectivity?
Forest “restoration” activities range from
active planting, to management (e.g., invasive
species’ removal), to more passive restoration
(creating the conditions that will allow natural
processes to regenerate high-quality forest).
Because active restoration is so resource inten-
sive, it should generally be the last option
selected to meet a conservation objective. The
key point is that from a conservation perspec-
tive restoration activities should not be under-
taken for the sake of restoration; rather, the
activity should be a strategic response to a spe-
cific need identified during the formation of
conservation goals. The Forests of the Lower
Mekong ecoregion has endeavoured to find the
right balance of protection, management, and
restoration—all stemming from the conserva-
tion goals highlighted during the ecoregional
vision process.
2. Examples: Restoration and
the Four Conservation
Goals
Conceptually, it is a relatively simple matter to
decide whether restoration is necessary or not.
By selecting conservation targets that are appli-
cable to the aforementioned four goals of
conservation, it should quickly become clear
whether or not the relevant ecoregion or prior-
ity landscape still contains the necessary com-
ponents to satisfy all four goals. If there are
elements missing or the ecoregion/landscape is
too fragmented, some restoration is probably
necessary. At the basic level of the four conser-
vation goals,the following discussion illustrates
how the need for restoration can be identified.
2.1. Representation
Conservationists need to represent all natural
communities in some sort of a conservation
network, which is generally a mix of different
levels of protection. It is important that the mix
of natural communities is one that has existed
before a major disturbance rather than the
existing mix. But all of these original commu-
nities may no longer be present in the quantity
6. Restoration as a Strategy to Contribute to Ecoregion Visions 45
and quality necessary, and that is where the
potential application of restoration comes in.
This is especially true during periods of climate
change when species will need to move in
response to changing conditions.
One of the first steps in any conservation plan-
ning initiative is to obtain or develop a map of
historic (sometimes called “potential”) natural
community types across the entire ecoregion/
priority landscape.A number of coverages may
suffice for this purpose, including historic vege-
tation maps,potential vegetation maps,or maps
of plant communities or ecosystems.In the case
where land conversion has made this task
impossible, maps of environmental domains,
which are unique combinations of substrate
(soils or geology), elevation, and climate classi-
fications, may be developed. If these environ-
mental domains are carefully developed, they
should represent unique environmental classes
that correlate with the species living in them.
It is common practice for a target level of
representation to be chosen for each natural
community type (or environmental domain).
This is not always easy, but endeavouring to
determine what these levels should be (prefer-
ably on an individual habitat-by-habitat basis
rather than a blanket prescription) is one of the
highest callings of a conservation biologist. It
is altogether appropriate to begin with coarse
estimates that can be improved over time.
Custom representation targets are preferable
to blanket prescriptions. Once an appropriate
level of representation of each historic natural
community is decided (20 percent, 30 percent,
50 percent, etc.), it may be discovered that less
intact habitat of a particular type(s) remains
than the target representation amount.This is a
sign that some restoration is in order. Mada-
gascar and the dry forests of New Caledonia
are prime examples—forest conversion has
proceeded so far in these ecoregions that forest
restoration is required to meet the most basic
habitat representation goals.
It should also be noted that each natural
community is itself made up of seral stages,and
the appropriate mix of seral stages, or more
likely the allowable ranges of seral stages, cor-
responding to a natural range of variation, must
be specified.The ability of a natural community
type to support a natural range of seral stages
must be protected, or if necessary enhanced,
and this may also require some forest restora-
tion activities. An example is the relative lack
of primary, or old-growth forest, in many tem-
perate forest ecoregions compared to historic
levels.Efforts to increase the proportion of late
seral stages are an appropriate application of
forest restoration in this case.
Many ecoregional programmes, especially
those in developed or densely populated coun-
tries, have found that the amount of lowland
and riparian communities are in short supply—
they have already been converted for human
uses. Clearly in such situations, restoration will
necessarily be an important component of the
overall conservation strategy if representation
targets are to be met.
2.2. Viable Populations
The idea behind this goal is that all species
should have conserved viable populations, but
in practice it is never possible to plan for all
species (if for no other reason than that all
species are never really identified). During any
large-scale conservation initiative, therefore,
focal species are selected for special attention.
Focal species are chosen because they are “key-
stone,” highly threatened endemics, habitat
specialists, or because they are very “area-
sensitive” and act as umbrellas for a number of
species with smaller area requirements. The
number of focal species chosen will vary from
ecoregion to ecoregion, and certainly from pri-
ority landscape to priority landscape,but is gen-
erally a manageable number of five to 20
species from the above categories.
After determining what the list of focal
species is, the next step is to determine the
number of breeding individuals that represent a
viable population, or potentially a viable sub-
population in the case of a priority landscape.
This is not a trivial determination, and there is
an extensive literature discussing rules of thumb
for the number of breeding individuals that
constitutes a viable population—with little
consensus. In some cases a species-specific and
resource-intensive population viability analysis
(PVA) will be necessary. If a viable population
46 J. Morrison et al
estimate is difficult to come by or there are
severe limits to the number of individuals that
are possible,the bottom line is that a target level
should be chosen that represents the largest
conceivable achievable population level.
For restoration purposes, the specific needs
of each focal species must be analysed individ-
ually. A number of related metrics, including
minimum patch size, connecting patches to
enlarge the effective habitat area or feature
(breeding, feeding, or nesting areas/cavities),
corridor width, specific habitat requirements
(plant species), access to water, etc. must be
considered. During the course of the analysis
to determine the habitat and total area re-
quirements for each species, it should quickly
become clear if there is not enough habitat
necessary for a viable population of a particular
species—and restoration will be necessary. This
is frequently the case in those ecoregions that
have been highly degraded.
The reconnection of now disjunct habitat
patches is a common application of forest
restoration activities. This is the focus of the
current work in the Terai Arc in the Eastern
Himalayas: reconnecting 10 protected areas
by encouraging the growth of community-
managed forests (Fig. 6.2). Tigers are loath to
cross more than 5km2of nonhabitat, but the
existing protected areas are not large enough
to maintain viable populations of tigers. Some
mixing of the respective populations is desir-
able. Therefore, community forests are being
encouraged where gaps in forest cover are
noted between the existing protected areas.
This will allow tigers, greater-one horned rhi-
noceroses, and Asian elephants to disperse
between patches of prime habitat. Restoration
is an important activity in other fragmented
ecoregions that still contain large carnivores,
including for jaguars in South America’s
Atlantic Forest and for wolves and grizzly bears
Figure 6.2. Reconnecting protected areas (dark) with forest restoration (light). (Source: WWF.)
6. Restoration as a Strategy to Contribute to Ecoregion Visions 47
in the ecoregions of the Northern Rockies of
North America.
2.3. Ecological and Evolutionary
Processes
The many evolutionary and ecological
processes that create and sustain biodiversity
are complex, and often poorly understood.
Gene flow, migration, pollination, seed disper-
sal, predator–prey dynamics, and nutrient
cycling are some of the many that should be
considered when a conservation plan is devel-
oped. All of these processes can potentially
benefit from restoration activities, because
many species (and the processes that they are
involved in) will respond positively to restored
forest quality, but some of them will benefit
more obviously than others. Gene flow and
migration can directly benefit from restored
forest corridors,as in the above examples.Like-
wise,if key processes such as pollination or seed
dispersal are threatened by insufficient forest
area to support the species that are performing
these functions, restoration activities would be
appropriate.
In some regions, reduced forest cover threat-
ens to throw the area into a not-easily-
reversible regional climatic shift. Restoration of
forest cover (that simultaneously meets finer
scale representation targets and is configured
to maximise forest block size for area-sensitive
species) would be a high priority activity.
The Terai Arc is also a good example for this
set of conservation goals. By reconnecting
disjunct forest patches and thus tiger subpo-
pulations, the ecological processes of subadult
dispersal, gene flow, and restoration of pre-
dator–prey dynamics can be restored. Because
systems with large predators are often domi-
nated top-down forces (in this case elephants
and tigers), the reintroduction of tigers and
elephants across the entire landscape will help
put a number of natural ecological processes
back into a more natural dynamic balance.
However, the needs of finer-scale habitat
specialists (particularly for breeding or
feeding) within the larger area should not be
overlooked.
2.4. Environmental Change
Planning for inevitable environmental change
(even without the additional spectre of anthro-
pogenic climate change) is a key precept in con-
servation. Ecological systems are by their very
nature dynamic, and it is important to incorpo-
rate large habitat areas and sufficient connec-
tivity between habitat areas in order to build
resiliency into the protected area network.
Increased connectivity is the main option avail-
able to conservation planners trying to antici-
pate the effects of anthropogenic climate
change. Species’ ranges are already beginning
to shift in latitude and altitude; this is true not
only for animals but for plant species as well.
Again, reconnecting now disjunct habitat
patches through restored forest corridors is an
appropriate application for forest restoration
activities to help migration to keep pace with
changing conditions. In addition, managing the
landscape in such a way that it provides more
flexibility for species and gene flow in times of
stress is an important element of restoration.
This connectivity strategy will be important
for every ecoregion across the planet to con-
sider. Ecoregions likely to be faced with this
threat in the near term are tropical montane
ecoregions that contain significant topographic
relief. Climatological changes are concentrated
in narrow bands, and maintaining altitudinal
connectivity will be critical for allowing habi-
tats to shift in response to changing tempera-
ture and moisture regimes.
Restoration activities are important for all
ecoregions where human activities have frag-
mented the ecoregion, and this includes most
ecoregions. Rising temperatures and changing
precipitation patterns will cause natural com-
munities to shift latitudinally and altitudinally.
Without restoration to reconnect fragmented
habitat patches with corridors, natural commu-
nities will have great difficulty shifting across
human-dominated landscapes. A more specific
example of the need for restoration will be in
tropical coastal ecoregions with mangroves.As
sea level continues to rise, mangrove belts will
tend to shift inland (Fig. 6.3). However, if the
landward edge of the mangrove belt has been
degraded, which it commonly is, space and
48 J. Morrison et al
The current condition of the forest area in
question—how much effort/time is required
to restore?
Proximity to other viable habitats, to allow
species to disperse or facilitate later
reconnection
Proximity to the existing or anticipated
urban frontier
This last bullet point highlights an entire class
of information that can help to assure that
restoration activities (and in fact any con-
servation activities) have the greatest chance of
success. The mapping of human population
density, distance from access corridors, govern-
ment capacity, ethnic stability and homogene-
ity, and similar factors can help a project see
where the threats and opportunities lie across
the ecoregion or landscape. Additionally, the
incorporation of socioeconomic information
and consultation will help to assure that
restoration activities undertaken for ecological
reasons will also benefit local people either
through ecological services or even through
employment in restoration activities.
3. Outline of Tools
As already noted, ecoregion conservation in
the WWF network is more of a philosophy than
a particular methodology, and a number of
methodologies have been used to achieve the
four goals of conservation. This is altogether
appropriate, since there is a great variety of
Figure 6.3. Mangrove belts along
coastal areas are expected to shift
inland with rising sea levels.(Photo ©
John Morrison.)
69 Noss, 2001.
restoration activities will be necessary to allow
the continued persistence of the mangroves,
and with them the important ecological (and
social) functions they perform.69
2.5. Deciding Where to Do
Restoration When There
Are Choices
In the preceding discussion, the need for
restoration fell into two broad categories:
increasing the area of a particular forest type
for representation or for particular species/
processes, and restoring particular landscape
features, especially corridors, which allow spe-
cific ecological processes to operate.Sometimes
there are choices of where restoration is most
appropriate. All other things being equal, it is
generally easier to restore the less degraded
example of a forest type, since less effort or
time will be required.All other things are rarely
equal, however. How does one decide which
semi-irreplaceable example of a forest type to
restore if there are several choices? Obviously,
many factors must often be weighed.
The first step is to be clear about the end
objective(s). For example, is primary forest the
only possible objective, or would secondary
forest do just as well (or even better) for the
focal species being considered? Factors to con-
sider when determining which area to restore
are the following:
6. Restoration as a Strategy to Contribute to Ecoregion Visions 49
data availability, social structures, infrastruc-
ture, and professional capacity in the ecore-
gions across the planet. There is no tool
especially tailored to help set restoration prior-
ities. These priorities should emerge from a
generic comprehensive planning process.
A full discussion of the tools available for
ecoregional conservation planning is beyond
the scope of this paper. Some of the primary
tools include:
• WWF’s approaches to ecoregion conserva-
tion,70 including specific advice about actions
in priority conservation landscapes71 and case
studies72 and a detailed guide to implemen-
tation within ecoregions73
The Nature Conservancy’s approach to
ecoregion conservation74
Systematic conservation planning appro-
aches as developed in New South Wales,
Australia75
The use of a geographic information system
(GIS) is practically mandatory when consider-
ing spatial planning for conservation. The GIS
allows spatial maps to display conservation
options,and more powerfully,allows the user to
combine biological and socioeconomic infor-
mation to analyse ways of meeting conserva-
tion goals at the least socioeconomic “cost.
Additional tools that work alongside and with
a GIS are decision support software tools,
which allow numerous competing variables to
be combined. Depending on the particular tool
used, a single best conservation configuration
may be generated or a range of choices can be
portrayed. In some of these tools, once a deci-
sion is made regarding a particular portion of
the landscape, the entire study area can be
recalculated to portray the next best options.
4. Future Needs
Further development is needed for tools to
prioritise restoration needs. Current decision
support tools are able to identify remaining
habitat for inclusion in protected area net-
works,and these tools can be used to work with
maps of previously existing potential vegeta-
tion. However,further refinement of these tools
and associated techniques to identify areas that
could be restored to meet representation goals
is needed.
References
Dinerstein, E., Powell, G., Olson, D., et al. 2000. A
workbook for conducting biological assessments
and developing biodiversity visions for ecoregion-
based conservation. World Wildlife Fund,
Washington, DC. http://www.worldwildlife.
org/science/pubs2.cfml.
Groves, C.R., Valutis, L.L., Vosick, D., et al. 2000.
Designing a geography of hope: a practitioner’s
handbook to ecoregional conservation planning.
The Nature Conservancy, Arlington, VA. www.
conserveonline.org.
Loucks, C., Springer, J., Palminteri, S., Morrison, J.,
and Strand, H. 2004. From the Vision to the
Ground: A Guide to Implementing Ecoregion
Conservation in Priority Areas. World Wildlife
Fund, Washington, DC.
Margules, C.R., and Pressey, R.L. 2000. Systematic
conservation planning. Nature 405:243–253.
Noss, R.F. 1992. The wildlands project: land conser-
vation strategy. Wild Earth (Special issue) 10–25.
Noss, R.F. 2001. Beyond Kyoto: forest management
in a time of rapid climate change. Conservation
Biology 15(3):578–590.
Olson, D.M., and Dinerstein, E. 1998. The global
200: a representation approach to conserving the
earth’s most biological valuable ecoregions. Con-
servation Biology 12:502–515.
Olson, D.M., Dinerstein, E., Wikramanayake, E.D.,
et al. 2001.A new map of life on earth. BioScience
15:933–938.
Palminteri, S. 2003.Ecoregion conservation: securing
living landscapes through science-based planning
and action. A users guide for ecoregion conserva-
tion through examples from the field (draft).
CD-Rom. World Wildlife Fund US, Washington,
DC.
Scott, J.M., Norse, E.A., Arita, H., et al. 1999. The
issue of scale in selecting and designing biological
reserves. In: Soule, M.E., Terborgh, J. Continental
Conservation; Scientific Foundations of Regional
Reserve Networks. Island Press,Washington, DC.
WWF. 2003. Ecoregion Action Programmes A Guide
for Practitioners. WWF International, Gland,
Switzerland.
70 Dinerstein et al, 2000.
71 Loucks et al, 2004.
72 Palminteri, 2003.
73 WWF, 2003.
74 Groves et al, 2000.
75 Margules and Pressey, 2000.
50 J. Morrison et al
Additional Reading
International Tropical Timber Organisation. 2002.
ITTO Guidelines for the Restoration, Manage-
ment, and Rehabilitation of Degraded and
Secondary Tropical Forests. ITTO Policy Develop-
ment Series No. 13, Yokohama, Japan.
Moguel, P., and Toledo,V.M. 1999. Biodiversity con-
servation in traditional coffee systems of Mexico.
Conservation Biology 13:11–21.
Pimentel, D., Stachow, U., Takacs, D.A., et al. 1992.
Conserving biological diversity in agricultural
forestry systems: most biological diversity exists
in human-managed ecosystems. Bioscience 42:
354–362.
Victor, D.G., and Ausubel, J.H. 2000. Restoring the
forest: skinhead earth? Foreign Affairs 79(6):127–
144.
1. Background and
Explanation of the Issue
The landscape is the spatial and ecological scale
at which the range of different ecological,
social, and economic needs and desires of
stakeholders can best be discussed, compared,
and integrated.
1.1. Why Restore?
Conservation strategies that rely solely on
protected areas and sustainable management
have proved insufficient either to secure biodi-
versity or to stabilise the environment. The
United Nations Environment Programme now
classifies a large proportion of the world’s land
surface as “degraded,” and reversing this
damage is one of the largest and most complex
challenges of the 21st century. Habitat loss
is already so severe that conservation pro-
grammes need to include restoration if they are
to deliver long-term success. Analysis of the
WWF Global 200 ecoregions—identified as
those of the highest conservation importance—
demonstrates the problems. Over 80 percent of
the G200 forest ecoregions need restoration in
at least parts of their area; deforestation is a key
threat to water quality in 59 percent of G200
freshwater ecoregions, and three quarters of
G200 mangrove ecoregions are under threat.76
Even where forest is stable or increasing, par-
allel losses of forest quality create the need for
restoration. In Western Europe, for instance,
research by the United Nations Economic
Commission for Europe found that most coun-
tries had less than 1 percent of their forests sur-
viving in an unmanaged state.77
Forest loss is not only of concern to conser-
vationists.The United Nations estimates that 60
million people are directly dependent on forest
7
Why Do We Need to Consider
Restoration in a Landscape Context?
Nigel Dudley, John Morrison, James Aronson, and Stephanie Mansourian
Key Points to Retain
Restoration is already needed in many
important forest ecosystems because loss
and degradation have proceeded to a point
where the ecosystem is no longer sustainable
in the long term.
Approaching restoration on a landscape
scale means addressing conservation issues
while considering social concerns, at a scale
where optimisation and trade-offs are easier
to agree on than at the site level.
Most current restoration activities tend too
often to focus on one or two benefits and
miss the wider picture.
Tools are starting to be developed that help
to negotiate realistic mixes of management
actions,including a suite of restoration activ-
ities, and biodiversity protection, at the full
landscape scale.
51
76 Dudley and Mansourian, 2000.
77 Dudley and Stolton, 2004.
52 N. Dudley et al
resources including many of the poorest
people. A far larger number are indirectly
dependent, for example, on environmental
services from forests such as soil and watershed
protection. Forests also provide a wealth of
recreational, spiritual, and aesthetic services.
1.2. Why Landscapes?
Many restoration efforts have ended in fail-
ure (see “Forest Landscape Restoration in
Context”). Some of the reasons for this relate
to their limited scope, their lack of engagement
with local people and other stakeholders’ inter-
ests and needs, their short-term nature, and
their failure to address underlying causes of
forest loss and degradation. In the last decade
or so it has become increasingly clear to con-
servationists that developmental and socio-
economic concerns cannot be overlooked if
conservation is to be successful. Conservation
activities,therefore,inevitably take place along-
side other aspects of sustainable development,
and a landscape approach can help to embrace
both aspects of conservation and development.
Because the restoration of forests in landscapes
aims to repair and recover forest products and
services that are valuable to people,it has a key
role to play in development programmes. Bal-
ancing competing ecological and social needs is
always difficult, but is most likely to succeed if
we work on a large enough area to encompass
two or more interactive ecosystems, as well as
different landscape units with different land
uses by local people.This facilitates negotiation
and trade-offs among different demands.
Thus, rather than relying on a series of indi-
vidual projects attempting to restore individual
forest values, at the landscape scale it becomes
possible to attempt the integration of these
projects.Where successful, the net result should
be much more than the sum of individual
site-based restoration actions. Achieving a
balance between the various goods and services
required from restored forest ecosystems
requires conceptualisation, planning,and imple-
mentation on a broader scale. It also assumes
some negotiations and trade-offs among the
various stakeholders involved to identify those
restoration actions that have enough of a
groundswell of support to be likely to succeed.
A landscape or ecoregion approach also allows
forest restoration to be fully integrated with pro-
tection and sustainable management of forest.
From the perspectives of biodiversity, long-
term viability and ultimately social and eco-
nomic values, approaches to restoration need
to focus on forest functions and ecological
processes. A key concern in many restoration
projects is increasing the size of core areas of
forest habitat. However, where space is limited
by competing land uses, many functions of a
large forest can be simulated by increasing con-
nectivity between patches of forest by biologi-
cal corridors and ecological stepping stones
(patches of habitat that can provide “way sta-
tions” for migrating or mobile species).Increas-
ing the values of existing forests,for example by
changing management or decreasing interfer-
ence, can also play a vital role in restoration.
The landscape scale also allows us to consider
the links between different habitat types. The
interface between habitats may be abrupt (par-
ticularly in managed landscapes) or gradual,
and they will have a varying ability to allow dis-
persal and interchange of species (see “Restor-
ing Tropical Montane Forests”). Increasing the
permeability of habitat boundaries to genetic
interchange may be as important as specific
habitat creation such as biological corridors.
1.3. Protect, Manage, Restore
in a Landscape
The result of integrating efforts to restore mul-
tiple functions at a landscape scale often resem-
bles a mosaic, where protected areas, other
protective forests, and various forms of use
and management are combined, depending on
existing and evolving needs, legislative con-
straints, and land ownership patterns. Restora-
tion becomes a management option that can be
used within any part of the landscape to con-
tribute to the overall long-term aims for the
landscape.Agreeing on the mosaic and balanc-
ing different social, economic, and environ-
mental needs on a landscape scale requires
careful planning and negotiation.
A landscape approach recognises that overall
landscape values and services are more impor-
7. Why Do We Need to Consider Restoration in a Landscape Context? 53
tant than individual sites, and that in a world of
competing interests, conservation aims need
to be integrated with those of, for example,
poverty alleviation, human health, and other
legitimate forms of social and economic devel-
opment and welfare. Conservation cannot, or
should not, take place divorced from issues
relating to human well-being, and people
working for conservation are usually also con-
cerned about social justice and sustainable
development. The appropriate approach,
therefore, is to identify where and how these
different but overlapping interests can best be
integrated into a multifunctional landscape.
Such integration will necessarily include nego-
tiation and trade-offs.
1.4. The Process of Restoring
Forest Functions in
a Landscape
Deciding what forms of restoration to apply
requires a suite of different activities, including
careful analysis of what is needed, assessment of
what is possible, and agreement amongst rele-
vant stakeholders about the aims of restoration
and the appropriate actions to undertake. It is
axiomatic of forest landscape restoration that in
most cases we are not looking at a single project
or a single forest use, but rather at a range of
different restoration efforts that will, as far as is
feasible, be coordinated and complementary.
The extent to which this is attainable in practice
depends on the willingness of different groups
of stakeholders to cooperate, the negotiation
skills of those involved, and hard-to-define
issues such as ownership patterns and other
demands on the landscape.In areas where much
of the land is in private ownership, many
“common goods” including conservation can
only be addressed through voluntary agree-
ments, land purchase, or overarching policy
decisions, and all of these options are slow and
laborious to achieve in most situations.
2. Examples
Some examples show how different countries
or regions have approached issues of restora-
tion and how different priorities have shaped
and in some cases distorted options for restor-
ing a balanced forest mosaic.
2.1. Switzerland: Restoration for
Environmental Services but
with Additional Economic and
Biodiversity Values
Following severe erosion and flooding prob-
lems in the past resulting from historical defor-
estation, during the 19th and 20th centuries
Switzerland devised a system of continuous
cover forestry to protect slopes and provide
resources and fuel. The government has one of
the few forest policies that explicitly rank social
and protective functions above commercial
functions.The country has 1,204,047 hectares of
forest and woodland, covering 29 percent of
the country.78 Trees within managed forests
are generally native and around 60 percent are
conifers, with almost half the growing stock
being Norway spruce.Although forest manage-
ment is less intensive than in many European
countries on a stand level, it affects virtually the
entire forest area, and there are very few old-
growth forests. Around 0.5 percent of forests
are in natural forest reserves. Landscape-scale
planning has played a critical role in identifying
where best to restore forests, with an emphasis
being placed on avalanche control, stabilisation
of slopes, provision of local firewood, and bio-
diversity conservation.79
2.2. Guinea: Traditional
Management Including
Forest Restoration
Careful research with villages on the forest-
savannah interface in Guinea, in West Africa,
found that rather than contributing to defor-
estation as was once thought, local communi-
ties were actually planting and tending forest
patches. Once villages were abandoned (a peri-
odic response to declining soil fertility so that
communities moved every few decades), such
forests tended to decline and disappear as a
78 Holenstein, 1995.
79 McShane and McShane-Caluzi, 1997.
54 N. Dudley et al
result of increased grazing pressure from savan-
nah herbivores. New areas were chosen on the
basis of past use and where fertility was likely
to have recovered, thus focussing on different
parts of the landscape at different times to ensure
long-term continuity. Villagers established
forest patches on the edge of the grassland to
provide needed nontimber forest products and
protected these from fire and grazing.80
2.3. United Kingdom: Plantations
Replacing Natural Forests and
Dominating the Landscape
Following the First World War, concern about
lack of timber led to the establishment of the
Forestry Commission,which was provided with
considerable funds and political power to
undertake compulsory purchase, to establish
fast-growing plantations of trees.The emphasis
was on conifers,particularly Sitka spruce (Picea
sitchensis) from Alaska. Many of these planta-
tions were established on upland grazing areas
(which were originally forested but had lost
their tree cover, in some cases centuries before).
Some plantations were also established on the
site of native woodland, which was occasionally
cleared with herbicides, and in northeast Scot-
land on moor that had never contained trees.
Whilst the planting was successful in creating a
strategic reserve,it led to resentment about loss
of access, native woodlands, and other natural
habitats,and a limited range of forest functions.
Dense forest created access problems and the
abrupt boundaries between this and other
habitat limited usefulness for biodiversity. Plan-
ning was usually at site rather than landscape
scale. From the 1980s onward, the commission
started revising its aims,increasing native plant-
ing and playing a more general stewardship
role in land management; experiments are also
taking place in returning woodland areas to
local community control.81
2.4. Costa Rica: Shade-Grown
Coffee as a Linking Habitat in
Fragmented Landscape with a
High Population Density
Although Costa Rica still contains large areas
of native forests, some forest ecosystems have
declined to a fraction of their former size and
are no longer ecologically viable, particularly
in Talamanca and Guanacaste. In the former
area, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) has been
working with local communities to link remain-
ing forest fragments to allow access for birds.
Because pressure on land was too intense to
allow space for native woodland as such, shade
grown cacao and coffee production was encour-
aged and supported, planned at a landscape
scale to link remaining forest fragments.While
far from a natural woodland, the trees shading
coffee provide habitats to allow passage for
rare birds, thus allowing them to form viable
populations.82
The above cases illustrate only a fraction of
the possible examples. They show that in most
places where restoration is encouraged, its
purpose is generally fairly narrow (also see
“Goals and Targets of Forest Landscape
Restoration”): erosion control, strategic re-
serves,etc. If other benefits accrue, it has some-
times been fortuitous.One of the key aspects of
forest landscape restoration is to reduce the
elements of chance and increase the sophisti-
cation of restoration planning.
3. Outline of Tools
3.1. Ecoregional Planning Tools
A wide range of possible tools exist to plan
regional scale forest cover and management
(see also previous chapter). Among the most
popular are the following:
Ecoregional workshops: used to help estab-
lish a vision for an ecoregion, prioritise
actions and conservation landscapes, and
develop strategies
80 Fairhead and Leach, 1996.
81 Garforth and Dudley, 2003. 82 Parrish et al, 1999.
7. Why Do We Need to Consider Restoration in a Landscape Context? 55
• Computer-aided design packages: including
those involved in the development of sys-
tematic conservation planning
Conservation by design: developed by TNC,
using a five-step process (identifying targets,
gathering information, setting goals, assess-
ing viability, assembling portfolios) and the 5-
S framework (systems, stresses, sources,
strategies, success)
There are many other examples; a selection are
available on the Web-based Earth Conserva-
tion Toolbox.83
3.2. Protect, Manage, Restore
WWF84 and IUCN have developed a number of
landscape approaches to help address this kind
of broadscale decision making, and these or
similar exercises could provide help in deter-
mining where restoration could be used most
effectively.An outline of one approach is shown
diagrammatically in Figure 7.1 (also see Box 7.1
for the detailed steps):
3.3. Implementing Conservation in
Priority Areas
WWF also has a science-based methodology
for continuing ecoregion planning inside prior-
ity conservation landscapes, containing a set of
guidelines to develop and implement a conser-
vation landscape, which could be used to
include restoration issues.85
3.4. Reference Forests
Restoration for conservation usually involves
trying to regain something as similar to a native
forest as possible (for more, see “Identifying
and Using Reference Landscapes for
Restoration”).
Defining our own conservation targets
Learning about the needs and expectations of others
Defining the landscape(s)
Assessing current/potential benefits from the landscape
Developing possible land-use scenarios
Reconciling land-use options
Implementation (strategic interventions)
Monitoring and learning
Adaptation as a result of lessons learned
The order given is one possibility but in practice many stages may take place simultaneously, or at different
times in different parts of the landscape—e.g., stakeholder negotiation is likely to occur throughout this process in
some form or other, and early development of a monitoring and evaluation system has proved very valuable.
Identification of
conservation and
other values
Integration of
protection,
management
and restoration
Negotiation with
stakeholders
Implementation
Adaptation
Decisions
Conflict resolution
Understanding
development
trajectories
Figure 7.1. Protect–manage–restore approach.
83 www.earthtoolbox.net.
84 Aldrich et al, 2004. 85 Loucks et al, 2004.
56 N. Dudley et al
Box 7.1. The stages in a protect–manage–restore process
Defining our own conservation targets:
As stakeholders, conservation organisa-
tions need to start with some ideas of the
landscape mix that they are aiming for,
including ideas about geographical areas
and ecological processes of primary inter-
est. Reaching these targets will require
a mix of protection, management, and
restoration.
Learning about the needs and expecta-
tions of others: At an early stage it is
important to get an initial idea about the
other key stakeholders and their relation-
ships, what they need and want, and what
they are planning. While the focus will
be on economic or development issues,
culture, history, expectations within
society, level of development, and spiri-
tual needs are all important.
Defining the landscape(s):The concept of
“landscape” has many different mean-
ings; a conservation programme will
usually work within a predetermined
“conservation landscape,” but it is impor-
tant to identify any “cultural landscapes”
nested within or overlapping the conser-
vation landscape: e.g., a village, land used
by nomadic pastoralists, or a timber
concession.
Assessing current/potential benefits from
the landscape: The next stage involves
assessment to identify lost, current, and
potential future values from the land-
scape. While conservationists tend to
focus on biodiversity, assessment also
takes full account of social, cultural, and
economic values.The extent to which this
is a participatory process can be decided
on a case-by-case basis. Including stake-
holders also means that assessment is part
of the negotiation process.
Developing land-use scenarios: Integra-
tion of potential conservation and
development actions to develop scenarios
including a combination of elements
such as protected areas; other protected
forests (set asides, watershed protection
etc); well-managed forests; areas need-
ing restoration; and other compatible
and competing land uses.All these factors
interact. What mosaic will work best?
Are we looking at one “master plan” or
a pattern that emerges gradually over
time?
Reconciling land use options: The
approach is predicated on the idea that
trades-offs among social, economic, and
environmental values are often essential
and are acceptable if overall values are
maintained or enhanced within the
landscape.
Decisions: In some situations govern-
ment(s), nongovernmental organisations,
corporate interests,and communities may
agree on a package of actions within one
action plan. In many other cases, negotia-
tions are likely to be continuing and spo-
radic. Here it is unlikely that a single
master plan could be agreed; rather,deci-
sions will be over smaller parcels of land
within a framework that will continue to
evolve.
Implementation (strategic interventions):
Some of the resulting actions will take
place at the site level and may involve
creating the right conditions for natural
regeneration, selective tree planting to
reconnect forest fragments,or community
initiatives to improve fire management.
Other interventions may be necessary
at a landscape or even larger scale, e.g.,
working with governments to realign
reforestation programmes.
Monitoring and learning: Much of what
we will be attempting with the landscape
approach is quite new, and therefore
it is especially important to ensure that
progress is monitored effectively and that
7. Why Do We Need to Consider Restoration in a Landscape Context? 57
3.5. Gap Analysis
Several methodologies exist for identifying
gaps in existing forest systems. For example,
a WWF Canada methodology used enduring
landform features to identify likely past vege-
tation,86 while another developed by the United
Nations Environment Programme-World Con-
servation Monitoring Centre(UNEP-WCMC)
used analysis of current forest cover.87
4. Future Needs
Although restoration needs are increasingly
being addressed within broader-scale conserva-
tion, they generally remain less well supported
in terms of approaches and methodologies
than, for example, planning of protected areas.
These needs include the following:
Prioritisation: There is a need for better tools
for prioritisation of areas for restoration, for
example to balance the importance of con-
nectivity with core areas, identification of
microhabitat gaps in current forest cover, cal-
culation of minimum viable areas, etc.
Decision support: Methodologies are needed
for balancing social and ecological values,
including participatory methods.
Incorporating a range of management schemes
into existing decision support tools: Cur-
rently, decision support tools consider an
area either protected, or not, based on the
input of the user. More sophisticated tools
are needed that can handle a wider range
of “protection” schemes (e.g., sustainably
managed forests).
There is also the need for some degree of
advocacy and explanation, to encourage those
involved in broad-scale planning to consider
restoration, particularly in the case of restoring
forest quality. Some of these tools are being
developed during current forest landscape
restoration projects, but it is still too early to
judge their success.
References
Aldrich, M., et al. 2004. Integrating Forest Protec-
tion, Management and Restoration at a Landscape
Scale. WWF, Gland, Switzerland.
Dudley, N., and Mansourian, S. 2000. Forest Land-
scape Restoration and WWF’s Conservation Pri-
orities.WWF International, Gland, Switzerland.
Dudley, N., and Stolton, S. 2004. Biological diversity,
tree species composition and environmental pro-
tection in regional FRA-2000. Geneva Timber and
Forest Discussion Paper 33. United Nations Eco-
nomic Commission for Europe and Food and
Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations,
Geneva.
Fairhead, J., and Leach, M. 1996. Misreading the
African Landscape: Society and Ecology in a
Forest-Savanna Mosaic. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, UK.
Garforth, M., and Dudley, N. 2003. Forest Renais-
sance. Published in association with the Forestry
Commission and WWF UK, Edinburgh and
Godalming.
Holenstein, B. 1995. Forests and Wood in Switzer-
land. Federal Office of Environment, Forests and
Landscape. Swiss Forest Agency, Bern.
Iacobelli, T., Kavanagh, K., and Rowe, S. 1994. A
Protected Areas Gap Analysis Methodology: Plan-
ning for the Conservation of Biodiversity. World
Wildlife Fund Canada, Toronto.
Loucks, C., Springer, J., Palminteri, S., Morrison, J.,
and Strand, H. 2004. From the Vision to the
lessons are both used to improve pro-
grammes as they develop and are also
transmitted around and beyond the
immediate conservation programme. At
a larger scale, combining monitoring of
many individual projects, along with
some additional indicators that transcend
individual project work, will be needed
to measure progress over the whole
landscape.
86 Iacobelli et al, 1994.
87 UNEP-WCMC, 2002.
58 N. Dudley et al
Ground: A Guide to Implementing Ecoregion
Conservation in Priority Areas. WWF-US,
Washington, DC.
McShane, T.O., and McShane-Caluzi, E. 1997. Swiss
forest use and biodiversity conservation. In Freese,
C.H., ed. Harvesting Wild Species: Implications
for Biodiversity Conservation. John Hopkins
University Press, Baltimore and London, pp. 132–
166.
Parrish, J.D., Reitsma, R., and Greenberg, R., et al.
1999. Cacao as Crop and Conservation Tool in
Latin America:Meeting the Needs of Farmers and
Biodiversity. Island Press/America Verde Publi-
cations, The Nature Conservancy, Arlington,
Virginia.
UNEP-WCMC. 2002. European forests and pro-
tected areas gap analysis 2002. http://www.
unep-wcmc.org/forest/eu_gap/index.htm.
1. Background and
Explanation of the Issue
In most of the places where forest restoration
is being considered, from the perspective of
either conservation or development, the land-
scape is already inhabited. Furthermore, the
resident or transient populations are unlikely
to be a single homogeneous entity. Therefore,
forest restoration involves many different
stakeholder groups with their own wants and
needs.87a Agreeing what the restoration priori-
ties should be within a given landscape will con-
sequently necessitate negotiating trade-offs
among a range of stakeholders.
1.1. Win–Win Situations
It is often assumed that with enough discussion
and compromise, questions of land manage-
ment and natural resource allocation can be
agreed to in ways that satisfy everyone—in this
case that a sufficient number and variety of
forest functions can be restored in a landscape
to satisfy all stakeholder groups: so-called
win–win situations. The question of how to
attain such win–win situations has been
addressed by many integrated conservation and
development projects,and the consensus seems
to be that in most real-life situations it will be
impossible to satisfy everybody and there will
necessarily be winners and losers.88 From our
perspective, some people will stand to gain
more from the restored functions of a forest,
for example with increased availability of fuel-
wood or salable products, while others will lose
for instance, through access or grazing rights.
The realistic aim of a negotiated process is to
minimise the losses and to ensure that these do
not fall disproportionately on those already
amongst the poorest or otherwise disadvan-
taged. Indeed, raising false assumptions that
careful planning and participatory processes
can deliver win–win results, and an accompa-
nying failure to deal with necessary trade-offs
are often major sources of conflict, because
people have their expectations raised and then
not met.
8
Addressing Trade-Offs in Forest
Landscape Restoration
Katrina Brown
Key Points to Retain
In questions of land management and natural
resource allocation it will nearly always be
impossible to satisfy all stakeholders and
there will necessarily be winners and losers.
Applying the concept of multifunctionality
can help to allow different forest functions
to coexist, meeting a wider range of differ-
ent stakeholder groups’ interests.
Capacity needs to be created among conser-
vationists to engage stakeholders in con-
structive trade-off discussions and to deal
with the outcomes of these.
59
87a Sheng (no year). 88 McShane and Wells, 2004.
60 K. Brown
1.2. Identifying Stakeholders
The need for trade-offs arises because different
stakeholder groups have different expectations
or needs from a landscape. To understand
trade-offs when dealing with a restoration pro-
gramme in a landscape, the first step is to iden-
tify all the stakeholders.Often stakeholders are
characterised by their degree of influence and
importance.89 The results of such an analysis can
be categorised into primary stakeholders, sec-
ondary stakeholders,and external stakeholders.
Primary stakeholders have little influence
on the outcomes but they have the most to
lose from management decisions. A primary
stakeholder could be a farmer, a fisher, or
a forest-dweller. Secondary stakeholders are
often managers or decision makers, and they
are the ones charged with implementing the
decision, although the outcomes do not impact
directly on them. External stakeholders are
those who can significantly influence the
outcome even if they are located far away,
typically international nongovernmental organ-
isations (NGOs). Many more complex stake-
holder categories have been suggested, but
these three capture the main groupings.
Depending on the objectives of the trade-off
process, stakeholder analysis can be critical in
identifying who to include and perhaps how to
engage them.
1.3. Brokering a Satisfactory
Outcome
The next requirement in an equitable trade-off
process is to allow genuine discussion on trade-
offs between different stakeholders. There is
usually a need for someone to help facilitate
this process, ideally a person without a stake
(perhaps a trusted outsider) who can act as an
“honest broker.”90 The role of the broker is to
encourage an open discussion and to help facil-
itate a process whereby different stakeholders
feel that they are gaining something from the
process, even if that may mean also agreeing to
some sacrifices.For instance,shifting cultivators
may need to modify their approach to farming,
but in return they may gain legitimate access to
nontimber forest products located in the land-
scape.Frequently, conservation or development
organisations like to consider themselves as
“neutral brokers,” yet the reality is that they
also have a position and an interest. Conserva-
tion organisations are stakeholders just like any
other, with a particular vision that will some-
times be in competition with other legitimate
economic and social “visions,” and conserva-
tionists are therefore unlikely to get everything
that they want.91 “Valid processes require much
more time, patience and sensitivity to local cul-
tures than most outside experts are prepared to
allocate. Neutral facilitation and explicit recog-
nition of the trade-offs between the interests of
different stakeholders are important ingredi-
ents of success.92
1.4. The Concept of
Multifunctionality
When negotiating trade-offs in attempting to
restore forest functions in a landscape, the
concept of “multifunctionality” is important. If
one stakeholder group,for instance biologists,is
the only one deciding on the restoration out-
comes of a given landscape, it may be that an
ideal landscape for that group is one containing
pristine habitat for all identified species in the
given area. On the other hand,if the single stake-
holder is a plantation company, it may be that its
vision for the main function to restore in the
landscape is that of productive monoculture
plantations bringing in money from pulp and
paper. For a poor local family, the main function
it may be interested in restoring might be fuel-
wood.Applying the concept of multifunctional-
ity can help to allow these different functions to
coexist, meeting a wider range of different
stakeholder groups’ interests.
1.5. Types of Trade-Offs93
Restoring a landscape intentionally to meet a
range of functions requires negotiating trade-
offs.There are different types of trade-offs:
89 Brown, 2004.
90 Franks, 2004.
91 Aldrich et al, 2003.
92 Sayer et al, 2003.
93 Brown, 2004.
8. Addressing Trade-Offs in Forest Landscape Restoration 61
Trade-offs between different interest priori-
ties, as per the example above
Trade-offs between short and long-term
horizons
• Trade-offs between different spatial scales,
notably sites and landscapes
Trade-offs between different sections of
society and biodiversity conservation, typi-
cally farmers or plantation owners and con-
servation NGOs
Trade-offs between different aspects of bio-
diversity, as it may not always be possible to
restore a landscape to secure all species in a
landscape; decisions on which species will
take priority will require trade-offs
Trade-offs between different social groups—
traditionally more influential groups may
have taken decisions, but primary stakehold-
ers are those whose livelihoods are directly
affected; in a truly representative process,
trade-offs will need to happen across social
groups and scales.
Trade-offs among economic priorities, social
welfare, and conservation.
The skills needed to assess and evaluate such
trade-offs and support negotiations about them
are often lacking amongst conservation organ-
isations, although they are more likely to exist
within aid or development bodies. Developing
negotiating skills is one of the key priorities in
developing the capacity to work at landscape level
(see “Negotiations and Conflict Management”).
2. Example: An Hypothetical
Example for Negotiating the
Restoration of a Landscape
There are as yet few examples where a truly
negotiated discussion and trade-offs led to a
restored landscape.
A theoretical process to achieve this was pre-
sented at a workshop in Madagascar.94 Possible
steps to reach a negotiated outcome for a re-
stored landscape are as follows:
Each stakeholder group describes the land-
scape as it was 50 years ago, the steps that
turned it into the current landscape and the
main drivers of the changes.
A facilitated discussion takes place to negotiate
the general state of the landscape and its pos-
sible future state(s) (characteristics,products,
and services it could offer, etc.).
Each group develops a precise and detailed
vision for the landscape 10 years from the
present, identifying the most important char-
acteristics (i.e.,the nonnegotiables), categoris-
ing the possibly negotiable characteristics and
the definitely negotiable characteristics.
The visions of different groups are then placed
side by side, and a negotiation process begins
that will culminate in a common vision for
the future, restored landscape, that is accept-
able to all.
Such a process most certainly takes a signifi-
cant amount of time. It requires clear identifi-
cation and representation of stakeholders, a
genuine neutral broker (or group of brokers),
and different tools and processes to allow each
stakeholder group to understand the implica-
tions of different decisions.
3. Outline of Tools
Some of the tools available to allow the nego-
tiation of trade-offs are as follows:
3.1. Focus Groups
Working in small groups builds confidence,
especially amongst stakeholders who may be
reluctant to air their views in large meetings or
are not used to public speaking. It enables spe-
cific stakeholders to rehearse and deliberate in
a safe structured environment, prior to larger
meetings or workshops.
3.2. Surveys
Surveys can be valuable in generating baseline
data and information to build believable
scenarios or visions of the future and to illus-
trate management options.They are a means to
learn about and approach different stakehold-
ers.A particularly useful contribution is to feed
back information generated from surveys to
stakeholders as part of a social learning and tri-
angulation process.
94 Taken from a presentation by Tom Erdmann given at a
workshop on Forest Landscape Restoration in Madagascar
in March 2003.
62 K. Brown
3.3. Consensus Building Workshops
Different stakeholders may be brought to-
gether in workshops to negotiate trade-offs and
agree on management strategies. A range of
conflict resolution and consensus building
techniques can be used, including visioning and
scenarios, as well as ranking and voting on cri-
teria and scenarios.
3.4. Multicriteria Analysis
Multicriteria analysis is a decision-support tool
that can be used in a sophisticated and data
intensive way or, in deliberative workshops, as
a means to help stakeholders take a step back
from concentrating on outcome to assess what
criteria should guide decisions. Rather than
discussing the outcomes of management, this
forces people to look at why and how decisions
should be made rather than on the impacts
of the decisions. This aids a more consensus-
based approach to negotiations.
3.5. Extended Cost-Benefit
Analyses
A range of evaluation techniques can be used
to draw attention to the nonmonetary and
noneconomic impacts of different management
options and to learn about how different stake-
holders value the multiple functions of re-
sources.Again it can help to validate and build
confidence in stakeholders by recognising their
priorities and values.
3.6. Scenario-Building
A useful way to discuss different options
without them being directly linked to interests
of specific stakeholders is to define scenarios or
coherent, internally consistent, and plausible
descriptions of the future.These must be believ-
able and understandable to all stakeholders
and must be linked to specific changes. Dis-
cussing and evaluating scenarios are a way of
talking about management options without
having to argue against one person’s project or
strategy, and therefore can be useful for build-
ing consensus.95
4. Future Needs
Evaluating and negotiating trade-offs is rarely
part of conservation projects, let alone restora-
tion ones. Much more practical experience
is needed in negotiating trade-offs when look-
ing at restoring forest functions in a landscape.
This is particularly the case when considering
limited resources and the urgency of some
restoration needs.In other words,how does one
balance a truly participatory trade-off analysis
with urgent needs to restore habitat for a
threatened species?
Capacity needs to be created among conser-
vationists to engage stakeholders in construc-
tive trade-off discussions and to deal with the
outcomes of these.
References
Aldrich, M., Belokurov, A., Bowling, J., et al. 2003.
Integrating Forest Protection, Management and
Restoration at a Landscape Scale, WWF, Gland,
Switzerland.
Brown, K., Tompkins, E., and Adger, W.N. 2002.
Making Waves: Integrating Coastal Conservation
and Development. Earthscan, London.
Brown, K. 2004. Trade-off Analysis for Integrated
Conservation and Development. In: Mc Shane,T.,
and Wells, M.P., eds. Getting Biodiversity Projects
to Work. Columbia University Press, New York.
Franks, P., and Blomley, T. 2004. Fitting ICD into
a Project Framework: A CARE Perspective. In:
Mc Shane, T., and Wells, M.P., eds. Getting Biodi-
versity Projects to Work. Columbia University
Press, New York.
Mc Shane, T., and Wells, M.P. 2004. Getting Biodi-
versity Projects to Work. Colombia University
Press, New York.
Sayer, J., Elliott, C., and Maginnis, S. 2003. Protect,
manage and restore: conserving forests in multi-
functional landscapes.Paper prepared for the World
Forestry Congress, Quebec, Canada, September.
Sheng, F. (No date.) Wants, Needs and Rights:
Economic Instruments and Biodiversity Conser-
vation, a dialogue. WWF, Gland, Switzerland.
95 Brown et al, 2002.
Part B
Key Preparatory Steps Toward
Restoring Forests Within a
Landscape Context
Section IV
Overview of the Planning Process
1. Background and
Explanation of the Issue
1.1. Why Planning?
Restoration of natural systems is a difficult,
energy-consuming, and expensive undertaking.
It is almost always a long-term, complex, and
transdisciplinary process.96 This is particularly
true when dealing with highly degraded ecosys-
tems and landscapes. Inevitably, conflicts of
interest and other problems arise.
Ecologically speaking, the restoration of
highly degraded forest usually requires initiat-
ing an embryonic ecosystem within a few years
(usually less than 10 to 15 years after degrada-
tion), which will be only fully restored—very
often after additional corrective or fine-tuning
interventions—after a period of at least 50
years in the tropics,and of 100 years or more in
the extratropical zones. However, forest poli-
cies and restoration programmes are generally
financed only on a short- to medium-term basis.
A 10- to 15-year project span, in most cases, is
the longest possible perspective, both for polit-
ical and financial reasons. Bearing this in mind,
restorationists should (1) adapt short-term
restoration goals and techniques to minimise
the number of costly corrective actions; and (2)
plan ahead to secure funds for carrying out
monitoring and evaluation, corrective actions,
or “aftercare” in the long term.
Also, forest restoration requires inputs and
expertise from various academic and practi-
tioner fields97 like ecology, silviculture, eco-
nomics, public policy, and the social sciences,
which need to be combined in an efficient way.
Meanwhile, the relative lack of experience
with broad-scale conservation means that filling
the knowledge gaps through research pro-
grammes also takes time. Five to 10 years is the
minimum period needed to investigate critical
9
An Attempt to Develop a Framework
for Restoration Planning
Daniel Vallauri, James Aronson, and Nigel Dudley
Key Points to Retain
While no two restoration experiences will
follow the same pattern, indicative steps to
planning a restoration initiative are impor-
tant, particularly when dealing with large
scales or landscapes.
Success depends on wise planning, balancing
short-term with long-term goals, and allocat-
ing the funding available for the restoration
programme as efficiently as possible.
Learning from past restoration programmes
and their successes and failures is an impor-
tant starting point to help plan better res-
toration actions in the future.
There are few tools dealing with planning
restoration in large scales.A five-step logical
planning process is being proposed.
65
96 Pickett and Parker, 1994. 97 Clewell and Rieger, 1997.
66 D. Vallauri et al
questions like natural dynamics, nursery and
plantation techniques for native species, etc.
However, very little money is available to
finance pure research programmes unless they
can be linked to real implementation and
visible successes in the field. Bearing this in
mind, restorationists should define short-term
goals and activities that get restoration under-
way, along with long-term goals for how it can
be sustained over the time period required. A
critical, pragmatic aim is to achieve at least
some rapid field results, for example on care-
fully selected pilot sites, to build support for
longer term efforts.
Finally, forest landscape restoration, as
developed in this book, requires a concerted
approach among stakeholders and communi-
ties, to develop a shared and accepted vision
and goals for the future of the landscape in
question. This also takes time and should be
planned for, but at the same time should lead
rapidly to tangible changes or outcomes that
really engage stakeholders and people living in
the region in a lasting and meaningful manner.
Success in forest restoration depends on wise
planning,98,99 both in time and in space, balanc-
ing short-term goals with long-term goals, and
allocating the funding available for the restora-
tion programme as efficiently as possible.
Accordingly, a clear step-by-step plan of action
is needed for success. This was very often
lacking in past restoration programmes, espe-
cially site-oriented ones, and has led to many
failures or difficulties that often emerge only
decades after the first restoration efforts were
begun.
1.2. Restoring Step by Step
Where restoration is to be carried out as part
of a wider conservation effort, at the landscape
or ecoregional levels, we would propose that it
be planned as an embedded element within an
integrated programme that also involves pro-
tection of whatever is left of untouched nature,
and the promotion of good ecosystem man-
agement, as guided by the principles of ste-
wardship, sustainability, and sustained use. We
have already outlined some possible elements
in a protect–manage–restore programme in
the introduction to this book. This approach
includes identifying a series of conservation
targets—in this context, what forest functions
we wish to restore—and “reconciling” these
with the needs, tastes, and expectations of
other stakeholders, especially the indigenous
populations.
Conceptualisation of the process of imple-
menting restoration programmes is very new.
We propose below an outline of a planning
framework, following a five-step logical plan-
ning process. In the context of a broad-scale
conservation strategy, then, the following steps
help lead to the development and realisation of
restoration achievements.
1.2.1. Step 1: Initiating a Restoration
Programme and Partnerships
An essential first step of any forest landscape
restoration programme is the identification of
the problem being addressed and agreement on
the solutions and the targets for restoration.
Such targets should ideally contribute to wider
ecological and socioeconomical objectives at a
landscape scale.Very often,restorationists must
start from zero to raise awareness on the state
of degradation in the landscape, analyse the
root causes, and then convince other stake-
holders of both the need for and the feasibility
of forest restoration. Depending on the context
(the existing level of awareness, politics, funds
available, etc.), this step could last for several
years and require extensive effort.
Experience suggests that restoration usually
only works in the long term if it has support
from a significant proportion of local stake-
holders. Finding out the needs and opinions
of stakeholders is therefore important: What
forest functions do they want to restore and are
there potential clashes of interest? It should be
recognised that the restorationists (conserva-
tion NGO or other) are themselves stakehold-
ers with a particular interest (i.e., restoring
biodiversity), which may need to be reconciled
with other stakeholders’ priorities.
98 Aronson et al, 1993.
99 Wyant et al, 1995a,b.
9. An Attempt to Develop a Framework for Restoration Planning 67
Outputs of this step are:
• recognition and common understanding of
the degradation, root causes, and solutions;
stakeholders’ involvement and participation;
partnership development for an efficient
restoration programme (written key ideas of
the programme and memorandum of under-
standing); and
secured budget for the restoration pro-
gramme for at least a first pluri-annual period
(e.g., five years).
1.2.2. Step 2: Defining Restoration
Needs, Linking Restoration to
Large-Scale Conservation Vision
Here is a step that is not necessarily easy to
“sell” to local stakeholders. The geographical
scope can be much wider than many people
are used to working with or even concep-
tualising (or want to work with, as it has
some implications for development, too).
Ideally, as mentioned above, a vision and
strategy for restoration should be developed
within an integrated “protect–manage–restore”
approach, especially because the investment
needed to restore has to be reinforced through
synergy with management and protection
activities.
Assessment is needed to determine how
restoration targets might be achieved, including
determining current or potential benefits from
forests in the landscape (biodiversity, environ-
mental services, and resources for subsistence
or sale) and the potential for restoration
through use of reference forests and other tech-
niques. An important part of the process is
deciding the realistic boundary of the area or
areas that we wish to restore. Definition of key
areas for protection, analysis of degradation,
and the predictive anticipation of threats can all
help to define priority landscapes where invest-
ment in restoration is most justified.
Outputs of this step are:
definition of conservation targets at various
pertinent scales (ecoregion, landscape);
• analysis of the broad consequences on the
landscape of past degradation, active pres-
sure, and potential threats;
• definition of the role of restoration along
with identification of protection and man-
agement needs; and
identification of the priority areas that
require restoration and explanation of the
reasons why: Which landscapes, landscape
units, or landscape functions do we need to
restore? Which species do we need to eradi-
cate, control or reintroduce?
1.2.3. Step 3: Defining Restoration
Strategy and Tactics, Including
Land-Use Scenarios
Considering ecological characteristics, but also
socioeconomical context or goals assigned to
the restoration project, several trajectories and
restoration options could be developed for the
same project. Choosing among these options
requires careful study and data gathering.
This will necessarily mean reconciling differ-
ent points of view and opinions.Agreement can
be a phased and continuing process; that is, it
may be possible to agree to some specific and
useful restoration interventions without reach-
ing agreement about the whole future of the
landscape. The way in which such agreements
are reached will naturally depend on the polit-
ical and social realities of particular countries
or regions; the general principle that decisions
should be as participatory as possible applies
throughout.
Outputs of this step are:
assessment of current/potential benefits
from the landscape for people, and for
biodiversity;
assessment of the current, past,and reference
landscape states;
definition of what we can expect to restore;
development of possible land-use scenarios
in space (including maps);
• development of possible restoration trajec-
tories to achieve short-term and long-term
goals (including models, time frames, and
maps);
• reconciliation of land-use options: how can
we achieve specific goals while meeting or
reconciling conflicting demands, tastes, and
needs?;
68 D. Vallauri et al
• set of goals, strategies, and tactics for each
zone and problem in the landscape;
set of priorities in space and time;
identification of restoration trajectories,tech-
nical options, steps, and phases, (especially
remembering the monitoring and “fine-
tuning” phases necessary to fully achieve
long term restoration goals); and
A written restoration plan, strategy, and set
of tactics, with identified time frames, maps,
allocated funds, and quantified targets.
1.2.4. Step 4: Implementing Restoration
This step is the most visible part of the work,
and usually the most costly. Some projects
start here, for example, by directly investing all
the available funds to plant trees on an
emblematic or strategic site. However, this
ignores the previous planning steps recom-
mended above and can easily end up wasting
time and resources in restoration activities that
either do not work or are in suboptimal loca-
tions. It is of course judicious to start small-
scale actions,such as one or more pilot sites, for
the sake of “learning by doing,” to demonstrate
the feasibility of key restoration goals and to
test silvicultural techniques (for example plant-
ing, but also natural regeneration). But we
would strongly recommend that larger scale
activities also be undertaken in the context of
careful planning and assessment as outlined in
steps above.
Outputs of this step are:
development of pilot sites;
implementation of large-scale actions;
• lessons learned from first results, both suc-
cesses and failures; and
design and implementation of changes/
adaptation in the restoration programme.
1.2.5. Step 5: Piloting Systems Toward
Fully Restored Ecosystems
In practice, a few years or decades after start-
ing implementation, even if restoration has
hitherto been successful, unexpected results
of previous work or changing circumstances
(evolution of the socioeconomic context, for
example) could alter the most preferable
restoration trajectory. This could even lead in
some cases to redefining overall project goals.
Such modifications should not be considered as
a failure of the overall programme, but rather
as a normal step in the restoration of a complex
set of ecosystems within a larger landscape
matrix.
Thus, the restoration work is not “finished
after planting.” To sustain restoration success
in the long run, and to anticipate potential
problems, a simple monitoring and evaluation
framework (see section “Monitoring and Eval-
uation”) needs to be set up from the outset of
the programme in order to facilitate adaptive
management and corrective actions.
Outputs of this step are:
regular evaluation (social, economical,
ecological);
restoration trajectory reappraisal; and
design and implementation of corrective
actions.
2. Examples
As yet, there are few full-scale forest landscape
restoration programmes, although their num-
bers are rapidly increasing. The following ex-
amples show both the need for planning and
broad-scale restoration planning in practice.
These examples show not only how a planning
framework can be implemented, but also how
problems can arise by forgetting one step.
2.1. New Caledonia: From
Awareness to Restoration of
Tropical Dry Forests (Step 1)
It took 15 years from the first alarm signals by
scientists to the first significant pilot plantings or
protection of sites within a forest landscape
restoration initiative in New Caledonia. Atten-
tion to the tropical dry forests of New Caledo-
nia began to grow in the early 1990s. In 1998,
WWF, the global conservation organisation,
launched an effort to organise a consortium of
9. An Attempt to Develop a Framework for Restoration Planning 69
research institutions,local government agencies,
and NGOs (10 partners) to create a tropical dry
forests programme. Underway since 2001, this
programme has already carried out much of the
preliminary reconnaissance and mapping in dif-
ferent tropical dry forest fragments, as well
as ecological, silvicultural, and horticultural
studies of great importance to restoration
efforts slated to begin in the field in 2005.Two of
the authors (Aronson and Vallauri), who have
been involved in this restoration programme,
consider that partners should work to prepare
now as soon as possible a protect–manage–
restore approach and restoration at broad scale
in a large priority landscape,like the ecologically
outstanding landscape of Gouaro Deva (see
“Restoring Dry Tropical Forests”).
2.2. Vietnam: Integrating
Restoration into a Landscape
Approach Across Seven
Provinces (Step 2)
The Central Truong Son initiative, covering
seven provinces in central Vietnam inland from
Dalat, is developing an integrated approach to
forest protection, management, and restora-
tion. Comparatively large areas of natural
forest remain standing, although often in poor
or highly degraded condition. There are major
plantation developments of varying success,
and the government is committed to maintain-
ing protected areas. The new Ho Chi Minh
Highway is bringing rapid social and envi-
ronmental changes, some of which directly
threaten remaining natural forests.The Central
Truong Son initiative has identified priority
landscapes and used a gap analysis, coupled
with a detailed study of forest quality, to pin-
point the most effective areas for restoring
natural forest in terms of increasing forest con-
nectivity and protecting biodiversity; these are
currently around the buffer zone of Song Thanh
nature reserve and in a so-called green corridor
area linking several patches of natural forest.
Elsewhere, more generally the project is
seeking to increase the proportion of forest
restoration funds used for natural regeneration
(see case study “Monitoring Forest Landscape
Restoration—Vietnam”).
2.3. France: The Consequences of a
Lack of Ecological Monitoring
(Step 5)
In the early 1860s,an ambitious “Restoration of
Mountain Lands” initiative was set up by the
French forest administration in the southern
Alps, primarily for the purpose of erosion
control. A wide range of plant material was
used, including native shrubs and grasses, but
no particular preference was given to native
trees for replanting. Over 60,000 hectares
were thus planted between 1860 and 1914, using
mainly Pinus nigra Arn. subsp. nigra Host.
These efforts have proved effective at stopping
the average erosion rate (of 0.7mm per year)
on black marls. Nevertheless, although rehabil-
itated in the sense that erosion has been halted
and badlands forested, these ecosystems were
not fully restored. No fine-tuning assistance
and ecological evaluation was carried out until
recently.100 The forest soils were now better pro-
tected, as shown by the study of soil biological
activity, especially earthworm communities.
However, the rehabilitated ecosystems were
facing two new ecological problems: lack of
natural regeneration, and development of an
infestation of the pine trees by mistletoe
(Viscum album). Once management priorities
have been revised, the goal for the future is to
restore the diversity, structure, and functioning
of a native forest ecosystem. The absence of
long-term monitoring and evaluation for about
100 years did not allow a rapid adaptation of
the restoration trajectory. After a necessary
short pioneer stage with Austrian pine, the
restoration strategy should have been pursued
30 years later by a phase of autogenic restora-
tion of native biota [oak (Quercus), maple
(Acer), mountain ash (Sorbus), and others].
3. Outline of Tools
There are still few specific planning tools
designed specifically for restoration. However,
many existing conservation planning tools
could be adapted for or could include a restora-
100 Vallauri et al, 2002.
70 D. Vallauri et al
tion component. For example, Conservation
International has developed guidelines for cor-
ridors that include reference to restoration to
fill gaps in existing forest cover, although with
little detail.
The reader will find more details on the
potential tools step by step in the following sec-
tions.They include among others:
Step 1. Initiating a restoration programme and
partnerships
• Lobbying
Participatory approaches
Capacity building
Step 2. Defining restoration needs, linking
restoration to large-scale conservation vision
Ecoregional planning process (WWF)
• 5-S process and systematic conservation
planning (The Nature Conservancy)
Landscape planning
Step 3. Defining restoration strategy and
tactics, including land-use scenarios
Conceptual modelling
Geographic information systems
Ecological modelling
“Restoration vision and strategy” meetings
Step 4. Implementing restoration
Tools on plantation, natural regeneration,
species’ selection, etc.,are covered in other
sections of this book.
Step 5. Piloting systems toward fully restored
ecosystems
Restoration projects’ databases:A lot could
be learned from past restoration successes
and failures. The analysis of databases
of long-term restoration projects is very
useful, like the world restoration data-
base launched by UNEP-WCMC (http://
www.unepwcmc.org/forest/restoration/
database.htm) or the database of evaluated
restoration programmes in the Mediter-
ranean (http://www.ceam.es/reaction/)
Criteria and indicators for monitoring (see
section “Monitoring and Evaluation”)
4. Future Needs
Restoration planning in landscapes or large
scales is still in its infancy. Much further work
is needed to refine and improve the planning
process and define appropriate tools.Thus, spe-
cific work on restoration planning is highly
needed in the coming years, both in theory and
in practice. Learning from past restoration pro-
grammes and their successes and failures could
prove an efficient starting point. In time, lessons
might usefully be captured in a step-by-step
guidebook or manual specifically on this
subject and perhaps with associated software
programmes if appropriate.
References
Aronson, J., Floret, C., Le Floc’h, E., Ovalle, C., and
Pontanier, R. 1993. Restoration and rehabilitation
of degraded ecosystems in arid and semi-arid
lands. I. A view from the south. Restoration
Ecology 1:8–17.
Clewell, A., and Rieger, J.P. 1997. What practitioners
need from restoration ecologists. Restoration
Ecology 5(4):350–354.
Pickett, S.T.A., and Parker, V.T. 1994. Avoiding old
pitfalls: opportunities in a new discipline. Restora-
tion Ecology 2(2):75–79.
Vallauri, D., Aronson, J., and Barbéro, M. 2002. An
analysis of forest restoration 120 years after refor-
estation of badlands in the south-western Alps.
Restoration Ecology 10(1):16–26.
Wyant, J.G., Meganck, R.A., and Ham, S.H. 1995a.A
planning and decision-making framework for eco-
logical restoration. Environmental Management
6:789–796.
Wyant, J.G., Meganck, R.A., and Ham, S.H. 1995b.
The need for an environmental restoration deci-
sion framework. Ecological Engineering 5:417–
420.
Section V
Identifying and Addressing
Challenges/Constraints
1. Background and
Explanation of the Issue
The key to any successful restoration pro-
gramme lies in good project design that is based
on sound science, a thorough understanding of
threats and opportunities, and a strategic and
pragmatic suite of interventions chosen to mit-
igate identified threats while capitalising on key
opportunities. A comprehensive threat assess-
ment goes beyond merely identifying the
factors, behaviours, and practices that pose a
challenge to forest restoration, but includes an
analysis of the underlying social, economic,and
political incentives that drive such behaviours.
1.1. Information Needed for
Threat Assessment
For restoration programmes, a good threat
assessment provides actionable information
that can be used to define the scope of inter-
ventions. Information should be timely, verifi-
able, and collected in a cost- and time-effective
manner. Restoration programmes are not
immune to the all too common pitfall of invest-
ing considerable time and resources in collect-
ing a tremendous amount of data that, while
perhaps new and interesting, is not particularly
relevant to making decisions about the best
way to undertake restoration activities. To
avoid this pitfall it is often useful to frame a
threat assessment by exploring different types
of threats—direct, indirect, and potential.
1.2. Types of Threats
Direct threats are those with immediate and
clear causal links to the negative impact of
forest degradation or loss. Indirect threats,
often referred to as root causes,101 are the
underlying drivers behind direct threats.Poten-
tial threats are those threats that, while cur-
rently not posing a significant challenge to
forest restoration, have the potential to under-
10
Assessing and Addressing Threats in
Restoration Programmes
Doreen Robinson
Key Points to Retain
Threats may be direct, indirect, or potential.
Before undertaking a large-scale restoration
effort, it is important to understand threats
in all three categories.
A variety of tools for undertaking threat
assessment and integrating the results into
forest restoration programmes have been
tested around the world. In most cases, tools
will need to be used in conjunction with
others or may need to be modified to fit local
circumstances.
A key challenge for restoration programmes
is to expand the breadth of expertise inte-
grated into assessment and analysis through
multidisciplinary teams.
73
101 Wood et al. 2000.
74 D. Robinson
mine such investments in the future. Given that
forest restoration is a necessarily long-term
conservation intervention, it is important to
include such a temporal component in threat
analysis.
For restoration programmes around the
world a number of common direct threats have
been identified, including habitat fragmen-
tation, unsustainable use, and overharvesting
of forest resources, pollution, and invasive
species—all contributing to the breakdown of
ecological processes that are critical to the
healthy functioning of natural forest systems.
Underlying drivers of such threats are often
related to policies that favour rapid and unsus-
tainable conversion of forests for short-term
economic gains. Markets for forest products,
including global markets for products like
timber and palm oil or local markets for fuel-
wood, can drive forest degradation and loss,
particularly when market dynamics externalise
true costs.
Persistent conflict and civil unrest may force
local dependence on forest resources to expand
rapidly, given both a lack of alternatives to meet
livelihood needs or an influx of migrants and
displaced persons fleeing from conflict zones
into forest areas. Moreover, in many cases,
forest resources are the only resources readily
available to generate the cash necessary to con-
tinue such conflicts. In such situations, the
prospects for successful restoration are limited
if underlying governance and conflict issues are
not addressed.
Other common indirect threats to forest
restoration include a lack of knowledge and
skills regarding the science and research behind
appropriate habitat restoration and a lack of
technical capacity to implement activities on
the ground. A lack of political will and broad
stakeholder support for restoration activities
plagues many restoration programmes world-
wide. Such a lack of support is often tied to a
perception of high transaction costs or limited
benefits associated with undertaking restora-
tion. Given the time frame required for restora-
tion projects, both a lack of sustained financial
resources and unsure resource and land tenure
rights combined can create a strong disincen-
tive for undertaking restoration activities.
2. Examples
2.1. Madagascar
In southern Madagascar the U.S. Agency for
International Development is partnering with
the Communes of Ampasy-Nahampoana and
Mandromodromotra, the Department of Water
and Forests (La Circonscription des Eaux et
Forêts–CIREF) and QIT Madagascar Minerals
(QMM) to undertake forest restoration activi-
ties in the Mandena Conservation Zone. The
region’s forests are highly fragmented as a
result of extraction of forest resources to meet
the rising fuelwood needs of a growing popula-
tion and increasing slash-and-burn agriculture,
among other threats.This is one of the poorest
regions of Madagascar, and the reliance of local
populations on the forests to meet livelihood
needs is driving forest loss and degradation.
A thorough understanding of the threats and
opportunities of this region identified by QMM
in collaboration with the communes, commu-
nity leaders, and regional government repre-
sentatives produced a diverse set of innovative
activities intended to mitigate direct threats of
forest fragmentation and indirect threats asso-
ciated with poverty. For example, in exchange
for rights to mine ilmenite across the region—
intended to stimulate economic growth and
generate income within the region—QMM has
agreed to invest in forest restoration in blocks
adjacent to existing protected areas of primary
forest harbouring significant biodiversity. The
restoration will not only expand the area of
contiguous forest, but also improve the health
of the forest, protect critical water cycling
processes, and is also tied to investment and
development of ecotourism in the region. To
mitigate deforestation of remaining intact areas
driven by increasing local demand for fuelwood
and charcoal, plantations of fast-growing
species on already degraded or deforested land
are also being supported.
Even with a solid understanding of threats,
the ability to address forest restoration, bio-
diversity, and local development needs in
southern Madagascar is certainly not without
challenges.A lack of knowledge and capacity in
local forest ecology made the identification of
10. Assessing and Addressing Threats in Restoration Programmes 75
relevant native pioneer species a significant
challenge, requiring over 8 years of research
and a multimillion dollar investment to develop
appropriate protocols for forest restoration.
Perhaps the greatest challenges faced by part-
ners now are how to scale up interventions
beyond initial target restoration sites and to
engage new collaborators in order to effectively
address the true magnitude of threats driving
forest degradation and loss across the entire
region.
2.2. Atlantic Forest in Argentina
In the Andresito region of Misiones,Argentina,
Fundación Vida Silvestre Argentina (FVSA)
and WWF are helping to restore key areas of
forest adjacent to the Green Corridor, the
largest remaining area of contiguous Atlantic
forest in the world. The area has been signifi-
cantly deforested by rapidly growing human
populations to support small-scale agriculture
and meet human fuelwood needs.
To develop a detailed restoration strategy for
the region, FVSA undertook a thorough analy-
sis of threats and opportunities, combining on-
the-ground surveys, economic analyses, and
GIS tools. FVSA began by developing detailed
land use maps for each parcel of land in the
region based on the current tenure. Detailed
land use maps were then overlaid with biolog-
ical and socioeconomic data to identify key
opportunities for creating forest restoration
corridors that could meet overarching forest
restoration goals. Research on biodiversity-
friendly production practices for local forest
and shade products was also undertaken with
several universities in Argentina to assess
potential economic gains from alternative con-
servation friendly enterprises. Pilot restoration
plots using different species and production
techniques were established to assess both eco-
logical and economic costs and benefits (also
see case study “Finding Economically Sustain-
able Means of Preserving and Restoring the
Atlantic Forest in Argentina”).With poverty on
the rise in the region, alternative income gen-
eration opportunities are a critical incentive
for landowners to begin undertaking forest
restoration.
Armed with these analyses and research
results, FVSA continues to engage in a par-
ticipatory process with individual private
landowners, local cooperatives, government
representatives, and others to develop appro-
priate long-term land use management options
that include a mix of reforestation, timber har-
vesting, nontimber forest product production,
and other uses. By including a spatially explicit
component of such land use management plans,
stakeholders are continuously able to see not
only how restoration practices benefit them, but
also how they are contributing to a broader
sustainable vision for the entire region. Cur-
rently, the major challenge for this project
also involves scaling up. FVSA is focussed
on helping stakeholders expand the adoption
of new production alternatives, sustainable
resource use management practices, and devel-
oping carbon credit schemes to mitigate high
restoration costs in order to achieve restoration
goals over the long term.
2.3. Using a Three-Dimensional
Model to Identify Threats
in Vietnam
In the area surrounding the Song Thanh Nature
Reserve in the Quang Nam Province of
Vietnam, WWF and partners undertook a par-
ticipatory landscape planning process with
community members from nine villages.102 A
“papier-mâché” 1 :10,000 model of the 30,000-
hectare landscape surrounding the reserve
was used to facilitate planning and decision
making amongst villagers and forestry sector
employees.
Using paints, pins, and yarn to depict land
use, natural resource elements, threats, and
relationships,animated discussions and debates
helped inform an integrated management plan
focussed on a suite of protection, management,
and restoration activities.In particular, through
the modelling process, threats from illegal gold
mining activities were identified and hotly
debated, and have been raised with relevant
authorities. Elderly people, women, and chil-
dren were all able to contribute to the model-
102 Hardcastle et al, 2004.
76 D. Robinson
ling exercise, facilitating broader community
involvement in decision making and buy-in
for the planning process. While the three-
dimensional (3D) mapping of threats provided
a good way to engage communities in restora-
tion planning, solid facilitation and conflict res-
olution skills were critical in ensuring success.
This relatively cost-effective activity is now
being replicated in other areas in the region in
order to develop an integrated land and
resource management plan at a larger land-
scape scale.
3. Outline of Tools
A variety of tools for undertaking threat assess-
ment and integrating such analysis into forest
restoration programmes have been tested
around the world.While no one tool is ideal for
all situations, certain aspects are useful for pro-
gramme implementers to consider when select-
ing and modifying existing tools to meet specific
forest restoration goals, including stakeholder
participation, flexibility/adaptability of analysis,
costs (e.g., time, human resources, financial
resources, etc.), iterative nature of information
gathering and analyses, processes to include
new and updated information, communicability
of outputs to appropriate audiences,and ability
to incorporate different types of data (i.e.,qual-
itative vs. quantitative).
Research studies, literature reviews, ecologi-
cal and socioeconomic surveys, focus groups,
and key informant interviews are all techniques
that are used to gather relevant information
needed to undertake threat analyses.A number
of tools can be used, singularly or in combina-
tion, to carry out the actual analysis.
Conceptual modelling103 is commonly used
to show linkages and complex relationships
between threats and their impacts while pro-
viding a strategic framework for thinking about
appropriate project interventions. Conceptual
models explicitly identify the restoration
factors that programmes are intended to influ-
ence while characterising both direct and indi-
rect forces affecting these factors. Conceptual
models are particularly good for teasing out
root causes, integrating interdisciplinary per-
spectives and are generally supported by a mix
of quantitative and qualitative background
data. They can be quite participatory if multi-
ple stakeholders are brought in as part of facil-
itated discussions.However, conceptual models
can get very complex and make it challenging
to identify and prioritise interventions.
Threat matrices are a useful way to link
threat assessment to project goals and specific
activities. Matrices can vary from relatively
simple to complex logframes where forest
restoration targets are explicitly stated, with
relevant threats, activities, and potential indica-
tors for monitoring change over time explicitly
tied to these targets.Matrices are good for tying
threat analysis to specific activities and strate-
gic interventions and are easily updated as
adaptive management is practised. The under-
lying assumptions linking threats to targets and
activities can be obscure and should be explic-
itly stated and supported by both qualitative
and quantitative analysis.
Threat mapping104 can be used to assess
threats for a forest restoration area—in the
form of either a pictorial map or 3D models
made out of clay, wood, or other materials (see
above example in Vietnam).These maps are the
basis for discussion of changes in forest habitat
quantity or quality, often with community
groups. The process involves facilitated discus-
sion to ensure that different members of the
community with differential knowledge of
threats offer their insights. For example, elders
may have knowledge of the historical extent of
the forest, women and men may have very dif-
ferent perceptions of threats related to the dif-
ferent forest resources they use and manage,
and so on. When used appropriately this is
a highly participatory tool that effectively
incorporates qualitative data and generates a
product that multiple stakeholders can use.
Threat mapping is often most effective when
used in combination with some of the other
more quantitatively oriented tools.
GIS-based tools offer more advanced threat
mapping by reflecting quantitative data in
103 Robinson, 2000; WCS, 2004. 104 Biodiversity Support Programme, 1995.
10. Assessing and Addressing Threats in Restoration Programmes 77
sophisticated spatial maps. Direct threats, such
as habitat fragmentation, can be represented in
maps by showing changes in data over time.
GIS-based threat assessment tools can range
from simple maps that reflect data collected
on the ground to complex decision-support
systems incorporating threat data into pro-
grammes that model alternative scenarios and
outcomes using criteria established by users.
Visual products reflect alternative scenarios,
and an appropriate and transparent criteria and
value-setting process can help generate signifi-
cant buy-in from stakeholders engaged in the
process.These tools are heavily reliant on quan-
tifiable data, and depending on the specific
technology, their utility may suffer from limited
or unreliable data. GIS-based threat assess-
ment requires technical skills and equipment.
These tools are particularly useful for gener-
ating baseline data sets and for monitor-
ing change over time from restoration
interventions.
4. Future Needs
A key challenge to forest restoration pro-
grammes is more effective integration of rele-
vant threat analysis that is critical for making
pragmatic and real decisions. Threat analysis
has been seen as a discrete background
research activity that, once completed, often
gets put on a shelf, never to be revisited as part
of strategic programme development and adap-
tive management. The gap between threat
assessment, often seen as primarily scientific
and academic investigations, and actual project
implementation needs to be more effectively
breached.
To improve the rigour and utility of threat
assessments for forest restoration, approaches
for undertaking integrated and multidisci-
plinary analyses also need to be refined.
Biologists, social scientists, conservation prac-
titioners,policy makers,economists,community
leaders, and investors all bring a different lens
to threat analysis.Through a combined view of
the factors affecting restoration, more informed
and pragmatic decisions can be made regarding
trade-offs that inevitably must be made in the
real world.
References
Biodiversity Support Programme. 1995. Indigenous
peoples, mapping and biodiversity conservation:
An analysis of current activities and opportunities
for applying geomatics technologies. Washington,
DC, 83 pp.
Hardcastle, J., Rambaldi, G., Long, B., Le Van Lanh,
and Do Quoc Son. 2004. The use of participatory
three-dimensional modelling in community-based
planning in Quang Nam province, Vietnam. PLA
Notes 49:70–76.
Robinson, D. 2000. Assessing Root Causes—A
User’s Guide.WWF Macroeconomics Programme
Office, Washington, DC, 40 pp.
Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). 2004. Creat-
ing conceptual models—a tool for thinking strate-
gically. Living Landscapes Technical Manual 2,
8 pp.
Wood, A., Stedman-Edwards, P., and Mang, J. 2000.
The Root Causes of Biodiversity Loss. WWF/
Earthscan, 398 pp.
Additional Reading
Salafsky, N., and Margoluis, R.1999.Threat reduction
assessment to: a practical and cost-effective
approach to evaluating Conservation and Devel-
opment Projects. Conservation Biology 13(14):
830–841.
Verolme, H.J.H., and Moussa, J. 1999. Addressing the
Underlying Causes of Deforestation and Forest
Degradation—Case Studies, Analysis and Policy
Recommendations. Biodiversity Action Network,
Washington, DC, 141 pp.
Wildlife Conservation Society. 2004. Participatory
spatial assessment of human activities—a tool for
conservation planning. Living Landscapes Techni-
cal Manual 1, 12 pp.
WWF. 2000.A guide to socio-economic assessments
for ecoregion conservation. Ecoregional Conser-
vation Strategies Unit, 18 pp.
1. Background and
Explanation of the Issue
In some countries, government incentives for
particular kinds of restoration have distorted
approaches to the conservation, restoration,
and management of forests.Government incen-
tives to the forest industry for restoring forest
cover have traditionally been aimed mainly at
supporting plantation development. In light of
the financial costs of these incentive schemes,
and criticism from some environment and
social welfare groups, questions have been
raised about the economic, environmental,
and social benefits of these schemes. Although
many public incentives in forestry have pro-
vided some employment and income opportu-
nities, questions remain about the overall costs
of such schemes and about who will bear these
costs in the longer term. For example, some
studies have pointed out social and equity con-
cerns when subsidies are captured by a few
actors,such as large companies and landowners.
In Chile, 80 percent of public incentive pay-
ments for the establishment of plantations have
gone to three companies.105 Other poorly
designed incentive schemes have resulted in
increased conversion of natural forests and
land degradation. The key question is: Are
public funds for afforestation and reforestation
directed toward projects that provide net ben-
efits to society?
A case study review by Perrin106 showed that
government incentive programmes in refor-
estation and afforestation activities tend to
suffer from poor design, a lack of enforcement
mechanisms, and little or no monitoring. Public
incentives are often applied for short-term tree
planting activities that inadequately address
sustainability, biodiversity, and livelihood con-
cerns. Little emphasis is paid to ensuring that
public incentives contribute to restoring forest
functions and resources, and they seldom
benefit from adequate stakeholder participa-
11
Perverse Policy Incentives
Kirsten Schuyt
Key Points to Retain
Many government incentive programmes in
reforestation and afforestation suffer from
poor design, lack of enforcement,and lack of
monitoring, and are aimed at short-term
tree-planting activities.
As a result, government support for such
schemes acts as a perverse incentive that can
sometimes undermine efforts at introduc-
ing more balanced or equitable forms of
restoration.
Instead, incentives need to be redirected
toward a wider more integrated approach.
This allows broader benefits to society, the
involvement of local partners and stake-
holders, and effective monitoring and
evaluation.
78
105 Bazett and Associates, 2000.
106 Perrin, 2003.
11. Perverse Policy Incentives 79
tion. There is also a general lack of adequate
monitoring and enforcement mechanisms,
meaning that incentives are easily misused.
The Convention on Biological Diversity107
identifies three common types of perverse
policy incentives:
Environmentally perverse government subsi-
dies: Many different definitions exist in the
literature as to what a subsidy is. In general,
they include direct subsidies (such as grants
and payments to consumers or producers);
tax policies (tax credits, exemptions, allo-
wances, and so on); capital cost subsidies
(preferential loans or debt forgiveness);
public provision of public goods and services
below cost; and policies that create transfers
through the market mechanism (such as
price regulations and quantity controls).
Such subsidies may have a negative impact
on biological resources by directly encourag-
ing behaviour that leads to biodiversity loss.
Another example of perverse effects of sub-
sidies is that they may drain scarce public
finances that could have been used to con-
serve biodiversity.
• Persistence of environmental externalities:
Some governmental policies may contribute
to the persistence of negative externalities.
For example, government policies may weaken
traditional property rights systems,where such
rights reside within customary law or cultural
traditions. This absence of well-defined prop-
erty rights at private or communal level
may lead to pollution and overexploitation
of natural resources, resulting in negative
externalities or costs to third parties.
Laws and customary practices governing
resource use: An example of formal law gen-
erating perverse incentives is beneficial use
laws requiring land users to make productive
use of water and forest resources to secure
land entitlement. On the other hand, the
clearing of land may be rooted in customary
law to indicate a claim to an area, leading to
perverse incentives.
Perverse incentive schemes, however, can be
redirected to promote restoration practices that
will offer benefits to conservation and to a wide
range of stakeholders. In this respect, forest
landscape restoration offers important tools for
good practices in restoration, and the key lies
in promoting these tools to redirect existing
perverse incentive schemes toward restoration
that benefits conservation and society. Some
examples are provided below.
2. Examples108
2.1. Public Incentives for Plantation
Development, Indonesia
Deforestation is a major problem in Indonesia.
The Indonesian government began promoting
the development of industrial tree plantations
in the 1980s to boost industrial development
in wood-based industries and the oil palm
sector. Several government incentives were
put in place to stimulate timber plantation
development, including interest-free loans, allo-
cation of state-owned land, absence of land
taxes, and so on. Large sums of money could
also be obtained through the Reforestation
Fund. Another incentive came from the
International Monetary Fund–backed restruc-
turing of the corporate and banking sector in
the late 1990s, which was poorly implemented
and led to subsidies and financing being pro-
vided to badly managed and corrupt forest
companies.
In an attempt to redirect some of these
public incentives,WWF,the global conservation
organisation, has collaborated with the Centre
for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)
to restructure debt agreements related to the
forest and oil palm assets of the Indonesian
Bank Restructuring Agency. This reform is to
include a series of checks and balances among
the state, private sector, and civil society to mit-
igate structural pressures on the economy and
forests, which should help prevent the use of
funding for unsustainable and sometimes illegal
plantation development as has happened in the
past.
107 CBD, 2002. 108 Perrin, 2003.
80 K. Schuyt
2.2. CAP and SAPARD
Forestry-Related Incentives,
European Union
Two key programmes of the European Com-
mission (EC) that provide incentives for
afforestation and reforestation are the Com-
munity Regulation Directive 2080/92 (later
introduced as part of the Common Agricultural
Policy, CAP), which promotes afforestation of
agricultural land, and the Special Action for
Pre-Accession Measures for Agriculture and
Rural Development (SAPARD), which focusses
on rural development in European Union
(EU) accession countries and includes fund-
ing for afforestation. Both of these schemes
have been widely criticised as perverse incen-
tives (also see the case study that follows this
chapter).
Under the CAP, detailed analysis in 1997
suggested that the decrease in utilised agricul-
tural land was marginal and that the role
of afforestation under CAP had been over-
estimated. Also, the application of the direc-
tive varied between member states, with six
countries accounting for more than 90 per-
cent of total area planted. Lastly, the analysis
found examples where funds had been mis-
spent—for instance, in Spain, where farmers
frequently planted, cleared, and replanted the
same plots, all with subsidised funds from the
EU.
Under SAPARD, it has been noted that the
procedures have proven to be a big burden for
many countries. In addition, concerns have
been raised about some of the damaging
impacts of SAPARD, such as the use of chem-
ical protection, fence building,and construction
of new roads. Also, no requirements are given
under SAPARD for a minimum percentage
of native tree species to be planted or incen-
tives to enhance environmentally sound man-
agement practices. Environmental measures
related to forests are only marginally included
in national plans.
WWF is working both in the context of
CAP and the EU enlargement process to
ensure that EC policies promote sustainable
rural development. For example, in 2001 WWF
undertook a comprehensive review study of
SAPARD-related forestry measures, and it
also took part in the midterm review of the
CAP. Some of the main issues that emerged
relate to improving monitoring and follow-up
with different beneficiaries of afforestation
subsidies.
2.3. Grain-for-Green
Programme, China
The goal of China’s Grain-for-Green pro-
gramme, launched in 2000, was to convert steep
cultivated land to forest and pasture. It was ini-
tiated as a result of severe flooding in China
that was blamed on excessive logging and cul-
tivation along the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers.
The programme is expected to turn more than
340,000 hectares of farmland and 430,000
hectares of bare mountain back to forests.
These activities are to be carried out by the
communities and subsidised by the govern-
ment. In return for afforestation and reforesta-
tion activities, communities receive grain, cash,
and seedlings.
The positive effects of the incentive pro-
gramme so far are that the incentives have
contributed to afforestation and reforesta-
tion activities as well as natural forest protec-
tion. However, the long-term sustainability
of the programme remains uncertain along
with its ability to prevent soil erosion. Much
restoration has involved planting orchards
on steep slopes, which do little or nothing to
stop soil erosion. An important weakness of
the programme has been a lack of monitoring
and virtually no evaluation of the policy
implementation.
The Chinese government has been open to
reviewing its scheme following preliminary rec-
ommendations by WWF. The Centre for Inter-
national Forestry Research has also undertaken
a thorough assessment of the lessons learned
from this scheme (see “Local Participation,
Livelihood Needs, and Institutional Arrange-
ments”) as well as other reforestation/rehabili-
tation efforts in China and provided a number
of concrete recommendations.
11. Perverse Policy Incentives 81
3. Outline of Tools
Options to remove or mitigate public perverse
incentives in the forestry sector are described
here. Perrin109 recommends redirecting public
incentives within the context of the forest
landscape restoration approach. This means
governments and donor agencies need to (1)
allocate resources to the development of alter-
native forms of afforestation and reforestation
activities that provide broader benefits to the
environment and society, (2) involve local part-
ners and stakeholders in incentive schemes
(mechanisms for consultation and participation
need to be put in place), and (3) spend resources
on regulating the application of incentive pro-
grammes for afforestation and reforestation
activities and monitoring the impacts of such
activities (including developing sets of indica-
tors and criteria to assist monitoring). This
needs to be accompanied by the necessary
policy measures, institutional arrangements,
and monitoring and compliance mechanisms.
In this respect, the CBD110 recommends three
ideal phases:
• Identify policies or practices that generate
perverse incentives. This includes: analysing
underlying causes of biodiversity loss, identi-
fying the nature and scope of perverse incen-
tives, identifying costs and benefits to society
from removing the perverse incentives,doing
a strategic environmental assessment, and
so on.
• Design and implement appropriate reform
policies. Reforms can include the total
removal of policies or practices, or their
replacement with other policies with the
same objectives but without perverse incen-
tives, or with the introduction of additional
policies, and so on.
Monitor, enforce, and evaluate these reform
policies.This includes institutional and admin-
istrative capacity building, development of
sound indicators, stakeholder involvement,
and transparency.
4. Future Needs
Despite the fact that numerous suggestions on
how to address perverse policy incentives can
be found (as described in the previous section),
the reality is that many perverse policies still
exist in the forestry sector. The key need is to
start putting these new policies into practice,
including the need for redirecting public incen-
tives toward a forest landscape restoration
approach at all levels in cases where policies
have promoted habitat alteration or destruc-
tion and unsustainable use of natural resources.
We also need to improve our understanding of
the impacts caused by policies and practices on
biodiversity. In this respect, the CBD111 recom-
mends undertaking further work on the use of
valuation tools to assess the extent and scope
of negative impacts of policies and practices on
biodiversity.
References
Bazett, M., and Associates. 2000. Public Incentives for
Industrial Tree Plantations.WWF, Gland, Switzer-
land, and IUCN, Gland, Switzerland.
Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). 2002.
Proposals for the Application of Ways and Means
to Remove or Mitigate Perverse Incentives.Note by
the Executive Secretary, Quebec, Canada.
Perrin, M. 2003. Incentives for Forest Landscape
Restoration: Maximizing Benefits for Forests and
People. WWF Discussion Paper, WWF, Gland,
Switzerland.
Additional References
Myers,N., and Kent, J. 1998. Perverse SubsidiesTax
$ Undercutting our Economies and Environments
Alike. International Institute for Sustainable
Development, Winnipeg, Canada.
Sizer, N. 2000. Perverse Habits, the G8 and Subsidies
the Harm Forests and Economies. World
Resources Institute, Washington, DC.
109 Perrin, 2003.
110 CBD, 2002. 111 CBD, 2002.
The European Commission has been promot-
ing afforestation since 1992 under the
Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) (Direc-
tive 2080/92) as a solution to reducing agri-
cultural land and therefore, agricultural
surpluses (which are currently supported
financially through subsidies). More recently
a sister scheme has been developed, the
Special Action for Pre-accession Measures
for Agriculture and Rural Development
(SAPARD), which is applicable to European
Union (EU) accession countries and covers
the period 2000 to 2006, with a budget of over
333 million Euros.
Today, Directive 2080/92 is part of the Rural
Development Regulation (RDR), which
establishes a new framework for European
Community support for sustainable rural
development.
While the afforestation measures under the
EU had spent four billion euros by 1999 and
planted 900,000 hectares of trees, the results
in terms of the original aims of the scheme,
and also in terms of restoring forest cover and
forest functionality remained disappointing.
Some of the key problems with the CAP
afforestation directive include the following:
Limited role in taking land out of agricul-
ture: In most member states, only 1.3 to 1.4
percent of land has actually been set aside
from agriculture following its application.
Conflicting objectives: While the subsidy
scheme was largely centred around taking
land out of agriculture, many governments
and companies used the scheme to establish
timber plantations. In Ireland, for example,
the subsidies were used to establish planta-
tions with a high economic return (Sitka
spruce, pines) in order to achieve the
country’s aim to double its forest area over
the next 30 years.
Unequal distribution of subsidies and
“double dipping”: Six countries accounted
for more than 90 percent of the total area
planted (Spain, the U.K., Portugal, Ireland,
Italy, and France). In addition, individual
examples show that funds were easily mis-
spent. In Spain, the largest recipient of the
EU afforestation funds, “double dipping”
was discovered to be common, with farmers
planting, clearing, and replanting the same
plots all with subsidised funds from the
EU.
Unnecessary manipulation of natural
processes: In many cases, subsidies were
applied to reforest areas that were regener-
ating naturally. It is estimated that up to
62.5 percent of the area benefiting from the
subsidy did not actually qualify as produc-
ing an oversupply of crops.
• Inappropriate methods and species: Over
65 percent of afforestation was carried out
in areas believed at risk of fire under
Council Regulation (EEC) No. 2158/92 on
protection of the community’s forests
against fire. Planting was often done in an
ad hoc fashion, without selecting optimal
Case Study: The European Union’s
Afforestation Policies and Their Real
Impact on Forest Restoration
Stephanie Mansourian and Pedro Regato
82
Case Study: The European Union’s Afforestation Policies 83
areas to restore forest cover, nor were these
properly integrated into land use plans.
References
Perrin, M. 2003. Incentives for forest landscape
restoration: maximizing benefits for forests and
people. WWF Discussion Paper, WWF, Gland,
Switzerland.
Report to Parliament and the Council on the appli-
cation of Regulation No. 2080/92 instituting a
community aid scheme for forestry measures in
agriculture, 1996.
1. Background and
Explanation of the Issue
1.1. Forest Ownership:
An Overview
The reports “Who Owns the World’s Forests”112
and “Who Conserves the World’s Forests?”113
indicate that globally, 77 percent of forestlands
are owned by governments,7 percent by indige-
nous and local communities, and 12 percent by
individual and corporate landowners, and that
in the last 15 years the forest area owned and
administered by indigenous and local commu-
nities has doubled, reaching nearly 400 million
hectares. This reflects important changes in
forest ownership worldwide.
This chapter discusses the relationships
between forest ownership and restoration,
more specifically, the implications of the
various types and conditions of forest owner-
ship for successful restoration of forestlands.
The basic assumption in this chapter is that
forest ownership regimes matter for restoration
because the end result of forest restoration,
trees,are the centrepieces of the ecosystem, and
their consequent, associated goods and ecolog-
ical services are of direct value to people. In
other words, the basic nature of the link
between forest ownership and forest restora-
tion is the fact that forest owners (whatever
their specific regime and bundles of rights) are
driven to restore (or not) by the expectation of
goods and services that restored forests offer.
1.2. Definitions
The literature often does not distinguish “tenure”
from “property” or “ownership” of forests,
although in a more general sense “tenure”could
be linked to custom-defined bundles of rights
that are socially acknowledged, and “property”
would be identified as a status in which custom-
ary tenure becomes more “institutional”through
legal and political procedures and means.
Ownership or property itself is in essence a
bundle of rights which are defined according to
the nature of the subject and the legal frame-
12
Land Ownership and
Forest Restoration
Gonzalo Oviedo
Key Points to Retain
Forest ownership regimes matter for forest
restoration because the end result of restora-
tion, the trees, are the centrepieces of the
ecosystem, and their consequent, associated
goods and ecological services are of direct
value to people. The ownership regime
determines how such goods and services are
accessed and distributed, and therefore, is
the basis for restoration incentives.
It is necessary to undertake further research
on experiences (successful and unsuccessful)
of forest restoration under different types of
ownership, to better understand how owner-
ship rights’ systems impact on the results.
84
112 White and Martin, 2002.
113 Molnar et al, 2004.
12. Land Ownership and Forest Restoration 85
work in a given situation. Such rights can be
listed114 as the rights to (1) possess and exclu-
sively physically control, (2) use, (3) manage, (4)
draw income,(5) transmit or destroy capital, (6)
have protection from expropriation, (7) dispose
of interest on death, (8) potentially hold prop-
erty forever, (9) reversionary/residual interests
arising on expiration, (10) liability to seizure for
debts, and (11) prohibitions on harmful use.
There are many differences in the way in which
these various rights are defined and apply to
forests in different countries and social and his-
torical contexts; some of these specific rights
appear to be particularly important when
dealing with sustainable forest management
and forest restoration, as will be discussed later.
The literature distinguishes four main types
of property applicable to lands and forests:
private (individual or corporative), state, com-
mon or communal, and open access. These
systems have been studied extensively, and
their advantages and disadvantages with regard
to natural resource use are well documented
(for a useful typology and comparative analy-
sis, see GTZ, 1998).
In country regimes of the 20th and 21st cen-
turies, the rule for forest ownership is typically
a combination of these four types of property,
with significant changes in the composition of
property according to historical moments and
with great differences among countries. Gener-
ally, however, the predominant pattern is for
the majority of forest areas to be in the hands
of government, and only a small proportion
being communal forests. In modern times,
legally speaking there is little if any open access
in forestlands, as any forestlands without
private owners are automatically converted by
law to state lands. In practice, however, state-
owned forest has in many cases meant open
access, as governments, particularly in develop-
ing countries,have had little capacity to control
access to their forests. In developing countries,
however, the establishment of large state-
owned forest areas was in most cases the result
of the expropriation of forestlands from their
traditional users, who until colonial times were
owners of those lands (or parts of them) under
customary tenure. In this sense, and in cases
where traditional forest-owning communities
still exist and inhabit their traditional lands,
there is an overlap of state property and com-
munal, customary tenure.
Partly due to the recognition of customary
tenure as legal communal (or individual) prop-
erty, forest ownership is undergoing a major
change in the world, with the main trend being
the transfer or “devolution”of ownership rights
to the local level, and the consequent expansion
of community-owned forests.
1.3. Degree of Dependence
on Forests
From the perspective of goods and services that
forests (standing or future) offer, there are
roughly two types of owners: forest-dependent
people and non–forest-dependent people (and
institutions). This distinction is important
because of the expectations of the end result
of forest restoration and their implications.
Forest-dependent communities basically expect
from restored forests an array of goods and
services of direct economic value. They may
value other associated benefits, such as ecolog-
ical services at a landscape scale—climate
change mitigation, regulation of the hydrologi-
cal cycle, watershed protection, etc.—but they
will normally not place higher values on asso-
ciated ecological services than on those related
to direct forest produce.115 In the cases of
non–forest-dependent owners, such as the
absentee forest owner and the state and public
agencies, the scale and hierarchy of values may
vary for some areas, and their expectations,
therefore, may not directly be linked to the
economic importance of forest produce, but to
ecosystem protection and services, biodiversity
conservation, aesthetic aspects (which in turn
can become economic values for example from
tourism), etc.
114 Ziff, 1993, cited by Clogg, 1997.
115 Some exceptions exist to the hierarchy of values of
forest restoration from the perspective of forest-dependent
owners, but they are exceptions that do not contradict the
primary expectations on forest produce or alternative
livelihoods. For example, this is the case of restoration of
degraded forest areas with sacred or particular spiritual
value to local communities.
86 G. Oviedo
1.4. Ownership of Land but Also of
Forest Goods and Services
Forest ownership differs significantly from
other types of land and resource tenure—agri-
cultural land, for example. The differences rely
basically on the wide array of goods and serv-
ices of the forest, and more specifically on the
fact that forest ownership consists of a complex
mixture of three types of ownership rights:
rights to the land, rights to the forest resources,
and rights to the trees. Further, ownership
rights in forestlands overlap frequently with,
and are different from, user rights.As Neef and
Schwarzmeier116 illustrate for Southeast Asia,in
some cases groups or individuals holding the
property of the land recognise rights of other
individuals or groups to use the trees existing
on that land, as long as there are no competing
uses over the trees.There could even be multi-
ple layers of rights on a single plot of land; for
example, when a group or individual has prop-
erty on the land, another group has rights on
nontimber forest products, and another group
holds rights on timber exploitation.
1.5. Opportunity Cost and
Intergenerational Equity
Tree growth takes place over long or relatively
long periods, when the forest ecosystem under
restoration can offer only limited services;
therefore, we are dealing with situations where
there is a high, or relatively high, opportunity
cost in the use of the land for forest-dependent
people. In these conditions, only significant
incentives and economic alternatives can cover
the opportunity cost of forest restoration. The
nature of benefits and incentives from forest
restoration in terms of the time horizon (espe-
cially in cases of slow-maturing tree species)
adds a time perspective to tenure security. For
forest owners and users, it is not sufficient to
know that their rights to forests and trees are
secure now; it is more important to know that
they will be secure and enforceable after one
generation or more. In this sense, changing
ownership and rights policies are even worse
than the absence of them, since they cause a
great lack of confidence in restoration as some-
thing socially beneficial.
1.6. Stability of Forest Ownership
In the case of China, Liu Dachang116a finds no
conclusive evidence that user rights on trees are
the best option (e.g., compared to state regula-
tions), but does find evidence that changing
rights policies were the basis of ups and downs
in forest cover, and especially that lack of sta-
bility of forest ownership policies was the main
reason for decline in forest cover and tree
planting in certain periods; in fact,over approx-
imately 25 years of China’s modern history
(from 1956 to the early 1980s), there was a suc-
cession of at least five major forest ownership
policy paradigms, thus an average of a major
policy change every 5 years. In practice, a few
years after villagers planted trees, a major
policy change would affect dramatically their
rights to those trees and forests. The results
were simply lack of confidence in the system
and lack of incentives for tree planting.
Generally, the evidence is that where tenure
security was greatest, tree planting was most
successful. Tenure security means basically
three levels: land tenure security, forest owner-
ship security, and also user rights security.
1.7. Communal Systems
Several researchers have pointed to the fact
that communal forest tenure, especially in
conditions of market economies, requires a
“critical group size” to be effective, where
enforcement of rights and regulations can be
optimally implemented, and where economies
of scale and diversification make opportunity
costs affordable, particularly when the commu-
nity has to invest in forest restoration or refor-
estation. In other words, in any particular
situation of communal forest ownership, it
seems that there is a certain size of the group
where forest management works best; if it is too
small or too big, management is inefficient.
In many places, forest communities have
tended to solve this issue by establishing a dual
community/user group system, where forest
116 Neef and Schwarzmeier, 2001. 116a Dachang, 2001.
12. Land Ownership and Forest Restoration 87
ownership remains at the community level, but
user rights (especially for trees) are allocated
to smaller groups that act as forest manage-
ment units. For example, in Honduras group-
based management has proven better than
community-based management, but the experi-
ence also shows that links between both are
critical at decision-making levels on broader
issues such as natural resources linked to
forests: “What is required, therefore, is an insti-
tutional arrangement that retains forest man-
agement under group control, but which also
provides a protocol for liaison between group
and community and possibly some form of
profit-sharing”117 i.e., an arrangement where
land and forest ownership remains in the com-
munity, where decision making for the entire
area or landscape lies,while user rights for trees
and other products are allocated to forestry
groups who act on behalf of the community.
The same logic applies to the duality
community-households in many communal
ownership regimes.
An effective articulation of forest ownership
and use rights between small units (even indi-
viduals) and larger units (community) seems
therefore a critical element for successful forest
management and restoration (although not the
only element, as already indicated). It is also a
fundamental tool to deal with the very impor-
tant elements of equity and social stratification
or differentiation. It has been documented that
as much in agricultural lands as in forestlands,
the egalitarianism that dominated ideological
paradigms of agrarian reform and forest estate
reform in the 20th century produced large frag-
mentation of lands and forests as a result of the
distribution of family plots. The intention of
the reformers, who were probably aware of
the need to address problems of stratification
within rural communities, was to overcome
community differentiation by allocating equal
plots to all families.118
In areas where this type of reform took place,
fragmentation often made forest management
extremely inefficient, and restoration virtually
impossible, as a “critical size” is required in
plots of forestland to make restoration or refor-
estation viable; tree planting in these conditions
is often reduced to small numbers of trees
around houses and within agricultural plots—
normally fruit trees.
1.8. Equity Issues
Stratification of local communities in relation
to forest ownership is one of the equity issues
that need to be addressed in community-owned
forests. Experience shows that often the most
forest-dependent groups have the least user
rights, especially women,119 a situation that
creates obstacles to developing solid, long-
term, rights-based incentives for forest restora-
tion. As in the case of the relationship
group/community, finding the appropriate
articulation of forest ownership and use rights
between specific groups of users,including indi-
vidual users, and larger units (forests groups
and communities), in a stable, long-term policy
framework, is critical to forest rehabilitation
success.
2. Examples
2.1. China: Restoration Benefits
and Incentives
Liu Dachang120 has extensively researched the
experience of China on forest policies,and con-
cludes that generally user rights on trees are of
greater importance than forest ownership per
se for sustainable management and particularly
for tree planting, reforestation,and restoration.
For example, Liu Dachang shows that despite
clear tenure policies on forestlands in China, in
periods of stringent protective regulations on
trees there was no incentive for reforestation;
strict market regulations, aimed at protecting
forests by discouraging commercialisation of
117 Markopoulos, 1999, p. 46.
118 As an example, in China,under the Land Reform Cam-
paign initiated in 1950,“all rural households in a given geo-
graphical area were given equal forest resources” (Liu
Dachang, 2001,p. 241).Exceptions to this policy were Tibet
and the ethnic minority areas in the South of Yunnan,
where community forests were established.
119 Neef and Schwarzmeier, 2001.
120 Dachang, 2001, 2003.
88 G. Oviedo
timber, ended up discouraging tree planting
and therefore slowing down or totally stopping
reforestation of degraded lands owned by
villagers.The conclusion here is that, at least in
the case of China, regulations to protect forests
by restricting tree owners’ rights to trees and
timber in fact removed incentives for tree
planting and therefore for reforestation and
restoration. Successful forest restoration
depends on incentives for tree owners to use
the trees when they are mature, and for forest
owners to use also other forest products and
services; it thus depends on the clarity, extent,
and enforceability of user and owner rights
over trees and forest products, where timber
use seems to play a major role.
But, if forest ownership rights are insufficient
or even ineffective for successful restoration
when not combined with user rights on trees
and products, total lack of regulations on the
use of timber and forest products can create
perverse market incentives,especially when the
conditions of clarity and enforceability of rights
are not present in other adjacent forest areas.
In such conditions, perverse market incentives
discourage owners and users from tree plant-
ing, as the pressures from unregulated markets
where competition exists from unsustainably
managed forest areas (for example, areas
subject to illegal timber extraction) would
make it impossible for forest owners to meet
the opportunity costs of tree planting and forest
restoration.
2.2. Forest Rights in Ethnic Groups
of Thailand and Vietnam
“The concept of individual rights to planted
trees on agricultural fields applies to virtually
all ethnic minority groups in the uplands of
northern Thailand and Vietnam,121 but there
are considerable differences in gender-specific
rights to plant trees due to distinct inheritance
laws.
“In strictly patrilineal societies like the Hmong,
women are not allowed to inherit land. Thus, tree
planting by women is usually limited to the area
around the houses....In contrast to the Hmong, the
Black Thai and Tay societies have strong matrilineal
elements.Although land inheritance of women is not
common, there are a few exceptions giving women
fully individual use rights, including the rights to
plant trees....Marketing of forest products such as
bamboo shoots, medicinal plants and fuelwood is
mainly done by women. Despite the strong involve-
ment of women in collection and marketing of prod-
ucts from the forests, they do not play a role in
setting management rules.121a
2.3. Strengthening User Rights for
Forest Restoration in Northeast
Highlands of Ethiopia122
The Meket district in the North Wollo adminis-
trative zone of Ethiopia ranges in altitude from
2000 to 3400m above sea level and has a mix of
agroclimatic zones. Its inhabitants are almost
wholly dependent on agriculture. As rising
numbers of people have put more pressure on
the land, fallow periods have shortened, and
continuous ploughing has become common-
place. Local people say that within a genera-
tion, there has been dramatic deforestation,and
the grazing has declined in both quantity and
quality. Expanding cultivation and increasing
demand for wood have left even the steepest
slopes unprotected. Only about 8 percent of the
total area remains under forest. Much of the
rainfall is lost through runoff, causing severe
soil erosion and floods.Indigenous trees are not
commonly allowed to regenerate (except on
some church lands), and efforts to plant trees
have had little impact.
The Ethiopian people have had negative
experiences of land reallocation over the last 20
years, and are hence unwilling to invest effort
in reforestation or regeneration activities. Dif-
ferent types of forest ownership (individual,
church, service cooperative, and community)
can be found in the district, but none has
reversed the natural resource depletion.
Weak land-tenure and user rights were
clearly hindering effective community-led
environmental conservation in Meket.
121 Neef and Schwarzmeier, 2001, p. 22.
121a Neef and Schwarzmeier, 2001.
122 International Institute of Rural Reconstruction, 2000.
12. Land Ownership and Forest Restoration 89
In mid-1996, SOS Sahel, an international
nongovernmental organisation (NGO), began
working with local authorities and agriculture
ministry staff to seek a way to work with com-
munities and solve these problems. Central to
these was the establishment of official user
rights for villagers.
In the community reforestation project,
communities were allowed to define their own
objectives for their sites, but long-term plans (5
to 10 years, or more if indigenous trees were
established) were required. Within communi-
ties, reforestation groups were established, and
each group decided how to share the benefits
among its members,and this had to be included
in the management plan. Similarly, each village
developed its own strategy for guarding the site.
The proposed plan was then presented for
approval at the kebele (subdistrict) level by
relevant bodies: community representatives,
subdistrict officials, and church leaders. It was
then submitted to district officials and the agri-
culture office. If the plan was approved, official
user rights were given to the group for their
site.
As a result of this approach, farmers’ partic-
ipation in reforestation efforts increased. At
first, 14 villages received official user rights;
20 more communities have since become
involved, directly benefiting more than 2000
households.
Natural regeneration of indigenous grass,
shrub, and tree species has been dramatic.
There are very clear differences when com-
pared with unprotected sites.
Sufficient short-term benefits have been
realised—such as improved forage and
increased production of thatching grass—to
motivate communities to strengthen and
expand their enclosure sites.
More secure user rights have created confi-
dence among the communities. They have
expressed strong interest to plant indigenous
species (e.g., Hagenia abyssinica, Juniperus
procera, Olea africana) instead of eucalyptus.
Communities have started to expand their
sites, and new communities want to establish
their own enclosures. Some are seeking com-
pensation from the subdistrict administration
for individual farmers who are cultivating land
within the future enclosures.Some villages have
even begun a similar process without outside
intervention or support.
Farmers seem to have accepted the introduc-
tion of cut-and-carry fodder systems. This may
prove to be one of the most significant impacts
for the Ethiopian highlands.
2.4. Limited Success in the
Protection Forest Walomerah,
Indonesia123
The province of East Nusa Tenggara consists of
the main island of Flores, Sumba, the Western
part of Timor and a number of smaller islands.
In 1992 the population of the province totalled
3.3 million. With an average rainfall ranging
from 2196mm in Manggarai district to 805 mm
in Alor district and not so fertile soils, the con-
ditions for agriculture are not very favourable.
About 36 percent of the land area of the
island of Flores has by ministerial decree been
classified as forest land and one third of this
forest land as Protection Forests. The largest
part of this has in reality little or no tree cover
and has for generations been tilled by the pop-
ulation living there.
The protection forest of the mountain
Walomerah in Ngada district is one such area.
As part of the Presidential Instruction Pro-
gramme (INPRES) for the development of
Indonesia, this particular protection forest was
to be reforested. The project, which began in
1995, was to start with the reforestation of 500
hectares, including part of the village Wangka,
which covers 9000 hectares. Almost all of the
2400 inhabitants secure their livelihoods from
subsistence farming, as their ancestors have
done for generations. They are totally depend-
ent on the land. Their traditional rights to land
had been recognised by the government, but
all 9000 hectares of this village lie within the
protection forest. According to the legislation
applying to such areas, the villagers were not
allowed to occupy this area on a permanent
basis.
123 Vochten and Mulyana, 1995.
90 G. Oviedo
The Forest Service decided it was necessary
to consult with these villagers with the purpose
of better understanding their living situation
and see to what extent the reforestation project
could be modified to accommodate their needs
and aspirations. Several problems directly or
indirectly connected with the proposed refor-
estation were identified by the villagers who
took part in such consultations. The problem
concerning the status of their land tenure rights
surfaced as a key conflict. Even though they
had been paying their land ownership taxes
regularly, rights to use forest products could not
be granted to them.
This key issue, land tenure rights, was not
solved in this reforestation project. Some useful
compromises were reached, and an attempt was
made to balance the undisputed need for refor-
estation with the primary need of farmers—
land. But clearly it was not possible to move
ahead with enough confidence in the project’s
success without addressing further the issue of
land and forest produce rights.
3. Outline of Tools
Tools useful to addressing ownership issues
in forest restoration are basically the same
that have proven useful in the case of examin-
ing land and resource tenure in different
conditions.
1. Land and resource mapping: This can be
done at any level, to learn about the environ-
mental, economic, and social resources in the
community. A variation of mapping is the tech-
nique of transects, which focusses on specific
areas of a community’s land, for learning about
the community’s natural resource base, land
forms, and land use, location and size of farms
or homesteads, and location and availability
of infrastructure and services, and economic
activities.
2. The International Tropical Timber Organ-
isation (ITTO) restoration guidelines are a
useful tool addressing ownership issues. To
ensure secure land tenure, these guidelines rec-
ommend (recommended actions 13 to 16): “13)
Clarify and legitimise equitable tenure, access,
use and other customary rights in degraded and
secondary forests among national and local
stakeholders.14) Strengthen the rights of forest
dwellers and indigenous people. 15) Establish a
transparent mechanism for conflict resolution
where property and access rights are not clear.
16) Provide incentives for stabilizing colonists/
farmers in agricultural frontier zones.
3. Participatory rural appraisal (PRA) or
participatory rapid rural appraisal have been
described many times in the literature.124 A
methodological illustration of a PRA exercise
for forest restoration in Indonesia125 is as
follows:
The PRA facilitator team included 14 people:
from the government...,from local NGOs...,
and the authors....The main actors were the res-
idents of two of the four hamlets of the village
Wangka, which adjoined the proposed reforesta-
tion site.They collected the information, analysed
the problems, considered the options, and drew
up the final reforestation plan. The facilitators
supported this by introducing certain techniques
to structure the information. They also listened
and learned. The entire PRA lasted only three
days in the field, from October 12–14,1993. It was
preceded by a one day gathering of the facilita-
tors to exchange information about the PRA
techniques to be used and to inform themselves
about the village of Wangka. At the start of the
PRA, the facilitators introduced themselves and
the purpose of their visit and then split into two
groups each to cover one of the hamlets. On the
first day a map of the village including the pro-
posed reforestation site was made. Then a sea-
sonal calendar, presenting the main events and
activities of the community (agricultural, reli-
gious,festivals,etc.) was made. On the second day
a transect of the respective hamlets and the pro-
posed reforestation site was made. Later in the
day a matrix ranking was done to learn about the
preferred tree species.On the final day the results
of the PRA exercise in both hamlets were com-
bined and presented by the villagers who had
been involved in the PRA at a village meeting.
This was also attended by representatives from
the other two hamlets, the village head (kepala
desa), and the head of the Forestry Service of
Ngada District. During this meeting, spiced with
animated discussions, problems were reviewed
124 Notably, Chambers, 1994; Chambers and Guijt, 1995.
125 Vochten and Mulyana, 1995.
12. Land Ownership and Forest Restoration 91
and compromises made. Finally a work pro-
gramme for implementing the reforestation
project was produced. To ensure its future imple-
mentation the facilitators met with representa-
tives of the concerned government agencies and
presented the proposal to them the next day.
4. FAO’s Socio-economic and Gender
Analysis (SEAGA): This is an approach to
development based on an analysis of socioeco-
nomic patterns and participatory identification
of women’s and men’s priorities. The objective
of the SEAGA approach is to close the gaps
between what people need and what develop-
ment delivers. It uses three toolkits: the Devel-
opment Context Toolkit, for learning about the
economic, environmental, social, and institu-
tional patterns that pose supports or constraints
for development; the Livelihood Analysis
Toolkit, for learning about the flow of activities
and resources through which different people
make their living; and the Stakeholders’ Prior-
ities for Development Toolkit, for planning
development activities based on women’s and
men’s priorities.
5. Dachang approaches the analysis of
drivers for forest restoration in South China
through a logical procedure consisting of three
stages: diagnosis, design, and delivery (Tri-D).
This procedure is the result of an adaptation of
farming system approaches and rapid rural
appraisal (RRA) or PRA to the identification
of problems and to the design and testing of
forestry and agroforestry options. This proce-
dure has been used commonly in community-
based agroforestry research.
6. User rights/stakeholder analysis: A
general long-term objective is to gain knowl-
edge about the community, and to appreciate
“how to approach and structure a collaboration
process.126 For WWF, stakeholder analysis “is
the process by which the various stakeholders
who might have an interest in a conservation
initiative are identified. A stakeholder analysis
generates information about stakeholders and
their interests, the relationships between them,
their motivations, and their ability to influence
outcomes. There are numerous approaches to
stakeholder analysis, ranging from the formal
to informal, comprehensive to superficial. A
frequent problem of these approaches,however,
is a narrow understanding of stakes and differ-
entiation within communities, associated with
the absence of consideration of tenure rights.A
second conceptual and methodological problem
is that often conservation organisations define
primary stakeholders as “those who, because of
power, authority, responsibilities,or claims over
the resources, are central to any conservation
initiative,” while in reality primary stakeholders
are those with closer dependence and rights on
the resources involved.
7. The German agency GTZ proposes four
principles to assist decision makers in the
process of drafting and enforcing property
related legislation. The principles also serve as
yardsticks for evaluating existing land tenure
systems and reforms,and thus they can be used
to assess the forest ownership situation in any
given country, and monitoring progress in
establishing clear tenure systems.The proposed
principles are (1) certainty in law, (2) the rule
of law and human rights, (3) political participa-
tion of the population in land issues, and (4)
definition of property in market economies.
Ideally, the development of forest restoration
interventions should be preceded and accom-
panied by a process by which these principles
guide an appraisal of the situation of forest
ownership, and help identify the critical inter-
ventions to follow to ensure success of the ini-
tiatives in the long term.
8. The International Institute of Rural
Reconstruction127 offers advice as shown in Box
12.1 on addressing land tenure issues. This is
largely applicable to situations where forest
restoration is planned, and where forest own-
ership is an issue requiring specific actions.
4. Future Needs
The following areas require further development:
Understanding better the complex issues of
rights and how they interact with various
factors,such as incentives and policy environ-
126 WWF-US, 2000a,b. 127 International Institute of Rural Reconstruction, 2000.
92 G. Oviedo
ments, is a task that needs to be undertaken
on the basis of specific cases of forest restora-
tion. It is therefore recommended that such
initiatives include in their plans the ongoing
accompaniment of the process by researchers
equipped to understand the links between
rights and incentives.
Use experience to synthesise guidance in
the form of option menus for dealing with
tenure issues in different situations. For the
moment, most of the experiences of forest
restoration offer lessons of mostly local or
national value on ownership matters,difficult
to generalise and to apply to other situations.
An analytical effort of learning more from
those lessons and then systematising them
for guidance would be valuable, always with
the understanding that lesson-based guid-
ance is indicative only, and any mechanistic
application of experiences from one place to
another needs to be avoided.
Research further on experiences (successful
and unsuccessful) of forest restoration under
different types of ownership,to better under-
stand how rights’ systems (including from
creation or granting of rights to law enforce-
ment and judicial processes) impact on the
results—in the short, medium, and long
terms. In undertaking such research, it is
fundamental to use a conceptual and meth-
odological framework that is based on the
understanding of the complexities of the
bundle of forest ownership rights, avoiding
for example an exclusive focus on land
tenure.
References
Chambers, R. 1994a. The origins and practice of par-
ticipatory rural appraisal. World Development
22(7):953–969.
Chambers, R. 1994b. Participatory rural appraisal
(PRA): analysis of experience. World Develop-
ment 22(9):1253–1268.
Chambers, R. 1994c. Participatory rural appraisal
(PRA): challenges, potentials and paradigm.
World Development 22(10):1437–1454.
Box 12.1. Do’s and Don’ts from International Institute of Rural Reconstruction (2000)
Do’s
Begin with a clear understanding of the local
situation and policy context.
Use a two-pronged approach for advocacy
and lobbying work—at the top with policy
makers,and on the ground to demonstrate
impact.
Start with a clear shared vision with partners
at all levels.
Have a clear understanding of policies and
strategies.
Prepare clear guidelines in the local lan-
guage and share with all stakeholders.
Actively share experiences and ideas.
Be patient: be prepared to invest a lot of
effort and time.
Strive to build the technical and managerial
capacity of communities.
Full coordination with local government
officials and line agencies is essential; they
can play a key role in monitoring the
entire process.
Work toward establishing official legislation
for user rights to greatly strengthen the
process.
Help communities understand that a short-
term reduction in fuelwood availability
will result from enclosure, and assist them
to find ways to deal with this problem.
Don’ts
Don’t start with sensitive issues (e.g., dis-
cussing the problems of the land-tenure
situation).
Don’t allow conflicts to become too large.
Try to resolve them as soon as possible.
Don’t impose plans.
Don’t monopolize the intervention. Partners
should be key players in the process.
12. Land Ownership and Forest Restoration 93
Chambers, R., and Guijt, I. 1995. PRA—Five years
later. Where are we now? Forests, Trees and
People Newsletter 26/27:4–13.
Clogg, J. 1997. Tenure reform for ecologically and
socially responsible forest use in British Columbia.
A paper submitted to the Faculty of Environmen-
tal Studies in partial fulfilment of the requirements
for the degree of Master in Environmental
Studies, York University, North York, Ontario,
Canada.
Dachang, L. 2001. Tenure and management of non-
state forests in China since 1950: a historical
review. Environmental History 6(2):239–263.
Dachang, L., ed. 2003. Rehabilitation of Degraded
Forests to Improve Livelihoods of Poor Farmers in
South China. CIFOR, Bogor, Indonesia.
International Institute of Rural Reconstruction.
2000. Sustainable Agriculture Extension Manual.
IIRR, Silang, Cavite, Philippines.
Markopoulos, M.D. 1999. The Impacts of Certifica-
tion on Campesino Forestry Groups in Northern
Honduras. Oxford Forestry Institute (OFI),
Oxford, UK.
Molnar, A., Scherr, S., and Khare, A. 2004. Who
conserves the world’s forests? Comunity-driven
strategies to protect forests and respect rights.
Forest Trends, Ecoagriculture Partners, Washington,
DC.
Neef, A., and Schwarzmeier, R. 2001. Land Tenure
Systems and Rights in Trees and Forests: Interde-
pendencies, Dynamics and the Role of Develop-
ment Cooperation, Case Studies from Mainland
Southeast Asia. GTZ, Division 4500 Rural Devel-
opment, Eschborn, Germany.
Vochten, P., and Mulyana, A. 1995. Reforestation,
protection forest and people—finding compro-
mises through PRA, Forests, Trees and People
Newsletter, FAO, issues 26/27.
White, A., and Martin, A. 2002. Who Owns the
World’s Forests? Forest Tenure and Public Forests
in Transition. Forest Trends, Washington, DC.
World Wildlife Fund USA. 2000a. A Guide to
Socioeconomic Assessments for Ecoregion Con-
servation. WWF–US Ecoregional Conservation
Strategies Unit, Washington, DC.
World Wildlife USA. 2000b. Stakeholder Collabora-
tion: Building Bridges for Conservation. WWF–
US Ecoregional Conservation Strategies Unit,
Research and Development, Washington, DC.
Ziff, B. 1993. Principles of Property Law. Carswell.
Scarborough, Canada.
Additional Reading
Agrawal, A., and Ostrom, E. 1999. Collective action,
property rights, and devolution of forest and pro-
tected area management. Research paper. S/l.
Barton Bray, D., Merino-Perez,L., Negreros Castillo,
P., Segura-Warnholtz, G., Torres, J.M., and Vester,
H.F.M. 2003. Mexico’s community-managed
forests as a global model for sustainable land-
scapes. Conservation Biology 17(3):672–677.
Chambers, R. 1983. Rural Development: Putting the
Last First, Longman, London.
Chambers, R. 1993. Challenging the Professions.
Frontiers for Rural Development. Intermediate
Technology Publications, London.
Chambers, R. 1996. Whose Reality Counts? Inter-
mediate Technology Publications, London.
Chambers, R. 2002. Participatory Workshops: A
Sourcebook, Institute of Development Studies,
Brighton, UK.
Chambers, R., and Leach, M. 1990. Trees as Savings
and Security for the Rural Poor. Unasylva
161(41):39–52.
Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United
Nations, FAO. 2001. SEAGA—Socio-Economic
and Gender Analysis Package. FAO Socio-
Economic and Gender Analysis Programme.
Gender and Population Division, Sustainable
Development Department, Rome.
GTZ. 1998. Guiding Principles: Land Tenure in
Development Cooperation. Deutsche Gesel-
lschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit, Abt. 45,
Div. 45.
Jaramillo, C.F., and Kelly,T. 2000. La deforestación y
los derechos de propiedad en América Latina.
http://www.imacmexico.org/ev_es.php?ID=
5587_203&ID2=DO_TOPIC.
Lamb, D., and Gilmour, D. 2003. Rehabilitation and
Restoration of Degraded Forests. IUCN/WWF,
Gland, Switzerland.
1. Introduction
Since the start of its Forest Landscape Restora-
tion programme in 2000, WWF, the global
conservation organisation, has faced a number
of challenges related to (1) the planning of
restoration in large scales,(2) the integration of
social and ecological dimensions, and (3) the
implementation of restoration programmes on
a large scale. A more detailed analysis of
specific lessons learned from forest landscape
restoration projects can be found in this book
in the part entitled” Lessons Learned and the
Way Forward.”This chapter focusses instead on
specific challenges anticipated for future pro-
grammes to restore forest functions in land-
scapes, based on experience in the first 4 years
of WWF’s restoration programme. While this
draws on experience within one organisation,
we hope that the brief summary of some of
the tasks we have identified will also be useful
to governments, nongovernment organisations,
(NGOs) and others interested in developing
restoration projects, large or small.
We started WWF’s restoration initiative with
some concepts (e.g.,the need to integrate socio-
economics, the concept of trading off land uses
within landscapes, the idea of working at a
landscape scale), and also some principles (e.g.,
balancing ecological and social needs, adopting
where possible a participatory approach). For
the last 4 years, we have been testing out these
theories in practice in field programmes around
the world. One early result was recognition that
there was a lack of succinct information for
practitioners, which was the driving force
behind this book. In light of WWF’s experience
to date, a number of future challenges and
opportunities have been identified128:
1.1. Setting Realistic Goals
for Restoration Within
a Landscape
A failure of past restoration efforts can be
traced back to having started with unrealistic
goals or alternatively with very narrow goals
that fail to take into account local and sur-
rounding socioeconomic realities. For this
reason it is important to set goals that are at
once realistic but also consider the many dif-
13
Challenges for Forest Landscape
Restoration Based on WWF’s
Experience to Date
Stephanie Mansourian and Nigel Dudley
Key Points to Retain
Some of the most important challenges iden-
tified by WWF’s forest landscape restoration
programme in its first four years, include the
following:
The need to better value forest goods and
services
The need to increase capacity to deal with
landscape restoration issues
The need to better monitor the return of
forest functions at a landscape scale
94
128 Mansourian, 2004.
13. Challenges for Forest Landscape Restoration 95
ferent outputs required from most landscapes.
In a landscape context, restoration goals for
conservation organisations will often be closely
linked to other activities relating to protected
areas and sustainable forest management.Thus,
restoration may seek to complement a pro-
tected area or relieve pressure on it. Equally,
restoration can happen within and around the
estate of a managed forest. Forest restoration
goals within a landscape generally have to
address both social and ecological needs; they
may, for instance, relate to restoration of
species’ habitat in one location but also to the
establishment of fuelwood plantations else-
where. In all cases, the key will be to attempt to
balance those goals to provide optimal benefits
(also see “Goals and Targets of Forest Land-
scape Restoration,”“Negotiations and Conflict
Management,” and “Addressing Trade-Offs in
Forest Landscape Restoration”).
1.2. Ensuring that Restoration Is
Not Used as an Excuse for
Uncontrolled Exploitation
One reason many conservationists still balk at
restoration is that it can be seen to provide a
justification for failing to address the problems
of degradation. Given the cost, duration, and
difficulty of restoration, we do not believe that
this is a viable argument. However,the fact that
conservation organisations encourage restora-
tion should not be interpreted as licence for
degradation, because in many circumstances
restoration activities will not be able to recover
all of the values that have been lost. There is a
fine line between actively offering restoration
as a solution to dwindling natural resources
without undermining efforts at protection or
good management of these resources.
1.3. Active or Passive Restoration?
In some cases it is clear that restoration is
already urgently necessary. At this point the
first question for a community, conservation
organisation, or government becomes one of
choice between passive and active restoration.
Passive restoration, which means creating
suitable conditions for restoration to happen
through natural processes (e.g., by fencing an
area against grazing or preventing artificial fire)
is usually considered to be the most desirable
solution, being simpler,cheaper, and more akin
with natural processes. However, there comes
a point (a status of degradation or particular
set of ecological and social conditions) when
active restoration is necessary, either because
recovery needs to be speeded up to protect
threatened biodiversity or because ecological
conditions have changed so profoundly that
natural processes need some assistance. The
challenge for conservation planners is some-
times whether to wait for passive restoration,
and risk further degradation and in the future
a more expensive restoration process, or to
jump straight into active restoration. Develop-
ment of a more sophisticated set of criteria
or tools for helping make these kinds of deci-
sions will be one of the major needs in the
future.
1.4. Promoting the Concept of
Multifunctional Landscapes
If conservation organisations are to address
the big emerging issues related to forestry and
biodiversity, we will need to engage much
more closely with social actors, an example is
the emerging WWF-CARE partnership. An
emphasis on “multifunctional landscapes,” that
is, landscapes that provide a mixture of envi-
ronmental, social, and economic goods and
services through a mosaic of sites managed with
differing but harmonised objectives,can help to
provide balanced approaches in landscapes that
contain both environmental and social prob-
lems. One implication of this is that forest
restoration in most cases will not be a viable
activity unless it goes hand in hand with forest
management and usually also with forest
protection.
1.5. Sustainability of Restoration—
Valuing Forest Goods, Services,
and Processes to be Restored
Active restoration is an expensive process,
and in most cases conservationists (both state
government and NGOs) still opt to direct avail-
96 S. Mansourian and N. Dudley
able conservation budgets toward protection
instead. However,in many cases these decisions
are not being taken in full knowledge of the
long-term costs and benefits. For instance, it is
often easier to build political support for setting
aside a mountainous area of forest to protec-
tion because it appears to entail limited cost, or
at least delayed costs, whereas the apparent
cost of restoring a more accessible or econom-
ically valuable habitat such as a lowland forest
appears immediately. But if the long-term value
of a restored forest were properly estimated,
then on balance the net costs might not appear
to be as high. In some cases, it may make more
sense to focus efforts on protection, in others
more on restoration or a mixture of both. One
future challenge is to increase skills and tools
for valuation of the costs and benefits of various
approaches so that more balanced judgements
can be made.
1.6. Long Term Monitoring and
Evaluating Impact of
Restoration within
Large Scales
Monitoring and evaluation are essential in any
conservation programme, to help facilitate
adaptive management, and have been identi-
fied as one of the most critical elements in
success. They become particularly crucial in a
large-scale restoration effort, which will span
several decades and will involve many different
actors. Mistakes need to be redressed and
improvements need to be made. Proper moni-
toring tools that are adapted to a large scale
need to be developed and then applied
rigorously.
1.7. When Can We Claim Success?
When Is a Landscape
Restored?
There is no clear end point for restoration. A
natural forest is itself not a fixed or static
ecosystem but is generally in constant evolution
and flux. In any case, many restoration projects
will not be aiming to re-create an “original”
forest.Agreeing and then finding ways of meas-
uring an end point is therefore a challenge
particularly for organisations such as WWF,
which work in time-limited programmes and to
targets that are often agreed to between NGOs
and donors. In practice, targets need to be set
at the level of a specific landscape.For instance,
is the ultimate aim of a forest landscape
restoration programme to return a certain
endangered animal species to a viable popula-
tion? Or is it to improve water quality? Or is it
to reverse the decline in forest quality? Many
restoration projects have multiple aims, such as
restoring habitat for species but also increasing
nontimber forest products for local communi-
ties. By setting goals, conservation organisa-
tions should be able to establish meaningful
programmes, whilst recognising that forest
landscape restoration is never a short-term
project with a clear beginning and end. Efforts
should be longer term, and specific measures of
success will necessarily be steps along a trajec-
tory toward a healthier and more sustainable
forest landscape.
1.8. Resources
Forest restoration at the scale of large land-
scapes can be enormously costly. In addition,
the longer we wait before undertaking restora-
tion, the more degraded the landscape is likely
to have become (for instance, seeds of original
species may no longer be present, soil condi-
tions will have changed) and therefore the
higher the costs of restoration are likely to be.
Many restoration efforts have failed through
lack of resources.Ideally,systems that integrate
the cost of restoration within landscape-level
activities via taxes (for instance on ecotourists)
or via payment for environmental services (for
instance, for the provision of clean water, also
see “Payment for Environmental Services and
Restoration”) should provide long-term and
sustainable financing for restoration activities.
However, this assumes both that costs and ben-
efits can be measured accurately, which is still
often a challenge, and that there is sufficient
political support for restoration that such
payments can be levied. Establishing means
for long-term funding that go beyond donor
project cycles remains a key challenge for the
future.
13. Challenges for Forest Landscape Restoration 97
1.9. Capacity
A restoration programme carried out over
large areas is likely to require many different
skills, for instance negotiating skills, lobbying
skills, monitoring skills, small enterprise devel-
opment skills, plantation skills, nursery devel-
opment skills, etc. It is important to ensure that
local capacity to support the long-term restora-
tion effort exists. In many cases this requires
training as well as the partnering of different
institutions to share their respective knowledge
and expertise.
2. Examples
These examples demonstrate some of the practi-
cal challenges that have been encountered. They
may not all be as fundamental as those listed
above, but are interesting to highlight as they
demonstrate the full range of challenges that may
emerge from real experiences.
2.1. Vietnam: The Challenge of
Dealing with Pressures on
Remaining Forests
The government of Vietnam is well aware of
the importance of its forests, for instance to
ensure water quality, and has taken significant
forest areas out of production. But pressures
remain because local people face serious land
shortages, and restoration efforts have until
now mainly been aimed at intensive plantations
that supply only a small proportion of the
potential goods and services. Restoration
efforts in Vietnam therefore need to embrace
demonstration projects both to show what is
possible and to work with government author-
ities to modify current restoration policies
(see case study “Monitoring Forest Landscape
Restoration in Vietnam”).
2.2. Madagascar: The Challenge of
Choosing a Priority Landscape
for Restoration
In a country like Madagascar that has lost over
90 percent of its forest, it would seem straight-
forward to decide where to restore. Nonethe-
less, given scarce resources and given a difficult
socioeconomic context (Madagascar is one of
the poorest countries on the planet, and poor
people survive largely from slash and burn agri-
culture), it is necessary to select priority area(s)
to begin a large-scale restoration programme.
In 2003 WWF brought together a number of
stakeholders from government, civil society,
and the private sector to define together what
might be criteria for choosing a priority land-
scape in which to restore forest functions.
The group identified the following categories
of criteria:
1. Sociocultural
2. Economic
3. Ecological/biophysical
4. Political
Within these categories, some of the 24
criteria were, for example:
Type of land tenure
Values attributed to forests by local people
Proximity of fragments to a large forest plot
Level of diversification of revenue sources
Presence of management entity for the
landscape
Numbers of species used by local communi-
ties that have been lost
Level of involvement of communities in local
environmental actions
Members of the national working group on
forest landscape restoration then visited a
short-listed selection of landscapes and rated
each against the 24 criteria. The outcome was a
prioritised list of landscapes that need to be
restored based on criteria that were developed
locally and that were very specific to local
conditions.129
2.3. New Caledonia:
The Challenge of Dealing with
Multiple Partners
It took 2 years to develop an agreed to part-
nership, strategy, and plan, and to engage eight
other partners in the dry forest restoration
129 Allnutt et al, 2004.
98 S. Mansourian and N. Dudley
programme for New Caledonia.While this may
seem a long time to invest in building a part-
nership, the fruits of such an effort are now
being felt as the programme is taking off.
The programme carries much more weight in
the eyes of all stakeholders because of the
partnership.
2.4. Malaysia: The Challenge of
Identifying Priority Species
for Restoration
While restoration along the Kinabatangan river
was identified as a priority in order to recon-
nect patches of forest for biodiversity, the selec-
tion of appropriate species was not clearly
done. For this reason a demonstration site has
been set up where different species and tech-
niques (from simply fencing to weeding or
active planting) are being tested and monitored
in order to identify the approach that is best
suited to local conditions and which can then
be propagated along the corridor.
References
Allnutt, T., Mansourian, S., and Erdmann, T. 2004.
Setting preliminary biological and ecological
restoration targets for the landscape of Fandriana-
Marolambo in Madagascar’s moist forest eco-
region. WWF internal paper. WWF, Gland,
Switzerland.
Mansourian, S. 2004. Challenges and opportunities
for WWF’s Forest Landscape Restoration pro-
gramme. WWF internal paper. WWF, Gland,
Switzerland.
Section VI
A Suite of Planning Tools
1. Background and
Explanation of the Issue
A broadly shared understanding and accept-
ance by all stakeholders is fundamental to the
success of any restoration project. There are
countless examples of attempts at restoration
failing because one person’s “restoration” is
often another person’s degradation. Here are
some examples:
Attempts by the Indonesian Ministry of
Forestry to “restore” Imperata grasslands
by planting trees failed because local people
had no use for the trees (they belonged to
the foresters) but they made extensive uses
of the grasslands. The grasslands provided
fodder for their cattle and grass for roofing.
Attempts to plant spruce forests to restore
the degraded moorlands of northern
England and Scotland were opposed by
amenity and conservation groups because
the moorland scenery had come to be
accepted as “natural” and “beautiful” and it
was the habitat of rare birds.
Government attempts to restore tree cover
on the uplands of Vietnam were opposed
by local people because the types of trees
planted by the government were not the ones
that local people needed or could use.
Government-sponsored tree planting
schemes in China have denied local people
access to medicinal plants and have damaged
the habitats of rare plants and animals in the
dry mountainous areas of South Western and
Western China.
Attempts to restore pristine nature in
degraded areas in the United States are
opposed by some conservationists who con-
sider that such artificially restored areas can
never have the value of a pristine landscape.
14
Goals and Targets of Forest
Landscape Restoration
Jeffrey Sayer
Key Points to Retain
Outside experts cannot alone set goals and
targets because they are never self-evident.
Careful multi-stakeholder processes are
needed to set goals and targets that will be
broadly accepted.
Goals and targets will change with time and
need to be adapted.
Pristine “pre-intervention” nature is only
one of many possible goals.
101
The most fundamental (question) relates to the defi-
nition of the goals and targets for restoration projects.
It would seem that definition would be simple, but
it is often complex and involves difficult decisions
and compromises. Ideally, restoration reproduces the
entire system in question, complete in all its aspects—
genetics, populations, ecosystems, and landscapes.
This means not merely replicating the system’s com-
position, structure and functions, but also its dynam-
ics—even allowing for evolutionary as well as
ecological change (Meffe and Carroll, 1994).
102 J. Sayer
Pretending that restoration is possible is seen
as a ploy by commercial interests to justify
activities that degrade nature.
The basic problem is that what is perceived as
“degraded” by one interest group may be per-
ceived as desirable by another group. Foresters
consider land degraded if it does not support a
crop of commercially valuable trees. Ecologists
consider a forest degraded if it does not have
multiple layers of vegetation and a reasonable
number of dead or decaying trees as habitat for
birds and invertebrate. Amenity groups do not
like dense forests; they want mosaics of wood-
land and open land with extensive views.The list
is endless. The basic lesson is that there can
never be a single vision of an “end point” for
restoration that will automatically meet with
the approval of all interested parties.
2. Steps to Success
The first task in any broad-scale restoration ini-
tiative, therefore, is to find out what everyone
would ideally like to see as an outcome and
then to negotiate compromises between what
will inevitably be a collection of different view-
points and attempt to come up with a scenario
that is acceptable to all.
It is unwise to assume that once an end point
has been negotiated that the “visioning thing”
is done. As landscapes change so the percep-
tions and needs of interest groups will evolve.
Restoration is often a moving target. Markets,
recreational needs, conservation priorities, etc.
all change with time, and what people want
today will not necessarily be what they will
want tomorrow.
Dunwiddie130 has argued that objectives for
restoration projects should be defined as
“motion pictures” rather than “snapshots. The
problem is that objects such as species are much
easier to specify and monitor in projects than
are processes such as ecosystem function and
community dynamics.
The following concepts and approaches can
be used as tools to ensure that forest landscape
restoration projects are moving in the right
direction:
2.1. Answer the Questions:
Restoring What, for Whom
and Why
These are the most important questions yet
they are frequently not properly addressed in
restoration projects.
These questions should be answered by
real stakeholders—local people, conservation
organisations,etc.—those who will do the work
or incur the costs and benefits.
Avoid programmes that are “expert driven”
and ensure that development assistance agen-
cies stay honest, that they are explicit about
their real objectives and recognise that they
also are interested parties.
2.2. Work with Scenarios, Visions,
and Stakeholder Processes
There is an abundant literature on methods for
involving stakeholders in the development of
scenarios and visions. Care has to be taken to
ensure that the interests of less powerful groups
are addressed. Achieving genuine public par-
ticipation is not just common sense—it requires
professional skills. Neutral professional facili-
tation is almost always necessary. The Centre
for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)
and the International Institute for Environment
and Development (IIED) Web sites provide
access to the literature on these approaches.
Simple modelling tools exist for exploring
options and making assumptions explicit.
STELLA, VENSIM, and SIMILE are widely
used.These models are the best tools for devel-
oping scenarios, understanding the drivers
of change in a system, making stakeholder
assumptions and understanding explicit, and
then tracking progress toward goals that are
identified as desirable.
The concept of getting into the system131 is
fundamental.This means engaging for the long-
term, becoming a stakeholder, and making
one’s interest explicit. In the case of WWF, as
130 Dunwiddie, 1992. 131 Sayer and Campbell, 2004.
14. Goals and Targets of Forest Landscape Restoration 103
with other conservation organisations, this
interest is principally biodiversity, and we have
to make commitments for what we are pre-
pared to contribute in cash or other contribu-
tions to support the achievement of our
biodiversity goals.
2.3. Understand Development
Trajectories
What would happen if we did not intervene?
What is the underlying development trajec-
tory? What are the principal drivers of change?
It is vital to get the correct answers to these
questions. Modelling can help. Normally only
a small number of drivers of change are sig-
nificant at any one time. We have to know
which ones they are and how they can be
influenced.132
We must also understand the underlying
processes of ecological succession.133 The
factors that influence restoration at a single
location are not necessarily confined to that
place. A variety of extrasectoral influences
such as economic and trade policies and levels
of public understanding of issues will have a
continuing and variable influence on restora-
tion processes.
2.4. Use Monitoring and Evaluation
as a Management Tool
Monitoring and evaluation have to be linked to
the desired outcomes of interventions. Negoti-
ating these outcomes is the first and most
important activity in any programme. Indica-
tors of the desired outcomes have to be agreed
to or negotiated at the beginning, and they then
become the tools for adaptive management.134
The book by Sayer and Campbell has a chapter
on this issue that gives further references to the
monitoring and evaluation literature.134a
2.5. Find and Protect Reference
Landscapes
Whether or not the objective of forest land-
scape restoration is to restore the “original”
vegetation cover, it will always be useful to have
reference areas that are as near as possible to
the natural conditions of the area (see “Identi-
fying and Using Reference Landscapes for
Restoration”).These are useful as benchmarks,
for understanding ecological processes,for edu-
cation, and as sources of plants and animals to
be used in assisted restoration.
Much has been written about attempts to
restore a pristine, climax, “natural” land cover.
There are lots of problems with this approach,
not least of which is the difficulty of knowing
what the preintervention situation was.It is also
important to avoid falling into the trap of
assuming that natural systems reach a climax
condition and are then constant—this is rarely
the case. Even in the remotest and least dis-
turbed parts of the Congo Basin or the Amazon
the species’ composition of the forests today is
not the same as it was 100, 500, or 5000 years
ago. Natural landscapes are highly dynamic,
and decisions to restore to “natural”conditions
will always be arbitrary and open to multiple
interpretations. Reference landscapes, or plots,
with minimal intervention remain valuable in
helping us to understand landscape processes
and can be useful components of any large-
scale restoration programme.They can be valu-
able as examples to look at during negotiation
processes.
Normally restoring “natural conditions” is
just one of a range of possible objectives, and
in most situations what one restores will be
defined by more precise production and envi-
ronmental objectives.
2.6. Be Realistic About Designer
Landscapes
Once a comprehensive stakeholder participa-
tion process is engaged, it will gradually
become possible to begin to talk about desir-
able outcomes. Eventually a vision of a
“designer landscape” may begin to emerge.
Different approaches and tools are useful to
132 See the Web site of the Resilience Alliance and publi-
cation by Berkes et al, 2003.
133 Walker and del Moral, 2003.
134 CIFOR’s work on Adaptive Collaborative Management
provides guidance.
134a Sayer and Campbell, 2004.
104 J. Sayer
explore what the landscape should look like in
order to respond to the needs and wishes of dif-
ferent interest groups.
3. Outline of Tools
Stakeholders may decide that a certain land-
scape configuration and condition is ideal for
their objectives. But usually different stake-
holders have different ideals. To fine-tune a
landscape vision, some specific approaches can
be used depending on the restoration goal:
Biodiversity: Modelling tools developed by the
United Nations Environment Programme-
World Conservation Monitoring Centre
(UNEP-WCMC) are useful.135 Some assump-
tions about corridors and connectivity have
to be treated with caution.136 One should not
always assume that protected areas should be
as big as possible. There are often significant
opportunity costs that protected areas create
for local people. Protected areas should be
of an optimal size, not necessarily as big as
possible.136 The importance of seral stages
in vegetation development is often underes-
timated. Many wildlife species require early
successional vegetation for their survival.
Poverty mapping and assessment: The World
Agroforestry Centre has a lot to offer on this
topic (see “Agroforestry as a Tool for Forest
Landscape Restoration”).
Land care: The Landcare programme in Aus-
tralia and now expanding elsewhere is an
interesting model for participatory multi-
stakeholder restoration programmes.
Water: Lots of common assumptions about the
value of land cover for water quality and
quantity are not borne out by empirical evi-
dence. Forest cover may consume more
water than it conserves; it all depends on the
type of trees, the frequency and intensity of
rainfall, and the nature of the underlying sub-
strate. Expert advice should be sought on the
hydrological implications of restoration pro-
grammes (also see “Restoring Water Quality
and Quantity”).
Amenity: The Netherlands, the United
Kingdom, and the United States have
restoration programmes with a heavy
emphasis on amenity. This is the realm of
landscape architecture.138
Avalanche control:This is an important issue in
temperate and boreal countries and there is
an abundant literature.
Timber:Timber is the real objective of much so-
called restoration. Caution is needed because
narrow timber production objectives are
rarely consistent with the broader objectives
of local people and the environment.
Tree crops:Tree crops include oil palm, coffee,
cacao, rubber etc. More can be found on this
topic in the chapter on agroforestry, cited
above, but also in publications on extractive
reserves and jungle rubber.
4. Future Needs
4.1. Improved Economic Analysis
Restoring landscapes is expensive, but can and
should yield economic benefits. The valuation
of environmental goods and services is still an
imprecise science. The valuation of the sub-
sistence products used by poor subsistence
farmers is also a challenge. But all large-scale
restoration initiatives have to be rooted in
economic realism. The cost-benefit ratios are
essential in determining what is possible and
desirable. There are countless examples of
forest restoration programmes that have cost a
lot of money and yielded few real benefits.
It is especially important to remember that
investments in restoration carry opportunity
costs—the same money could be invested in
employment creation, establishing protected
areas,etc. Even though complete economic val-
uation will only rarely be possible or necessary,
it is always important to thoroughly examine
options from an economic perspective.
135 UNEP-WCMC, 2003.
136 Simberloff et al, 1992.
137 Zuidema et al, 1997. 138 Liu and Taylor, 2002.
14. Goals and Targets of Forest Landscape Restoration 105
4.2. A Capacity for Learning
by Doing
The above consideration may suggest a need
for heavy planning processes,but this should be
avoided at all costs. It is much better to start
immediately with a few experimental restora-
tion activities on the basis of outcomes of the
initial discussions amongst stakeholders. These
trials will establish the credibility of outside
stakeholders and will permit learning.They will
greatly enrich ongoing stakeholder negotia-
tions that should continue throughout the pro-
gramme.The initial objective should be to build
a community of interest groups that can exper-
iment and learn together.
A sense of community or “social capital” can
really enhance efforts to restore landscapes.
Voluntary groups have accomplished some
remarkable restoration achievements. People
can work together and develop a shared passion
for restoring the habitat of a rare animal or the
beauty of a disfigured landscape. Such commu-
nities will fine-tune their objectives and adapt
their programmes as they advance. They will
provide an excellent mechanism for setting and
updating goals and end points.
To get real “buy-in” from diverse interest
groups, it is important to start small, provide
outside inputs as drip-feeding, not as big cash
injections, avoid setting up bureaucracies, and
learn and adapt as you progress.
4.3. Tracking Tools for
“Landscapes”
As restoration programmes unfold it is essen-
tial to have feedback mechanisms so that
success can be assessed, stakeholders consulted,
and activities adapted to reflect changed per-
spectives. Such tracking tools (or monitoring
and evaluation) need to be negotiated at the
beginning of the process to ensure that they
genuinely track the attributes of the site that
people value.Since landscapes are complex and
stakeholders’ views often divergent, such track-
ing tools will inevitably be complicated.139
References
Berkes, F., Colding, J., and Folke, C. 2003. Navigating
Social-Ecological Systems. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, UK.
Dunwiddie, P.W. 1992. On setting goals: from snap-
shots to movies and beyond. Restoration Manage-
ment Notes 10(2):116–119.
Liu, J., and Taylor, W.W. 2002. Integrating Landscape
Ecology into Natural Resource Management.
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Meffe, G.K., and Carroll, C.R. 1994. Ecological
Restoration. In: Principles of Conservation
Biology, pp. 409–438. Sinamer Associates, Inc.,
Sunderland, MA.
Sayer, J.A., and Campbell, B. 2004. The Science of
Sustainable Development. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, UK.
Simberloff,D., Farr, J.A., Cox, J., and Mehlman, D.W.
1992. Movement corridors: conservation bargains
or poor investments? Conservation Biology 6:
493–504.
UNEP-WCMC. 2003. Spatial analysis as a decision
support tool for forest landscape restoration.
Report to WWF.
Walker, L.R., and del Moral, R. 2003. Primary Suc-
cession and Ecosystem Rehabilitation. Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Zuidema, P.A., Sayer, J.A., and Dijkman, W. 1997.
Forest fragmentation and biodiversity:the case for
intermediate-sized conservation areas. Environ-
mental Conservation 23:290–297.
Additional Reading
Aide, T.M., Zimmerman, J.K., et al. 2000. Forest
regeneration in a chronosequence of tropical
abandoned pastures: implications for restoration
ecology. Restoration Ecology 8(4): 328–338.
Ashton, M.S., Gunatilleke, C.V.S.et al. 2001.Restora-
tion pathways for rainforest in Southwest Sri
Lanka: a review of concepts and models. Forest
Ecology and Management 154:409–430.
Bradshaw, A.D., and Chadwick M.J. 1980. The
Restoration of Land:The ecology and reclamation
of derelict and degraded land. Blackwell Scientific
Publications, Oxford, UK.
Buckley, G.P., ed. 1989. Biological Habitat Recon-
struction. Belhaven Press, London.
Cairns, J., Jr., ed. 1988. Rehabilitating Damaged
Ecosystems,vols. 1 and 2.CRC Press, Boca Raton,
Florida.
139 See penultimate chapter in Sayer and Cambell, 2004.
106 J. Sayer
Gobster, P.H., and Hull, R.B., eds. 1999. Restoring
Nature: Perspectives from the Social Sciences and
Humanities. Island Press,Washington, D.C.
Holl, K.D., Loik, M.E., et al. 2000.Tropical montane
forest restoration in Costa Rica: overcoming bar-
riers to dispersal and establishment. Restoration
Ecology 8(4):339–349.
IUFRO. 2003. Occasional paper no. 15. Part 1:
Science and technology—building the future of
the world’s forests.Part II: Planted forests and bio-
diversity. ISSN 1024-1414X. IUFRO, Vienna, pp
1–50.
Jordan, W.R. III, Gilpin, M.E., and Abers, J.D., eds.
1987. Restoration Ecology:A Synthetic Approach
to Ecological Research. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, UK.
Lamb, D. 1998. Large scale ecological restoration
of degraded tropical forest lands: the potential
role of timber plantations. Restoration Ecology
6(3):271–279.
Luken, J.O. 1990. Directing Ecological Succession.
Chapman and Hall, London.
Nilsen, R., ed. 1991. Helping Nature Heal:An Intro-
duction to Environmental Restoration. A Whole
Earth Catalogue, Ten Speed Press, Berkeley, Cali-
fornia (Deals with restoration in a U.S. context.)
Perrow, M.R., and Davy, A.J. 2002. Handbook or
Ecological Restoration, vols. 1 and 2. Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Reiners, W.A., and Driese, K.L. 2003. Propagation
of Ecological Influence Through Environmental
Space. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
UK.
Smout, T.C. 2000. Nature Contested; Environmental
History in Scotland and Northern England Since
1600. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh,UK.
Whisenant, S.G. 1999. Repairing Damaged Wild-
lands—A Process-Oriented, Landscape-Scale
Approach. Cambridge University Press, Cam-
bridge, UK.
Starting in March 2003, WWF, the global con-
servation organisation, and its partners began
developing a Forest Landscape Restoration
programme in the moist forest ecoregion of
Madagascar.This case study highlights the dif-
ferent steps in the process.
Only about 10 percent of Madagascar’s
forests are left, and much of this is in poor
condition. For this reason forest landscape
restoration was identified as a useful approach
to tackle conservation and development
concerns in the country. In March 2003,
when WWF began its restoration programme,
a moist forest ecoregion process was already
underway to develop a comprehensive
conservation programme for the whole
area (i.e., data were being gathered, maps
developed highlighting key habitats, the
range of different species were being sur-
veyed, etc.) which helped to feed crucial data
into the development of the restoration
initiative.
The key steps in the development of the
restoration programme are as follows:
1. Short-listing priority landscapes (March
2003): In a national workshop with partici-
pants representing civil society, researchers,
government, and the private sector, a number
of potential landscapes were selected for
restoration based on coarse criteria developed
together in the workshop.
2. Reconnaissance to focus on one land-
scape (June–August 2003): The criteria were
then further refined by a national working
group set up at the workshop. Using the
selected criteria (which included both ecolog-
ical and social issues, for instance, distance
from large forest patch, literacy rate, presence
or absence of land tenure conflict), the
members of the national working group
visited the five short-listed landscapes and
rated each according to the criteria in order to
select one priority one.
3. Proposal development and funds raised
(August 2003–June 2004): A proposal was
developed, submitted, and approved for the
priority landscape.
4. Beginning the process for selecting bio-
logical and ecological targets (June 2004): To
begin identifying the biological and ecological
priorities for the landscape, data from the
ecoregion process was used to define what
might be priority areas for restoration within
the landscape and with which biological/
ecological objective (e.g.,restoring the habitat
for a specific lemur, buffering a protected
area, etc.).
5. Socioeconomic analysis (September–
December 2004): Before taking the biological
data further, it was felt that a better under-
standing of the social and economic situation
inside the landscape was needed, leading to the
commissioning of a socioeconomic analysis.
Case Study: Madagascar: Developing
a Forest Landscape Restoration
Initiative in a Landscape in the
Moist Forest
Stephanie Mansourian and Gérard Rambeloarisoa
107
108 S. Mansourian and G. Rambeloarisoa
Next Steps
Some of the key next steps that have been
already identified include the following:
Setting common targets in landscape: Using
a merge of the ecological and the socioeco-
nomic data, it will be possible to identify
“compromise targets” for the landscape in
consultation with stakeholders.
Partnerships: Key partnerships with stake-
holders will be important to the process,
from a point of view of both political sup-
port and technical complementarity.
Setting up a monitoring system at the land-
scape level: To measure progress against
those targets,a monitoring system will need
to be set up.
Beginning small-scale activities: Small-scale
activities need to start rapidly to identify
the most suitable techniques, species,
species’ mix, training needs, and alternative
economic activities that the population can
engage in.
Extracting lessons learned from the process
and revisiting the work plan: On an annual
basis, it is necessary to revise work plans
and review data to determine whether the
process is progressing according to plan or
if adjustments are necessary.
1. Background and
Explanation of the Issue
Because forest restoration is a process, a good
restoration programme starts with a fairly clear
idea of what type of forest is being created, that
is, the target for restoration and the associ-
ated activities. This can only be approximate,
because ecosystems change and evolve, but can
help set the approach and time scale.140 There
can be many different aims and end points, for
instance:
Restoration of deforested land with a staged
process leading to a more natural forest over
time, e.g., as in Guanacaste, Costa Rica,
where exotic species are used as nurse crops
for natural forest141
Restoration of forest with specific social
values, e.g., tembawang fruit gardens of
western Borneo, which are planted for their
nontimber forest products but are also high
repositories of biodiversity
• Restoration of specific values within man-
aged forests by specific interventions, such as
re-creation of dead wood components in
southern Swedish and Finnish forests
Restoration as a centuries-long process,
where initial intervention is then augmented
by natural changes and aging, as in the pre-
viously deforested Agathis forests of north-
ern New Zealand
Although it is often assumed that restoration
aims to re-create a “natural” forest, this is not
always the case. Many efforts aim instead at
culturally important forests, as in parts of the
Mediterranean, or even seek to limit the spread
of trees to maintain game animals, as in many
of the eastern African savannahs.Whatever the
aims,good restoration needs to be planned and
monitored against some framework, usually a
similar forest type that identifies a template for
the type of forest being restored.
Reference forests provide a model to follow.
The best reference forests are those that have
15
Identifying and Using Reference
Landscapes for Restoration
Nigel Dudley
Key Points to Retain
Reference forests are carefully preserved
natural or near-natural forests that can
provide information about natural species’
mix and ecology, that can be used in planning
and measuring the success of restoration.
Formal and informal networks of reference
forests are building up around the world.
Use of reference forests often needs to be
supplemented with other data such as his-
torical records, old maps, identification of
past vegetation through pollen mapping
from peat cores, etc.
109
140 Peterken, 1996. 141 Janzen, 2002.
110 N. Dudley
been identified, protected, and monitored over
time, so that they have an associated body of
understanding about their ecology. They will
often, although not invariably, be old forests,
although younger forests can provide valuable
reference for successional stages. Even quite
newly identified reference forests can provide
valuable information if their history is known
and it will often be necessary to find a reference
forest or reference landscape as part of the
planning for forest restoration at a landscape
scale. Sometimes reference forests need to be
re-created theoretically from historical records
and pollen diagrams.Although most valuable in
relating to forest types in the same ecosystem,
reference forests also provide information of
value to forests far away. It is important to
understand the relationship between the his-
torical reference forest and the future forest
being re-created or modified; the reference
forest is not necessarily the same as the target
forest being restored. Sometimes it will be pos-
sible, over time, for the latter to become very
similar to its reference, while in other cases this
will be impossible either because of other pres-
sures on and needs from the forest or because
conditions have changed and certain elements
of the original forest are irrecoverable. A clear
understanding of this relationship is important
when setting targets for restoration.
Reference landscapes provide information
on different aspects of ecology, particularly
composition, ecological processes and function-
ing, and,crucially but often the most difficult to
pinpoint, cyclical changes over time. Locating
forests undisturbed enough to exhibit natural
changes either through a gradual process of
aging and renewal or from evidence of natural
catastrophic events is now increasingly difficult
in many areas, yet an understanding of how
forests renew themselves is important in re-
creating near-to-natural forests and in under-
standing likely pressures on managed forests.
Other elements to consider in defining
targets for restoration include long-term
human interaction with forests and the evolu-
tion of cultural landscapes (many forests have
never existed without the presence of humans
so that the idea of a pristine, human-free
ecosystem is often little more than a myth).The
probability of future climate change and other
forms of environmental disturbance means that
targets should be tailored with this in mind, also
suggesting the limitation of following reference
landscapes too closely, when they may be
undergoing change themselves.More generally,
targets for restoration should be developed
with an understanding of likely changes. The
idea that vegetation evolves to some climax
type and then stays the same is now largely dis-
proved, at least at the level of a particular stand,
where flux is expected and is likely to be con-
stant. In the end, choices usually need to be
made about levels of biodiversity, naturalness,
and livelihood values contained in particular
restored forests, and reference forests can only
provide information to help with these more
political choices.
2. Examples
The presence of reference forests has played
a fundamental role in understanding forest
ecology and in developing responses to forest
loss and degradation. Some reference forests
are outlined below.
2.1. Oregon, United States
The H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest was
protected by the U.S. Forest Service in 1948 as
part of a network of forests intended to serve
as living laboratories for studies by the service’s
scientific research branch. The forest is admin-
istered cooperatively by the U.S.Department of
Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service Pacific
Northwest Research Station, Oregon State
University, and the Willamette National Forest,
with funding from the National Science Foun-
dation, U.S. Forest Service, Oregon State Uni-
versity, and others. Long-term field experiments
have focussed on climate dynamics, stream
flow, water quality, and vegetation succession.
Currently, researchers are working to develop
concepts and tools needed to predict effects
of natural disturbance, land use, and climate
change on ecosystem structure, function, and
species’ composition. Over 3000 scientific pub-
lications have used data from the forest. The
15. Identifying and Using Reference Landscapes for Restoration 111
research has been used in developing ways of
restoring old-growth characteristics within
managed forests in the Pacific Northwest
through “new forestry,” including retention of
standing dead wood and coarse woody debris
in streams.142
2.2. Centre for Tropical Forest
Science (CTFS), Smithsonian
Institute, Washington, DC
The CTFS has developed an international
network of standardised forest dynamics plots.
Within each plot, every tree over 1cm in diam-
eter is marked, measured,plotted on a map,and
identified according to species. The typical
forest dynamics plot is 50 hectares, containing
up to 360,000 individual trees. An initial tree
census and periodic follow-up censuses yield
long-term information on species’ growth, mor-
tality, regeneration,distribution, and productiv-
ity, which currently provides an almost unique
information source for developing restoration
strategies within managed tropical forests.Util-
ising the data from the standardised, intensive
forest dynamics plots throughout the tropics,
CTFS researchers are exploring tropical forest
species’ diversity and dynamics at a global
scale. Plots currently exist in Panama, Puerto
Rico, Ecuador, Colombia, Cameroon, Democ-
ratic Republic of Congo, Malaysia, Thailand,
Sri Lanka, India (see below), the Philippines,
Singapore, and Taiwan.
2.3. India
The Mudumalai Wildlife Sanctuary and
Bandipur National Park are part of the wildlife-
rich protected areas within the Nilgiri
Biosphere in the Western Ghat Mountains of
southern India.These reserves are sites of long-
term ecological research by the Centre for Eco-
logical Sciences. A 50-hectare permanent plot
in Mudumalai, where the dynamics of a tropi-
cal dry forest is investigated in relation to fire
and herbivory by large mammals, is part of the
international network of large-scale plots coor-
dinated by the CTFS (see above).
2.4. Europe
Under the auspices of the European Coopera-
tion in the Field of Scientific and Technical
Research (COST) programme of the European
Commission, a network has been established to
help coordinate research taking place in strict
forest reserves in 19 European countries. The
process established protocols for data collec-
tion both in a core area and over the whole
reserve, primarily to develop repeatable
methods of describing the stand structure
and ground vegetation. A Web-based forest
reserves databank is helping to coordinate
information. Natural forests are perhaps more
critically threatened in Europe than in any
other region, and the information will be used
to help identify and manage protected areas
and increase component of naturalness in
managed forests.143
2.5. Mediterranean Europe
In some cases, changes have progressed so far
that fully natural or near to natural reference
forests have been lost.The origin of many of the
fruit trees commonly found in Mediterranean
forests is often only very generally known for
example. Here the most useful references are
often old cultural forests that contain many
elements of biodiversity, and restoration pro-
grammes often aim to re-create these.144
Changes in access to reference forests can
dramatically increase our level of understand-
ing of forest dynamics and therefore manage-
ment options.For example, when Finnish forest
ecologists gained access to more natural forests
in the Russian Federation at the end of the
1980s, they revised their understanding about
disturbance patterns, recognising that snow
damage was a proportionately larger agent of
change than had been suspected. However,
reference forests seldom provide all necessary
information, particularly when changes have
been so profound that no natural forest
remains. Living reference forests are therefore
a useful tool but by no means the only method
142 Luoma, 1999.
143 Broekmeyer et al, 1993.
144 Moussouris and Regato, 1999.
112 N. Dudley
for determining targets.Some of the other tools
that may be used as surrogates for living refer-
ence forests are outlined below.
3. Outline of Tools
In most cases, reference landscapes are devel-
oped using a suite of different tools, the main
ones of which follow:
Reference forests: As described above, these
are probably the most valuable single source
of information.
• Comparison with other ecologically similar
forests: Even if no nearby forests exist to act
as a reference,use of cumulative data around
the world can help to build our understand-
ing about a forest’s ecology. For example,
knowledge about breeding patterns and pop-
ulation in many birds of prey allows ornithol-
ogists to make reasonably good predictions
about stable reproduction rates for species
based on body weight. Understanding about
forest fire ecology can, with caution,be trans-
ferred from one ecosystem to another, at
least to develop working hypotheses. Other
elements, such as old growth characteristics,
have been found to translate rather poorly
from one forest ecosystem to another.
Comparison with “original” forest types:
Although it is often impossible to find a
wholly unaltered forest ecosystem, numerous
well-thought-out attempts have been made
to describe ancient or natural forests: some
examples are given in Table 15.1.
• Historical records: Written records can tell
us a great deal and sometimes stretch back
for hundreds or even thousands of years.
The oldest known written records of forest
management are 2000 years old and refer
to forests maintained to supply timber for
Shinto temples in Japan. Records from
written histories, religious scriptures, sagas,
and trade accounts can all provide valuable,
albeit usually fragmentary, information
about forests. Many supposedly “natural”
forests in the U.K. can be traced back to
recorded planting (often with the names of
the people who planted them). More recent
travellers’ accounts are frequently used to
provide information on past vegetation
patterns, such as the records kept by Italian
travellers in Eritrea a century ago that
Table 15.1. Definitions of original forests.
Definition Explanation
Ancient woodland Woodland that has been in existence for many centuries: precise time varies but in
the U.K., 400 years is commonly used1
Frontier forest “Relatively undisturbed and big enough to maintain all their biodiversity, including
viable populations of the wide-ranging species associated with each forest type”;
criteria include primarily forested; natural structure, composition, and
heterogeneity; dominated by indigenous tree species2
Native forests Meaning is variable: often forests consisting of species originally found in the area—
may be young or old, established or naturally occurring, although in Australia often
used as if it were primary woodland3
Old-growth in the Pacific A forest stand usually at least 180–220 years old with moderate to high canopy
Northwest, United States cover; a multi-layered multi-species canopy dominated by large over-storey trees”4
Primary woodland “Land that has been wooded continuously since the original-natural woodlands were
fragmented. The character of the woodland varies according to how it has been treated.”5
Wildwood “Wholly natural woodland unaffected by Neolithic or later civilisation”6
1Bunce, 1989.
2Bryant et al, 1997.
3Clark, 1992.
4Johnson et al, 1991.
5Peterken, 2002.
6Rackham, 1976.
15. Identifying and Using Reference Landscapes for Restoration 113
now provide information for restoration
activities.
Forest fragments: Even quite unnatural
forest fragments or remnant microhabitats
can with care and caution, be used as partial
surrogates in areas where full reference
forests no longer exist. For instance, park
land and hedgerows both contain important
elements of natural forests in Western
Europe and can help set targets for restora-
tion. Similarly sacred sites, preserved for
religious reasons, can contain species that
have disappeared from the surrounding area,
as in forest gardens and sacred groves in,
for instance, Indonesia, Laos, China, Kenya,
and Malawi.
Pollen analysis and soil microcarbon analysis:
Analysis of pollen in peat cores,lake beds, or
soil profiles can identify plants from thou-
sands of years ago, as pollen is highly resist-
ant to decay, particularly in the anaerobic
conditions found in peat, and can often be
identified to the level of individual species.
Analysis along a core can show how vegeta-
tion changed over time,the presence and fre-
quency of fires, and sometimes information
about pollution. Such analysis is often the
only sure way of building a picture of past
vegetation where changes have been dra-
matic and living reference landscapes have
disappeared.
• Gap analysis using enduring features: This
approach consists of a coarse-filter conserva-
tion assessment of protected areas based on
a landscape approach using “enduring fea-
tures” (essentially land forms or physical
habitats) as geographic units that reflect bio-
logical diversity. The gap analysis involves
three main stages. First, natural regional
frameworks are reviewed to ensure that
natural region boundaries reflect broad phys-
iographic and climatic gradients.Next, within
each natural region maps are used to identify
enduring features. An enduring feature is a
land form or landscape element or unit
within a natural region characterised by rel-
atively uniform origin of parent material,
texture of parent material, and topography-
relief. Finally, the relationship of biodiver-
sity to enduring features of the landscape
is derived from more detailed tertiary
sources.145
4. Future Needs
Although a lot of the tools are in place, there is
still little experience in combining them to
develop realistic targets for restoration exer-
cises. Gaps go right back to the philosophical
roots of restoration and at what is being aimed
for—for example, original vegetation or just a
workable ecosystem at the present time. Much
better understanding of the likely process of
forest restoration itself is needed, along with
more accurate methods of measuring progress.
References
Broekmeyer, M.E.A., Vos, W., and Koop, H., eds.
1993. European Forest Reserves. Pudic Scientific
Publishers,Wageningen, The Netherlands.
Bryant, D., Nielsen, D., and Tangley, L. 1997. The Last
Frontier Forests: Ecosystems and economies on
the edge. World Resources Institute, Washington,
DC.
Bunce, R.G.H. 1989. A Field Key for Classifying
British Woodland Vegetation. Institute of Terres-
trial Ecology and HMSO, London.
Clark, J. 1992. The future for native logging in
Australia. Centre for Resource and Environmen-
tal Studies Working Paper 1992/1. The Australia
National University, Canberra.
Iacobelli, T., Kavanagh, K., and Rowe, S. 1994. A
Protected Areas Gap Analysis Methodology: Plan-
ning for the Conservation of Biodiversity. World
Wildlife Fund Canada, Toronto.
Janzen, D.H. 2002.Tropical dry forest: Area de Con-
servación Guanacaste, northwestern Costa Rica.
In: Perrow, M.R., Davy, A.J., eds. Handbook of
Ecological Restoration, vol.2, Restoration in Prac-
tice. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,UK,
pp. 559–583.
Johnson, K.N., Franklin, J.F., Thomas, J.W., and
Gordon, J. 1991. Alternatives to Late-Successional
Forests of the Pacific Northwest. A Report to the
US House of Representatives,Washington, DC.
Luoma, J.R. 1999.The Hidden Forest:The Biography
of an Ecosystem. Owl Books, New York.
145 Iacobelli et al, 1994.
114 N. Dudley
Moussouris, Y., and Regato, P. 1999. Forest harvest:
Mediterranean woodlands and the importance of
non-timber forest products to forest conservation.
Arborvitae supplement, WWF and IUCN, Gland,
Switzerland.
Peterken, G.F. 1996. Natural Woodland: Ecology and
Conservation in Northern Temperate Regions.
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Peterken G. 2002. Reversing the Habitat Fragmen-
tation of British Woodlands.WWF UK, Goldalm-
ing, UK.
Rackham, O. 1976.Trees and Woodland in the British
Landscape. Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London.
1. Background and
Explanation of the Issue
Successfully planning, implementing, and mon-
itoring projects that aim to restore forest land-
scapes involves the management and analysis
of spatial information, that is, quantitative and
qualitative two-dimensional data covering the
area of interest. For example, understanding
how a potential restoration site may or may not
meet a biodiversity goal such as “increase
overall habitat connectivity from x to y to main-
tain the viability of species z” requires maps
and basic statistics (size, isolation, etc.) for all
forest patches that occur across the landscape.
Many other spatial variables influence the suit-
ability and likely success of a given area for
restoration.Therefore,map-based technologies,
such as satellite remote sensing, aerial photo-
graphy, and geographic information systems
(GIS) have and will continue to provide many
benefits to forest landscape restoration.
There are many ways GIS and other spatial
technologies can assist forest landscape resto-
ration projects. At one end of the spectrum,
simple maps of forest cover, elevation, rivers,
communities, and roads are inherently useful
for understanding the ecological and human
context of the landscape.At the other extreme,
sophisticated and custom spatial models may
be constructed to simulate, for example, the
hydrological effects of forest restoration on
downstream watersheds. Here we focus on the
use of spatial data to develop spatial scenarios
that meet biological and socioeconomic targets.
Known as “suitability modelling” or “multicri-
teria evaluation,” this approach is one type of
GIS-based modelling utilising readily available
commercial GIS packages.
Specifically, in this chapter we provide (1)
examples of the types of spatial data and some
common map-based measures useful for plan-
ning and monitoring restoration of forest land-
scapes, (2) examples of spatial tools and
technologies for deriving this information, and
(3) reviews of several recent applications of
spatial technologies to restoration.
1.1. Mapping Areas to Meet or
Set Targets
The targets and goals of the project determine
the types of spatial data to collect and spatial
analyses to conduct. There are two main types
16
Mapping and Modelling as Tools to
Set Targets, Identify Opportunities,
and Measure Progress
Thomas F. Allnutt
Key Points to Retain
Forest landscape restoration can benefit
from mapping and use of geographical infor-
mation systems (GIS) in several key ways,
but in particular by measuring and monitor-
ing progress toward meeting biological and
socioeconomic targets via restoration.
Many potential methods exist to utilise maps
and GIS for landscape-scale restoration,
from the simple to the highly customised and
experimental.
115
116 T.F. Allnutt
of targets, biological and socioeconomic. Al-
though not all targets are spatial in nature
(e.g., “prevent the extinction of species x”),
many are. Some examples of spatial targets
include “Protect x hectares of habitat y” or
“Establish x hectares of community forest
reserves.” Planning for and evaluating progress
toward a target such as the latter type requires
appropriate spatial data.
1.1.1. Biological Targets
Often, biological targets are derived directly
from existing large-scale conservation plan-
ning processes such as ecoregion conservation
(ERC).146 An initial product of an ERC vision
is a set of priority landscapes designed to meet
specific biological objectives, such as the con-
servation of an endangered primate.Where this
is the case, these targets can be used directly to
prioritise and implement restoration areas, for
example, preferentially conduct restoration
adjacent to known populations of the target
primate.
In other cases,no such information may exist.
Here, participants may rely on basic principles
of biological conservation to guide what targets
to select, and thus what spatial data sets are
needed. In general, space-based biological tar-
gets involve individual species (e.g.,cheetah),147
habitat, or vegetation types (e.g., wetlands), or
ecological and evolutionary processes (e.g.,
migration, hydrology).148 Targets for these fea-
tures are typically expressed as quantitative
areas or percentages of the total distribution of
the biological element in question (e.g., 1000
hectares of oak-savannah).
Once biological targets are established,
several classes of spatial data are necessary to
map where they may be achieved on the
ground. In many cases, existing map sources
may be used; in others, maps will have to be
created using modelling or technologies such as
remote sensing.
To evaluate species-based targets, one first
needs to know the current distribution of all
target species within the landscape at the finest
level of detail possible. Range maps are one
potential surrogate for this information and
they are increasingly available for a number of
taxa worldwide.149 In other cases, modelling
may be used to predict species’ distributions
from field collections coupled with environ-
mental data.150 Often, and particularly at fine
scales, field-based inventories will be required
to assess the presence or absence of certain key
species.
Another common type of biological target
involves particular habitat and/or vegetation
types. Several sources of data are available to
evaluate this type of target. Existing maps and
classifications are often used, from national or
regional inventories, for example. In other
cases, new maps may be created from raw pho-
tographs or the processing of photographs or
digital images. The most widespread source
is remote sensing—typically photographs or
digital imagery from airplanes or satellite-
borne sensors. New, high-resolution imagery
(submetre) provides a good source for mapping
natural habitats as well as human land uses,
though cost can be a significant constraint.
In areas of high species and habitat hetero-
geneity, optical remote-sensing may not be able
to distinguish biological differences to a neces-
sary degree. Forest that is indistinguishable
spectrally—from the perspective of a camera
or satellite—is often very diverse biologically.
Here, habitat modelling can be used to map
areas where one expects species to differ sig-
nificantly. A range of approaches are available,
from the quick and approximate, to more
formal statistical methods.151 Elevation, for
example, is often used as a proxy for species’
distributions, and can be used to quickly divide
a continuously mapped forest type into several
or more forest habitats (lowland, sub-montane,
montane, etc.).
146 Dinerstein et al, 2000.
147 Lambeck, 1997.
148 Pressey et al, 2003.
149 Ridgely et al, 2003.
150 Boitani et al, 1999.
151 Ferrier et al, 2002.
16. Mapping and Modelling 117
The spatial configuration of the restoration
landscape is of critical importance for biodi-
versity conservation for several reasons. One,
the long-term survival of many species often
depends directly on the size and connectivity of
available habitat. The reasons for this are gen-
erally (a) individuals and populations require
sufficient outbreeding opportunities that are
only available in habitat blocks of a particular
size, and (b) the species in question has ecolog-
ical requirements (e.g.,seasonal migration) that
require large connected blocks of habitat. In
both cases, research may be necessary to assess
the habitat configuration necessary for the
target species. Two, many environmental and
ecological processes will not be maintained
once habitat fragments drop below a particular
threshold of isolation or fragmentation. The
maintenance of natural hydrological flows in
watersheds,for example,can depend on the size
and connectivity of intact forest blocks.
1.1.2. Socioeconomic Targets
The second major class of targets are socioeco-
nomic. In some cases, socioeconomic targets
will have been specified when the landscape
was identified within a priority setting exercise
(e.g., the visioning process in ecoregion conser-
vation), though this is less often the case than
with biological targets. Socioeconomic targets
that require spatial data generally specify target
amounts of land uses within the landscape.This
may involve zoning one portion of the land-
scape for a particular land use. For example,
participants may wish to have one third of the
landscape devoted to community forestry. In
other cases, the entire landscape (apart from
those areas reserved for biodiversity conser-
vation) may be zoned for particular land uses,
akin to a traditional land-use plan or zoning
map.
Mapping areas to meet socioeconomic
targets requires a detailed and up-to-date land-
cover map. This map shows the current distri-
bution of natural and human-oriented areas in
as much detail and at as fine a scale as possible
and it can be derived from existing land-use/
land-cover maps for the area, or may be created
from aerial and remote sensing sources coupled
with ground truth.The map of current land uses
serves as the starting point; a map of future land
uses shows those areas where changes in land
uses will be necessary to meet socioeconomic
targets.
1.1.3. Land Tenure and Land Value
The legal status and ownership of land (land
tenure) within the landscape, and the economic
value of that land are also important for plan-
ning forest landscape restoration. Sometimes
this information can be derived from existing
maps available from local or national govern-
ment organisations, particularly in the case of
land tenure. In other cases, ground surveys will
need to be conducted to establish tenure and
land value of unknown areas. Spatial economic
modelling has also been used to estimate land
value. Rules are constructed that allow one to
estimate the value of every parcel of land
within the area of interest, based on variables
such as market access, for example.
1.3. Mapping Opportunities:
Integrating Biological and
Socioeconomic Data to Meet
Targets and Map Opportunities
Some areas are more suitable than others for
particular uses.Analysis of spatial data has the
potential to efficiently allocate areas to one use
or another. This idea is formalised in land-use
plans or more formally via suitability modelling
otherwise known as multicriteria evaluation
(MCE).152
Suitability modelling or MCE using GIS
can be used to systematically combine spatial,
biological, physical and socioeconomic data
detailed above in order to meet biological and
socioeconomic objectives via restoration. Here
are two generic examples:
1. Map suitability for a single biological or
socioeconomic target. As an example, imagine
152 Eastman et al, 1993.
118 T.F. Allnutt
one biological target for the landscape is to
maintain a viable population of a primate. It
is estimated that the target primate requires
25,000 hectares of habitat between 1000 and
3000m in elevation, in a single,connected block
of forest. There are currently only 15,000
hectares of suitable forest within the landscape,
in two disconnected blocks.Therefore, the chal-
lenge is to map at least 10,000 hectares to
restore based on the habitat criteria required
for the species: elevation,size, and connectivity.
Three maps are created. One shows all areas in
the target range of 1000 to 3000m, one ranks
areas according to their potential to rejoin the
disconnected blocks, and one ranks areas by
their proximity to existing good habitat for the
primate. These three maps are standardised to
a common numeric range, and then combined
by means of a weighted average, to produce a
continuous map of suitability.The most suitable
areas are those that are close to existing intact
habitat, connect the two blocks, and are the
right elevation.The highest scoring areas (those
that come close to meeting all three criteria)
are selected until the target of 10,000 hectares
is met.These form the priority restoration areas
for this biological target.The same process may
be used to map suitable areas for socioeco-
nomic targets.
2. Incorporating socioeconomic data as a
constraint on suitable areas for biological
targets. Just as physical and biological criteria
may be combined to identify suitable restora-
tion areas to meet biological targets, socioeco-
nomic criteria, such as land use or land value,
can also be incorporated in the process. For
example,imagine two parcels of land that, when
restored, would be equal in every way for
meeting the above biological target. They are
equivalent in elevation, in proximity to existing
forest, and in terms of connecting the two forest
blocks.One parcel is currently actively used for
agricultural production, whereas the other has
been abandoned for several years. For several
reasons, it would likely be easier to restore the
abandoned parcel. Thus, including socioeco-
nomic data in the MCE process can help to
efficiently identify restoration priorities when
there are choices of areas to meet biological
targets.
1.4. Monitoring
A key benefit of using quantitative spatial data
and targets for both biological and socioeco-
nomic variables throughout the planning and
implementation process is that it facilitates
long-term monitoring as the project proceeds.
Remote sensing in particular provides a rela-
tively quick and inexpensive, synoptic, repeat-
able view of large-scale changes to land uses
and land cover over time within the landscape.
Clearly this will have to be paired with reviews
of progress toward those biological and socio-
economic targets that cannot be measured
remotely. A current disadvantage is the lack of
long-term large-scale attempts at systema-
tic monitoring of conservation programmes,
though efforts are currently underway at a
number of places and institutions.
2. Examples
Examples abound of the use of maps and GIS
in the fields of planning and conservation.153
Generally speaking, however, there are few
examples of its application to forest restoration
planning. One exception is the recent work of
J. Halperin, in which GIS was used for partici-
patory, community-based, large-scale restora-
tion planning in Uganda.154
The WWF network has only recently begun
to apply GIS to its restoration initiatives. The
United Nations’ Environment Programme-
World Conservation Monitoring Centre
(UNEP-WCMC) used GIS to prioritise areas
for WWF-based restoration projects in North
Africa.155 Biological attributes such as species’
richness, forest integrity, and patch size were
balanced against human pressures including
road density, grazing pressure, and resource use.
As of early 2004, there are two additional proj-
ects underway. In one, in the Andresito land-
scape (Argentina) of the Atlantic Forest, there
are plans to use suitability modelling with
IDRISI to identify key restoration corridors in
153 see e.g., Eghenter, 2000; Herrman and Osinski, 1999.
154 Halperin et al, 2004.
155 UNEP-WCMC, 2003.
16. Mapping and Modelling 119
conjunction with a set of stakeholders from
the region. Similarly, GIS is being used in
Madagascar to map and prioritise suitable
areas for restoration within a large landscape
that needs to be restored. Here, biological
targets are being established for six IUCN red-
listed vertebrates.Criteria are being established
to map suitable habitat for each species in order
to evaluate current status within the landscape.
Where current habitat is insufficient for long-
term viability of each population, areas will be
prioritised for restoration based on connectiv-
ity, proximity to known populations, and habitat
characteristics.Socioeconomic data will be used
as a constraint where options exist to meet bio-
logical targets. This work is in its initial stages
and is expected to continue through 2005.
3. Outline of Tools
Standard vector-based GIS software—ESRI
(ArcMap, ArcView, Arcinfo)—is the standard
GIS virtually worldwide. It is available at low
cost to conservation organisations, and it per-
forms all types of GIS functions, from basic
mapping to advanced analyses, especially when
customised or linked to other programmes
(e.g., statistical software, etc.).
Standard raster-based GIS—IDRISI, ESRI
(Spatial Analyst, GRID for Arcview, ArcMap,
and Arcinfo), ERDAS. The IDRISI and ESRI
products are low cost (for educational or non-
profit companies) GISs capable of doing raster-
based analyses (e.g., most analyses involving
remotely sensed imagery). IDRISI includes
functions for easily stepping through suitability
models and MCE as part of its decision support
package. ERDAS is a much more expensive
software designed primarily to analyse satellite
imagery and other remotely sensed data.
4. Future Needs
A key need is for participatory GIS-based deci-
sion-support tools designed specifically for
restoration in a biodiversity conservation con-
text. Similarly, research is needed into tools to
strengthen linkages between site-based restora-
tion research and spatial decision making with
GIS. Recently, several new GIS models are in
use that have been used extensively for spatial
planning in conservation, notably C-Plan156 and
SITES/Marxan.157 These particular applications
are currently, generally speaking, spatial opti-
misation tools designed to meet representation
targets in conservation plans. There is tremen-
dous potential, however, especially with the
simulated-annealing algorithm used by Marxan
(and now SPOT among other tools) to optimise
any given set of objectives (such as restoration)
in a spatial model. Research is urgently needed
to expand these tools to meet other objectives
beyond simple reservation and representation.
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Additional Reading
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ral considerations in restoring habitat for wildlife.
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mentation, and restoration. Restoration Ecology
7:309.
Jankowski, P., and Nyerges, T. 2001. Geographic
Information Systems for Group Decision Making.
Taylor and Francis, New York.
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2003.Avoiding pitfalls of using species distribution
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1. Background and
Explanation of the Issue
Localised and site-based interventions to re-
store habitat can be very useful, and much of
what we have learned about ecological res-
toration comes from small-scale initiatives,
primarily carried out by nongovernmental
organisations (NGOs) and local communities
but also to an increasing extent by forward-
looking companies and government depart-
ments. We also describe further in this book
(see “Practical Interventions that Will Sup-
port Restoration in Broad-Scale Conservation
Based on WWF Experiences”) how strategic
use of such initiatives can have wider benefits,
for example by linking patches of existing
habitat, by providing fuelwood to places that
are otherwise without energy sources, or by
preventing erosion. However, small-scale ini-
tiatives are inevitably limited in what they can
achieve on their own and are usually expensive,
stretching the resources of the organisations or
communities that carry them out. Accordingly,
it is often more effective to spend effort in
changing policies at local, provincial, national,
regional or even global level to encourage
restoration at a broader scale. Many NGOs
undertake restoration initiatives to use them
as a lever to change policies, by, for example,
showing that different approaches can be more
effective or cost less money. But although
working examples can be powerful tools in
stimulating change, they usually need to be
accompanied by effective advocacy and a thor-
ough understanding of the policy climate.
Policy change can operate at many different
levels. At the most local level, it can include
changing policies within a single community158
or landscape to stimulate forest restoration.
Examples include:
Agreed changes in grazing regimes to allow
natural regeneration, perhaps agreeing to
protect different zones at different times
Voluntary controls on collection of nontim-
ber forest products to ensure that these are
not degraded
17
Policy Interventions for Forest
Landscape Restoration
Nigel Dudley
Key Points to Retain
Changing policy toward restoration or land
use is often the most effective way of stimu-
lating large-scale restoration.
Such policy changes can be addressed, in dif-
ferent ways, at a local scale (e.g., changing
grazing patterns), a national scale (e.g.,
modifying forestry laws), or a global scale
(e.g.,ensuring that international conventions
favour high-quality restoration).
Key tools in policy interventions include
good analysis, especially economic analysis,
case studies, and advocacy.
121
158 Sithole, 2000.
122 N. Dudley
• Collective investment in tree planting, for
instance to establish fuelwood plantations
Whilst such interventions are already a
regular feature of many large conservation or
conservation and development projects, they
are again quite limited in scope.A far more sig-
nificant change can be affected if national poli-
cies are changed in favour of more sympathetic
restoration, for example:
Modification of national forestry laws to
allow old-growth forest to remain, facilitate
retention of deadwood, or remove perverse
incentives that discourage restoration
• Changing national forest restoration or af-
forestation programmes to increase the
range of goods and services that they provide
(for example, reducing the proportion of
intensive plantations and increasing assisted
natural regeneration)
There are also increasingly opportunities
to change policies that transcend national
borders,159 thus potentially having an impact on
a global or a regional scale. Along with inter-
governmental bodies, such transnational policy
can also involve companies that operate in
many countries or bilateral and multilateral
donors, including the following:
Introduction of pro-restoration clauses with-
in international treaties or incentives, such
as using carbon offsets for forest restora-
tion under the U.N. Framework Convention
on Climate Change, or specific policy recom-
mendations of global forest initiatives such as
the U.N. Forum on Forests
• Integration of restoration into funding op-
portunities or legislative requirements from
regional agreements such as those of the
European Community
• Development of company policies for res-
toration after mineral extraction, infrastruc-
ture developments, etc.
Modification of projects funded by bilateral
or multilateral donor agencies
2. Examples
2.1. Altai Sayan, Russia
Russia’s first woodland area to be certified
under the Forest Stewardship Council is still
managed collectively and includes large areas
of woodland on sandy soils dominated by
birch—used for specialist products sold by the
Body Shop chain. The certification process
included agreement by farming cooperatives on
changes in sheep grazing to leave some areas
untouched for long enough to foster regenera-
tion of birch woods.159a
2.2. Latvia
Latvian forestry inherited legislation crafted by
the Soviet Union, which included the use of
large clearcuts and a requirement to manage
forests including removal of deadwood. As a
result, dead standing and lying timber is in short
supply in many woodlands, leading to a de-
cline in many saproxylic (deadwood living)
species.160 This is particularly serious at a Euro-
pean scale because Latvia’s forests contain
some of the richest biodiversity in the conti-
nent. WWF in Latvia has worked with the gov-
ernment to change the forestry regulations
to allow retention of deadwood in managed
forests,thus opening the opportunity of increas-
ing this threatened microhabitat.
2.3. Vietnam
The government’s five million hectare refor-
estation programme aims to restore forest
cover but in practice hampers local flexibility.
Although large plantations have been estab-
lished, it seems likely that in several provinces
much money has been wasted in places where
forest cover remains high. In theory funding
can be used to support natural regeneration, for
example in the buffer zones of protected areas,
as is already happening around Song Thanh
Nature Reserve. The WWF Indochina Pro-
gramme is working with the government to
159 Tarasofsky, 1999.
159a Information drawn from site visit as part of certifica-
tion team, 1998.
160 Rotbergs, 1994.
17. Policy Interventions for Forest Landscape Restoration 123
modify the way in which funds are used, both
to increase natural forest restoration and to
ensure that established forests are retained and
gain higher value (see detailed case study
“Monitoring Forest Landscape Restoration in
Vietnam”).
2.4. European Community
Throughout the European Union (EU) region,
restoration of natural woodlands is hampered
in areas of sheep or goat grazing because
farmers receive hectare-based payments de-
pending on the area capable of being
grazed.161 To obtain maximum funds, wood-
lands are opened to grazing, which means that
young seedlings fail to establish, resulting in
gradually aging forest. In some cases, wood-
lands that have been fenced with EU funds to
encourage regeneration are now being opened
up again. It is recognised that the key to facili-
tating regeneration in many areas is not further
grants for tree planting but a removal of per-
verse incentives (see “Perverse Policy Incen-
tives” and case study “The European Union’s
Afforestation Policies and their Real Impact on
Forest Restoration”) by changing incentives’
schemes within the Common Agricultural
Policy to reduce the reasons for allowing sheep
grazing in woodlands.
2.5. Central America
The Kyoto protocol of the U.N. Framework
Convention on Climate Change allows for gov-
ernments to offset some of their carbon emis-
sions, or trade other countries’ emissions,
through tree planting. Initial proposals
focussed largely on the establishment of inten-
sive plantations of exotic species, but research
suggests that the long-term carbon sequestra-
tion benefits of such plantations are very
limited, as they are used mainly for short-term
products such as paper and cardboard that are
quickly abandoned and break down. Central
American governments have been amongst
those most active in lobbying for modification
of the Kyoto protocol to allow different kinds
of forest management including natural regen-
eration and increase of retention of deadwood
and humus components.Research suggests that
innovative use of carbon markets has aided
forest regeneration, with the side benefit of also
increasing tourism in these areas.162
2.6. Lafarge—Quarry Restoration
in Kenya
Lafarge, based in France, is now the largest
quarrying company in the world. The devel-
opment of its policy toward forest landscape
restoration is an example of how small-scale
interventions can lead to larger restoration
policy initiatives.
Lafarge’s forest restoration work started
with a series of site-based interventions. The
former quarry of the Bamburi cement plant
near Mombasa in Kenya was mined for 20
years. In the early 1970s, a rehabilitation pro-
gramme was started to restore the site as a
nature reserve. After a phase of soil formation
using the leaf litter of introduced pioneer trees,
a large number of tree and other plant species
typical of the indigenous coastal forests were
also planted.The success of these was observed
over time in order to select those species that
proved suitable for planting on a larger scale to
replace the pioneer trees.In addition to trees of
potential economic value (such as Iroko and
other indigenous hardwood, which is valuable
for local crafts such as carving), endangered
species and those that provide habitat or food
for indigenous wildlife have also been planted:
to date, 422 indigenous plant species have been
introduced into the newly created ecosys-
tems of forests, wetlands, and grasslands in
Bamburi’s former quarries. Of these 364 have
survived, including 30 that are on the IUCN
Red List of Threatened Species for Kenya.
Lafarge also started working with WWF on
policy issues, including supporting the organi-
sation’s forest landscape restoration initiative.
In April 2002, Bamburi signed a partnership
agreement with WWF East Africa, and identi-
fied forest landscape restoration as one of the
priority partnership activities, including the
161 Joint Nature Conservation Committee, 2002. 162 Miranda et al, 2004.
124 N. Dudley
need to establish a biodiversity monitoring
system in partnership with WWF, in order
to define guidelines for ecological quarry
rehabilitation.
In 2001 Lafarge adopted a formal quarry
rehabilitation policy with the participation of
WWF to spread best practice in terms of quar-
rying work and relations with local stakehold-
ers.The most important elements of this policy
are to plan restoration from the outset and
coordinate restoration with quarrying activities.
In addition to biodiversity issues, land planning
considerations are also taken into account
when defining a rehabilitation project in order
both to preserve the environment and to gen-
erate income for the local communities. In this
framework quarry rehabilitation often leads to
the creation of wetlands and natural reserves or
leisure areas.
3. Outline of Tools
Stimulating policy changes requires hard and
convincing analysis, including economic analy-
sis, a clear message, and sometimes some tar-
geted and effective advocacy. In cases where
financial support is being changed around in
favour of more balanced forms of restoration,
it may also include economic incentives. Some
key tools are as follows:
Economic analysis is useful to make the case
for restoration or for different kinds of restora-
tion. Examples might include demonstrating
that retention of deadwood within managed
forests does not entail excessive cost, or
showing that natural regeneration is cheaper
than replanting. For example, a WWF/World
Bank economic analysis convinced the govern-
ment of Bulgaria to change plans for establish-
ing intensive poplar plantations on islands in the
Danube with natural regeneration,163 and an
analysis for Forestry Commission economists in
Wales, U.K., persuaded the government agency
to use natural regeneration in an area of forest
because it proved cheaper than replanting.
Economic incentives encourage individuals
and groups to make space for restoration,
including both official incentive schemes and
incentives through the market, such as certifi-
cation.Targeted incentives have been used very
successfully to encourage restoration, for
instance through conservation easements to
take land out of production, as has occurred
widely in the U.S., through direct support for
tree planting as successfully implemented on
a large scale in parts of Pakistan, or through
tax incentives as in several Latin American
countries.164
Case studies show that restoration can work
and pay for itself. The case of the restored
quarry near Mombasa showed that restoration
was not an impossibly expensive task and
helped to encourage Lafarge,the company con-
cerned, to introduce a wider policy. Case studies
only work, however, if they are carefully pre-
pared and include all the relevant information
needed to make policy decisions, and if they
reach the attention of the right policy makers.
Advocacy entails campaigns or lobbying
to encourage change.165 Targeted lobbying has
been successful, for example, in changing some
conditions in the Kyoto Protocol to allow
greater latitude for natural regeneration.
Codes of practice are developed by working
with other stakeholders (e.g.,industry) to agree
and implement them voluntarily and to encour-
age restoration. The International Tropical Tim-
ber Organisation recently completed detailed
guidelines for natural regeneration, in associa-
tion with IUCN and WWF, which provide an
example of this approach.166 As with case
studies,however, such codes are only worth the
investment in developing them if they are
implemented in practice.
4. Future Needs
Many of these ideas remain in their infancy.We
still require far better understanding of the
economic and other benefits of environmental
goods and services from restoration in order to
make the case, for example, for natural regen-
163 Ecott, 2002.
164 Piskulich, 2001.
165 Byers, 2000.
166 ITTO, 2002.
17. Policy Interventions for Forest Landscape Restoration 125
eration rather than other land uses or for
changes in major funding initiatives such as
those under the European Common Agricul-
tural Policy. More generally, major changes are
still needed in global trade policy to remove the
perverse incentives that currently act against
restoration in many areas.
References
Byers, B. 2000. Understanding and Influencing
Behaviour. Biodiversity Support Programme,
Washington DC
Ecott, T. 2002. Forest Landscape Restoration:
Working Examples from Five Ecoregions. WWF,
Gland, Switzerland.
International Tropical Timber Organisation. 2002.
ITTO Guidelines for the Restoration, Man-
agement and Rehabilitation of Degraded and
Secondary Tropical Forests. ITTO, Yokohama,
Japan
Joint Nature Conservation Committee. 2002. Envi-
ronmental effects of the Common Agricultural
Policy and possible mitigation measures. Report to
the Department of Environment, Food and Rural
Affairs, Peterborough, UK.
Miranda, M.,Moreno,M.L., and Porras,I.T.2004. The
social impacts of carbon markets in Costa Rica:
the case of the Huetar Norte region. Internatio-
nal Institute of Environment and Development,
London.
Piskulich, Z.2001. Incentives for the Conservation of
Private Lands in Latin America. Biodiversity
Support Programme.The Nature Conservancy and
USAID, Arlington, Virginia.
Rotbergs, U. 1994. Forests and forestry in Latvia. In:
Paulenka, J., and Paule, L., eds. Conservation of
Forests in Central Europe. Arbora Publishers,
Zvolen, Slovakia.
Sithole, B. 2000. Where the Power Lies: Multiple
Stakeholder Politics Over Natural Resources—A
Participatory Methods Guide. Center for Interna-
tional Forestry Research, Bogor, Indonesia.
Tarasofsky, R. 1999. Assessing the International
Forest Regime. IUCN Environmental Law Centre,
Bonn, Germany.
1. Background and
Explanation of the Issue
Forest landscape restoration approaches use
the restoration of forest functions as an entry
point to identify and build a diversity of social,
ecological, and economic benefits at a land-
scape scale. As such they rely on achieving
broad consensus on a range of restoration
interventions from a variety of stakeholders,
who may have very different perceptions of
what forest landscapes should provide. This
requires effective negotiation among stake-
holders whose negotiation skills, interests,
needs, and power are often markedly different.
However, the success of forest landscape
restoration approaches often hinges on how
successfully such negotiations are conducted.
The principles of forest landscape restoration,
therefore, aim at restoring forests to provide
multiple social and environmental benefits
through processes that involve stakeholder par-
ticipation. The achievement of these ambitious
goals relies on finding a successful passage
through an array of practical challenges.These
include the implications of current and future
land tenure, competing land uses, and reach-
ing a balance between different management
regimes.Success depends on the ability of those
initiating or guiding a forest landscape restora-
tion project to manage the tensions and
conflicts that will arise on the way. This, in turn,
implies a certain amount of knowledge about
how to identify, analyse, and manage conflict,
retaining the varied, useful perspectives that
are helpfully expressed through conflict, while
resolving or mitigating those aspects of conflict
that are dangerous or prevent project success.
1.1. Types of Conflict
There are two aspects that characterise con-
flicts: their openness and the type of conflict.
Conflict can be concealed or open167; either
can cause problems in developing successful
landscape-scale approaches to restoration:
Open conflicts: everyone can see them and
knows about them.
Hidden conflicts: some people can see them
and know about them, but hide them
from others (particularly outsiders), perhaps
because of cultural or social reasons (e.g.,
18
Negotiations and Conflict
Management
Scott Jones and Nigel Dudley
Key Points to Retain
Forest landscape restoration relies on
achieving broad consensus among a variety
of stakeholders.
However, stakeholders may have very dif-
ferent perceptions of what forest landscapes
should provide.
This will require a certain amount of negoti-
ation and possible conflict resolution.
126
167 DFID, 2002a; Fisher et al, 2000.
18. Negotiations and Conflict Management 127
many gender-related conflicts) or because
disputes may be embarrassing to the com-
munity (e.g., disagreements between young
people and elders).
• Latent conflicts: these come to the surface
when something changes the status quo. For
example, if a restoration project brings ben-
efits (money, power, influence, equipment),
their distribution can create conflicts that
were not there before the project arrived.
There are also different types of conflict. It is
important to understand which type of conflict
one is facing since each needs addressing in a
different way.
Interpersonal conflicts: between two or more
people relating to personality differences
• Conflicts of interest: someone wants some-
thing that another has (e.g., money, power,
land, influence, inheritance)
Conflicts about process: how different
people, groups, and organisations solve prob-
lems (e.g., legal, customary, institutional)
Structural conflicts: the most deep-seated
type relating to major differences that are
hard to address (e.g., unequal social struc-
tures, unfair legal systems, economic power
biased toward certain stakeholders,or differ-
ences in deep-seated values, such as cultural
or religious)
Sometimes one type of conflict, perhaps
unthinkingly, is disguised as another, for
instance a personality clash may be presented
as an issue of process.
1.2. Elements in a Conflict
Situation
Managing conflict is not a straightforward
process. Rather, there are a number of key
building blocks in a conflict management
process that interrelate and must often be
undertaken in parallel (Figure 18.1168):
Conflict analysis is about understanding who
the different stakeholders are, what are their
strengths, fears, needs, and interests, and how
they perceive or understand the conflict(s).
Capacity-building is about helping people to
manage conflict. It may be required at any
time. For example, it may take place prior
to negotiations because some stakeholders
need to develop negotiation skills. It may
take place before agreements are signed
because different groups like to have agree-
ments in different forms; it is important that
all groups have the capacity to understand
each other’s approaches to problem solving
and reaching agreements. Capacity-building
often takes the form of training (e.g.,in nego-
tiations or “people” skills), but sometimes
other resources are needed.
Designing a process is about planning who
to bring together, where, when, and how.
The most effective conflict management
processes are usually flexible, iterative, and
capable of keeping stakeholders on board as
events, issues, and even the attitudes of the
conflicting parties change.
Conflict analysis Designing a process (plan)
Capacity building Process management
Principles
Tools
Experience
Rapport
Communication
Perceptions
Conflict
management
Figure 18.1. Building blocks in the conflict management process: elements in a conflict situation.
168 Modified from Warner and Jones, 1998.
128 S. Jones and N. Dudley
Process management is about how to build
and maintain effective ways of working with
the parties, to retain flexibility and patience,
while still keeping focussed on outcomes and
working toward success on the criteria that
stakeholders have agreed to, for example,
how to convene an effective meeting with
clear goals, or how to monitor an agreement.
Achieving these things requires adhering to
certain principles (e.g., mutual respect, being
accountable, recognising the potential and
limits of your influence, see Figure 18.2), using
certain tools (e.g., stakeholder and gender
analysis), and applying key experience (e.g.,
with similar projects or with these people in
other projects). They also require key people
skills, among the most important of which are
maintaining good rapport and effective com-
munications, and effectively engaging with the
multiple perspectives.169
Consensus-
Building
Principles
Acknowledge
and embrace
different
perceptions
Focus on
underlying
needs, not initial
demands
Test
agreement(s) for
achievability—
[reality testing]
Try to achieve
mutual gains—aim
to achieve early
agreement on
something
Explore
possibilities for
reframing
power, needs,
options
Accommodate
cultural
differences
Seek and
engage with
diversity
Build and
maintain
effective
communications
Develop and
manage
good rapport
Understand
and try to
equalize
power
Allow sufficient
time for
analysis given
your resources
Widen
options
before
narrowing to
solutions
Figure 18.2. Principles for successful negotiation.168a
168a Modified from Warner, 2001.
169 Jones, 1998.
18. Negotiations and Conflict Management 129
1.3. BATNA (Best Alternative to a
Negotiated Agreement)169a
Negotiations are a voluntary process. But what
if the other person is completely inflexible,
breaks the ground rules you agreed to,and only
wants his or her own way. In short, what if the
other person does not want to negotiate? Sim-
ilarly, what if the other person is negotiating in
good faith, you have excellent communications,
and trust each other, but it is simply not possi-
ble (in his or her view) to meet even your
“bottom line” needs? Under these circum-
stances, you need an alternative to negotiation.
There may be several alternatives. What you
really need is the best one.
So what would be your best alternative to
a negotiated agreement? In the (unfortunate)
language of conflict management, this has
become known as a BATNA (best alternative to
a negotiated agreement). Box 18.1 illustrates
some examples of where a BATNA may be
appropriate.
1.4. Project and Process
Management
Any approach to forest landscape restoration
requires time and resources to identify, to agree
to, and to manage the process. Different agen-
cies have different approaches to project and
process management, developed perhaps from
commercial approaches or international devel-
opment models. Clearly, in the world of logical
frameworks, multi-stakeholder partnerships,
and collaborative management schemes, the
management process itself is a subject for nego-
tiation that requires the full range of skills and
principles discussed above.
Conflicts over one form of management
indicate an opportunity to search for other
approaches that can helpfully deal with the
legal, financial, political, and operational issues
that any complex project or programme
involves. It follows that successful forest land-
scape design will be able to identify and engage
with different management approaches and
use the negotiation process to build ownership
while deciding roles and responsibilities.Some-
times one agency or another will desperately
seek management control, and the task is to
negotiate shared understandings and responsi-
Box 18.1. Examples of Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA) in the
Context of Forest Landscape Restoration
The loggers simply don’t want to negotiate at
all. They are going to go ahead and cut
those trees.
BATNA—What about going to the news-
papers? Let the media know that this
biodiversity hotspot is threatened and
local people are suffering.
The donor is not able to give you another grant
to add an extra component to this work.
BATNA—Perhaps write a report that helps
to bring the donor’s expectations in line
with your capacity to deliver.
The people in the community feel powerless
to enter face-to-face negotiations with the
government and the large Geneva-based and
Washington, DC–based agencies.
BATNA—Possibly see if a mediator can be
found who would be acceptable to both
sides.
The negotiations went well and trust is high,
but the government was unable to agree
involvement of their officials due to gov-
ernment rules.
BATNA—Perhaps work with another
NGO with relevant expertise that can
complement you but has no government
restrictions over committing official
staff.
169a Fisher and Ertel, 1995.
130 S. Jones and N. Dudley
bilities.At other times, it is a hard task to iden-
tify any agency that feels able to take manage-
ment responsibility.Again, this is an opportunity
to explore why, and to undertake a collective
search for a solution that supports stakeholders
who are willing to put their names forward.
1.5. Negotiation Health Warning
Finally, it is important to note that like other
aspects of conflict management, negotiation is
a culturally bound process. Different societies,
groups, agencies, and organisations all have
different cultures and approaches to managing
conflict. While much of the literature on nego-
tiations is Western and business-oriented, there
needs to be a high degree of cultural sensitivity
and contextually located understanding to
proceed with negotiations, especially where
many different cultures are involved in multi-
stakeholder negotiations.
2. Examples
There is very limited experience in applying
conflict resolution and negotiation skills to
landscape initiatives in forest restoration. We
highlight here just a few examples from other
chapters in this book that have shown some
successful or interesting outcomes through
negotiations.
In Vietnam, a three-dimensional paper and
cardboard model was used to bring stake-
holders together around “their” landscape
to identify specific elements within it. The
process was aimed at reconciling different
views of the landscape and what it could look
like in the future. It provided those around
the model with the opportunity to express
their views on the importance of different
elements in the landscape (more information
on this example can be found in “Assessing
and Addressing Threats in Restoration Pro-
grammes”).
In Malaysia, an ongoing negotiation process
with oil palm plantation companies is gradu-
ally ensuring a change in the companies’ poli-
cies related to restoration. Whereas initially
the companies converted their entire estates
to oil palm, they are now gradually allocating
part of their land for natural regeneration
and plantation of local species (for more on
this example see “Restoring Quality in Exist-
ing Native Forest Landscapes”).
In Jordan, negotiation between goat herders
and park authorities ensured a reduction
in grazing, thus allowing for more natural
regeneration (for more on this example see
“Restoration of Protected Area Values”).
3. Outline of Tools
Learning and applying the tools and skills for
successful conflict management cannot come
from reading books or attending courses alone,
but also involves long periods of trial and error,
and observation—“learning by doing.” Many
participatory techniques described elsewhere in
this book are relevant. Tools and skill sets for
conflict management that are particularly rele-
vant include those relating to analysis, capacity
building, communications, creative thinking, nego-
tiation, and project and process management.
3.1. Negotiation Process
Negotiating involves meeting to discuss ways of
reaching a mutual agreement or arrangement.
A negotiation is a voluntary process in which
each person or group (often called a party) has
a position that is not fixed, but that does have
its limits. A successful negotiation can create a
sense of ownership and commitment to shared
solutions and shared follow-up actions. This
sense of ownership and commitment makes
negotiated solutions often more desirable, for
example, than legal solutions, where one party
may feel it lost out. In a conflict, some things
cannot be negotiated, and some things can.
Usually it turns out that many more things can
be negotiated than people first thought. This is
another reason why negotiated agreements are
a valuable way, though not the only way, of
trying to manage conflicts in forest landscape
restoration. It follows that a first step in nego-
tiation is reaching agreement on what is nego-
tiable. Successful negotiations follow certain
important principles (see Box 18.2) and require
18. Negotiations and Conflict Management 131
Box 18.2. Some Principles and Skills Involved in Negotiating Forest Landscape
Restoration (See also Figure 18.2)
Be clear on what everyone means by the
issue and the problems, opportunities, and
people/agencies involved
Adopt a positive attitude, for example, being
clear that conflicts are not just problems
but also opportunities
Have in mind some kind of a route map,
some idea about ways in which key stake-
holders wish to proceed
Address role, responsibility, and legitimacy
issues, including the limitations (bound-
aries) to your negotiating authority
Build and maintain effective rapport and
relationships
Active listening
Identify high-quality, relevant questions
Embrace multiple perspectives and
perceptions
Build on what is already there (including cul-
tural aspects of conflict management and
problem solving)
Consider process (law, custom, institutional)
as well as structural conflicts and conflicts
of interest
Keep in mind options for withdrawing or not
getting involved further
Keep an eye on capacity building for
self-development and organisational
development
Separate and focus on the problem and not
the personalities
Separate and focus on underlying needs and
motivations, not initial positions
Know what you would do if the negotiations
did not work, perhaps because the other
party broke the ground rules or tried to
use unacceptable force (this is also called
knowing your BATNA: best alternative to
a negotiated agreement; see Box 18.1)
Seek, explore, and emphasise common
ground
Put your case in terms of their needs,not just
why you want something
The more you know about the other’s
position, the better able you are to find
consensus-based solutions; do some
homework to find out their situation
Maintain a creative, positive approach
Use paraphrasing and other communication
skills to understand and describe the
other’s points
Create a positive environment for the
negotiation (think about the physical set-
ting, the comfort and acceptability of the
place, the time, and the way you manage
yourself)
Look for an early, small successes (reach
agreement on something early, even if
that is just the venue, then emphasise that
agreement; common ground—start small)
Make sure your preparations are as com-
plete and accurate as possible.Write down
what you have done to prepare. Check
with a colleague. Check with another col-
league. Seek constructive feedback.
Keep in mind:
1. The process and conflict management
style
2. Your goals and boundaries (your limit or
bottom line)
3. Opportunities to address power inequalities
4. Your colleagues’ needs, expectations, and
ability to act as resources
5. Your personal values and principles
6. Time and space for reframing issues
7. Capacity building needs that may emerge
8. The needs for more analysis that may
emerge
Multiple perspectives and perceptions can
be useful. A diversity of opinion helps us
shed light on the issue from different direc-
tions.Treat difference and diversity not as an
emotional trigger to fight against, but as a
moment of opportunity to engage with.
132 S. Jones and N. Dudley
knowledge, skills, and a positive attitude. It is
helpful to look at each of these things in rela-
tion to three phases in negotiations:
Preparation—what we need to do before the
negotiation
Negotiation itself—could take place in one
meeting or over several meetings
Follow-up—what we need to do after the nego-
tiation is over and agreement has been reached
A negotiation can happen at any time.
Entering a community or a government offi-
cial’s office may require a negotiation.The gate-
keeper may want to know some details before
people just walk in, including when a group or
agency will arrive, how long it will stay, under
whose authority, with what level of formality,
and to do what.
Having agreed to who are the stakeholders
who need to be involved, a process of negotia-
tions in forest landscape restoration will prob-
ably look something like this:
1. Each group works to understand the
other group’s initial positions relating to the
landscape.
2. Each group then asks high-quality ques-
tions and uses listening skills to try to under-
stand underlying needs, fears, and motivations
in identifying restoration interventions.
3. The parties try to deploy creative thinking
and other skills to generate a wide range of
options that could address these needs, fears,
and motivations.
4. This range of options is prioritised and
brought together in ways that allow everyone
to gain as much as possible.
5. An agreement is sought, to which every-
one can commit.
6. That agreement is tested against the real
world to make sure it is achievable.
7. The parties agree on the next steps, on
how to manage the restoration interventions
and the resources that are needed, and on
ways of monitoring the agreements and com-
mitments they have made.
3.2. Analytical Tools
A large number of analytical tools and skills
that are used in participatory forest manage-
ment, project management, and development
can be brought to bear in conflict management.
Examples include participatory appraisal,170
a variety of approaches for measuring and
analysing sustainability,171 and more general
tools that help to frame and guide further
analysis, such as STEEP, SWOT, problem trees,
and forcefield analyses.172 The key is to use
those that are relevant for different stakehold-
ers and that help to bring understanding and
wider perspectives on the issues. Key analytical
tools, though, include the following:
Stakeholder analysis173
Conflict mapping and situation analysis174
• Tools that address power relations, culture,
and gender175
A variety of analytical tools can feed into a
summary conflict analysis. Conflict analysis can
be done in the office (alone or in a group) or in
the field (for example, in participatory exer-
cises) or in combination. Successful analyses
are clear about who undertook the analysis,
when, and why, and make it clear how different
groups were involved in verifying and agreeing
to analysis summaries from different stake-
holder perspectives.Of course,as events change
and time moves on, analyses need to be revis-
ited. This is especially important when new
stakeholders enter the picture or established
stakeholders leave, and when critical events
change key stakeholders’ circumstances.
Analysis helps to identify the domain of con-
flict (e.g.,domestic, social,cultural, economic,or
political) and whether conflict is nested within
several domains. Conflict mapping with key
individuals or stakeholder groups, can help to
summarise information and show up major
differences and possible ways forward. One
example is given as a matrix (Fig. 18.3).
However, flow charts, Venn diagrams, and other
visually powerful mapping tools can help
170 Jackson and Ingles, 1998; www.fao.org/participation.
171 Bell and Morse, 2003; Dalal-Clayton and Bass, 2002.
172 Pretty et al, 1995.
173 DFID, 2002b, section 2; Ramirez, 1999; Richards et al,
2003.
174 DFID, 2002b, section 3; Fisher et al, 2000;Wehr, 1998.
175 Fisher et al, 2000.
18. Negotiations and Conflict Management 133
communicate the outcomes from an analysis. It
is important to remember, though, that the
process of analysis itself is a part of managing
conflict. Done well, the process itself can help
foster trust and mutual understanding.An early
agreement on the individual and collective
concerns and opportunities can help establish
the stage for positive negotiation of emerging
issues.
3.3. Capacity Building
Undertaking a process of analysis often re-
quires capacity building. Some stakeholders
will be familiar with negotiating from a business
perspective. Others will see negotiations as
embedded within their own culture and
society—the way they negotiate and problem
solve will be different. Others may use legal
frameworks or a scientific approach to analysis.
Again, addressing the process of analysis is
itself a part of the overall approach to manag-
ing conflict. Capacity building skills and tools
may need to be deployed at an early stage.
Identifying and responding to gaps in conflict
management skills or to gaps in resources
requires a sophisticated approach to capacity
building backed up by appropriate levels of
resourcing (e.g., for training and stakeholder
support). Building capacity is best seen as an
ongoing activity rather than a linear one. High-
quality capacity building forms part of address-
ing inequalities in power relations. Strengths
and needs analysis and some form of training
needs analysis are important first steps in
capacity building.176 Capacity building actions
also need to be linked with reflection, so that
interventions can be monitored and evaluated
on an ongoing basis. This process, too, helps to
build confidence and trust, when people appre-
ciate the fact that someone somewhere is taking
responsibility for empowering key stakeholders
to participate effectively.
3.4. Effective Communications
Building and maintaining effective communi-
cations are key aspects of conflict management
and multi-stakeholder partnerships in forest
landscape restoration. Providing, managing,
using, and facilitating access to information is
part of any communication strategy.177 What is
additionally important in conflict management
is ensuring that these things translate into
meaningful understanding. Indeed, effective
communications are vital to generating and dis-
seminating the high levels of understanding of
different stakeholders’ perspectives and needs
that good conflict management requires. Some
aspects of effective communications relate to
general communications strategies: the frame-
works and mechanisms for enabling stakehold-
ers to engage with one another on relevant
matters.This includes documents, meetings, the
use of different media, and an overall informa-
tion, communication, and monitoring manage-
ment system, such as a logical framework or
Name of person or party A B C
Position or stance in relation to the conflict
Needs
Concerns, anxieties, or fears
Attitudes toward the others
Assumptions about the others
Values and beliefs
Historical issues (e.g., past misunderstandings)
Types of power (e.g., moral, financial, political)
Figure 18.3. Matrix to help analyse conflict.
176 Bartram and Gibson, 1997.
177 Dalal-Clayton and Bass, 2002, Ch. 8.
134 S. Jones and N. Dudley
action plan. Other aspects relate more to inter-
personal communications, such as getting the
balance right between telling and asking, or
become a good listener (Box 18.3).
In dealing with conflict, one important dis-
tinction is between telling and asking. Giving
free information is an important part of
building communications. However, if one is
usually “telling” people, this can be perceived
as aggressive and dominating (e.g., “I’m going
to tell you what the law says—and that is the
end of the story”).Asking relevant questions in
an involving, open way can communicate a
sense of concern and interest, that someone has
bothered to identify questions that may help
mutual understanding. Of course, a balance
between the two is needed.
3.5. Creative Thinking
People and agencies tend to think and react in
the ways that they always have done. The way
we think is constrained by many things, includ-
ing our experience, worldview, education, and
degree of comfort with new ideas. Creative
thinking is about breaking these patterns to
look at situations in new ways—thinking
“outside the box.” Creative thinking is an
important asset to conflict management at all
stages, not just analysis. Often, a breakthrough
can come when creative thinking allows the sit-
uation to be reframed—changing the way we
construct and represent the conflict.178 Reach-
ing agreement requires strong skills in synthe-
sis—thinking creatively about how to develop
an agreement and monitoring process that
everyone can live with can be challenging. A
number of tools exist that can help enhance
people’s creative thinking skills. One-on-one
and in small groups, good facilitators and train-
ers can help to build creative thinking skills.
Where things get trickier is moving through
organisations’ management and decision-
making structures to translate the creative,
useful thoughts into actions that are helpful.
Creative thinking is culturally embedded.
Indeed, culture plays a major part in resisting
Box 18.3. Barriers to Good Listening
“On-off listening”—drifting off into per-
sonal affairs while someone is talking
“Switch off” listening—words that irritate us
so that we stop listening
“Open ears–closed mind” listening—we
decide the speaker is boring and think that
we can predict what he or she will say, so
we stop listening
“Glassy eyed” listening
“Too deep for me” listening—when ideas are
complex or complicated there is a danger
we will switch off
“Matter over mind” listening—when a
speaker says something that clashes with
what we think and believe strongly, we
may stop listening
Being “subject-centred” instead of “speaker-
centred”—details and facts about an inci-
dent become more important than what
people are saying themselves
“Fact” listening—we try to remember facts
but the speaker has gone on to new facts
and we become lost
“Pencil” listening—trying to put down on
paper everything the speaker says usually
means we are bound to lose some of it and
eye contact is also lost
“Hubbub” listening—there are many dis-
tractions that we listen to instead
“I’ve got something to contribute” listen-
ing—something the speaker says triggers
something in our own mind and we are so
eager to contribute that we stop listening
An awareness of the above barriers to lis-
tening can be a first step in avoiding them.
178 Lewicki et al, 2003.
Adapted from training materials,Centre for International Development and Training, University of Wolverhampton,UK.
18. Negotiations and Conflict Management 135
and improving creative thinking skills,in organ-
isations as well as other groups.179
4. Future Needs
Most conservation organisations, forestry
departments, and companies have only very
limited knowledge about conflict resolution.
Capacity building for conflict management and
negotiation within conservation and forestry
organisations is a critical need in terms of build-
ing the ability to work across broad scales and
mainstream conservation. Most of the tools and
expertise are known but have been applied
in only a very limited way within the field of
natural resource management.
References
Bartram, S., and Gibson, B. 1997. Training Needs
Analysis. Gower Publishing, London.
Bell, S., and Morse, S. 2003.Measuring Sustainability.
Earthscan, London.
Dalal-Clayton, B., and Bass, S. 2002. Sustainable
Development Strategies. OECD, Earthscan and
UNDP. Earthscan Publications, London.
Department for International Development
(DFID). 2002a. Conducting conflict assessments:
guidance notes, DFID. Government of the United
Kingdom, http://www.dfid.gov.uk/pubs/files/conflic
tassessmentguidance.pdf.
Department for International Development
(DFID). 2002b. Tools for development. DFID,
Government of the United Kingdom. http://www.
dfid.gov.uk/pubs/files/toolsfordevelopment.pdf.
FAO, 2002.
Fisher, S., et al. 2000. Working with Conflict. Zed
Books, London.
Fisher, R., and Ertel, D. 1995. Getting Reading to
Negotiate, Penguin Books, London.
Hofstede, G. 1994. Cultures and Organisations:
Software of the Mind—The Successful Strategist
Series. Harper Collins, London.
Jackson, W.J., and Ingles, A.W. 1998. Participatory
Techniques for Community Forestry. World Wide
Fund for Nature, IUCN-World Conservation
Union and Australian Agency for International
Development, Gland, Switzerland.
Jones, P.S. 1998. Conflicts about Natural Resources.
Footsteps No. 36 (September).Tearfund,Tedding-
ton, London.
Lewicki, R.J., Gray, B., and Elliott, M. 2003. Making
Sense of Intractable Environmental Conflicts:
Concepts and Cases. Island Press, Covelo and
Washington, DC.
Pretty, J.N., Gujit, I., Thompson, J., and Scoones,
I. 1995. Participatory Learning and Action: A
Trainer’s Guide. International Institute for Envi-
ronment and Development, London.
Ramirez, R. 1999. Stakeholder analysis and conflict
management. In: Buckles, D. ed. Cultivating
Peace—Conflict and Collaboration in Natural
Resources Management. World Bank, Washing-
ton, DC.
Richards, M., Davies, J., and Yaron, G. 2003. Stake-
holder Incentives in Participatory Forest Manage-
ment. ITDG Publishing, London.
Warner, M., and Jones, P.S. 1998. Conflict resolution
in community based natural resources manage-
ment. Overseas Development Institute Policy
Paper (No. 35), August.
Warner, M. 2001. Complex Problems, Negotiated
Solutions. ITDG Publishing, London.
Wehr, P. 1998. International on-line training programme
on intractable conflict. http://www.colorado.edu/
conflict/peace/problem/cemerge.htm.
179 Hofstede, 1994.
1. Background and
Explanation of the Issue
In the face of increased threat of massive
species’ extinction, with estimates that more
than half of the world’s threatened species live
on less than 1.4 percent of the earth,180 it may
be important to consider a range of practical
and tactical interventions to begin to reverse
this rapid degradation, particularly in highly
threatened areas that are extremely rich in bio-
diversity.
There are still surprisingly few examples of
successful forest restoration from a conserva-
tion perspective, particularly at a large scale.181
Elsewhere, we have discussed the importance
of carrying out restoration as a component of
larger conservation and development pro-
grammes, but in some cases there may also be
opportunities to carry out useful restoration
more opportunistically.This chapter is intended
to highlight some tactical interventions that
could be undertaken if framed within a forest
landscape restoration process or approach.
Planning at a landscape or ecoregional scale
is difficult enough, but actually intervening at
that scale is generally harder still. In a forest
landscape restoration context, activities such as
planning, engagement,priority setting, negotia-
tion, trade-offs, modelling, etc. are usually all
best carried out at a landscape scale. However,
with the exception of some policy interventions,
most of the practical restoration actions will
take place at sites within the landscape or
ecoregion. Although planning processes are
often lengthy, some actions can often start in
anticipation of the overall long-term strategy
to restore forest landscapes; generally some
responses will be clear and uncontroversial and
these can often be initiated even whilst more
difficult issues remain unresolved.
This chapter discusses the types of specific
and punctual interventions related to restora-
tion that a field programme may consider
undertaking. Some of these would be expected
to arise within a longer term strategy to restore
ecological and social forest functions but may
also come in advance of such a strategy due to
lack of funds for the overall process, lack of
buy-in from stakeholders, and other issues
relating to expediency or urgency. When a
species is facing immediate threats of extinc-
19
Practical Interventions that Will
Support Restoration in Broad-Scale
Conservation Based on WWF
Experiences
Stephanie Mansourian
Key Points to Retain
Urgent conservation or livelihood problems
may necessitate short-term, strategic inter-
ventions even in the absence of a longer-
term programme.
A series of 10 different tactical interventions
are suggested, ranging from threat removal
to positive economic incentives.
136
180 Brooks et al, 2002.
181 TNC, 2002.
19. Practical Interventions that Will Support Restoration 137
tion, for instance, short-term measures may be
needed even while long-term planning is still in
process. None of the proposed interventions
below replace larger scale efforts, nor are they
meant to be implemented in isolation from a
broad-scale planning process. Rather, they are
to be seen as elements of the larger process and
as possible entry points; success at a small scale
is one of the most effective ways of gaining
support for larger-scale programmes.
When selecting one of the proposed entry
points listed below (see Outline of Tools), it is
important to think of the desired impact of this
tactical intervention:
• Is it to influence a specific group of stake-
holders? Which one and what is the desired
effect?
Is it to understand better the dynamics (bio-
logical or social) in the landscape?
• Is it to change sociopolitical conditions in
the landscape before engaging in restoration
within the landscape? Which conditions?
And what is the most cost-effective way to
change them?
• What are the resources (human and finan-
cial) and time involved? Can we afford
them?
What are the priority issues that need
addressing soonest?
2. Examples
2.1. Research into Different
Restoration Methods in
Malaysia
Some palm oil companies along the Kin-
abatangan River in Sabah, Borneo, have agreed
to set aside land for restoration. Initial trials
showed limited success. Starting in 2004, in an
effort to identify the most successful techniques
for restoration, tests began using different
methods on a small plot of land. These are the
methods proposed (during a field visit by the
author):
• Natural regeneration with no intervention
(including a smaller study area fenced
against browsing animals)
Assisted natural regeneration (mainly some
land preparation and weeding around regen-
erating species)
• Planting with native species (using species
adapted to local conditions and including if
possible both commercially valuable diptero-
carp trees and fruit trees)
Planting an exotic species as a nurse crop to
foster natural regeneration
Each approach is to be monitored on a
regular basis in order to determine which one
yields the highest survival rates.The long-term
aim of this research is to disseminate the most
suitable restoration methods in all the areas set
aside for restoration along this important bio-
diversity corridor.
2.2. Changing the Forest Policy in
Bulgaria Thanks to a Cost-
Benefit Analysis182
Bulgaria’s 75 islands on the Danube river are
rich in biodiversity, and are an important
stopover site for migratory birds. Yet, over the
last 40 years,the government has systematically
converted natural floodplain forest to hybrid
poplar plantations to supply the local timber
industry. Until the year 2000, the government
had plans to continue conversion of this
ecosystem, leaving only 7 percent of the origi-
nal forest. Thanks to a comprehensive cost-
benefit analysis, sponsored by the World Bank
and WWF, it was shown that financial losses
from suspending timber production on certain
islands could be offset by intensifying produc-
tion in areas already converted to poplar
plantations.Additional benefits that were high-
lighted by the analysis included the potential
use of original forest for recreational purposes,
improved fishing (by creating more spawning
grounds), the harvest of nontimber forest prod-
ucts, and possible ecotourism development. In
2001 the government, therefore, changed its
policy, adopting one that called for the imme-
diate halt of all logging and conversion of
floodplain forests to poplar plantations on the
Danube islands, restoration of native species
182 Ecott, 2002.
138 S. Mansourian
in selected sites, as well as strengthening of
the protected areas network on the islands.
Although a longer term forest landscape
restoration programme for the Danube is
underway, this tactical intervention helped to
maintain a unique habitat that might well have
disappeared before the more detailed pro-
gramme was implemented.
3. Outline of Tools
3.1. Focussing on Removing or
Reducing the Identified Threats
Sometimes it will be sufficient to remove,
reduce, or mitigate a particular threat or pres-
sure on forests in a landscape to set them on
a positive path toward regeneration. Because
threats often originate from political or eco-
nomic decisions, changing them may require
significant lobbying, backed up by negotiations,
research, and building of strategic partnerships.
If these threats can be reduced or removed,
natural regeneration can often be significant (if
there are no other biophysical constraining
factors).
Examples of threats that are common as
an impediment to natural forest regeneration
include the following:
Alien invasive species (e.g., electric ants,
Wasmannia auropunctata,in New Caledonia)
Government incentives that foster forest
conversion (e.g., Chile’s subsidies for
plantations)
Infrastructure projects (e.g., the construction
of the Ho Chi Minh highway in Vietnam)
Demand for cash crops (e.g., valuable soya
expansion in Paraguay causing forest
conversion)
Unsustainable agricultural practices (e.g.,
Slash and burn agriculture in Madagascar)
Illegal logging (e.g., in Indonesia)
• Uncontrolled and “unnatural” fires (e.g., in
India)
Concentrating first on removal of threats is
appropriate when it is clear that addressing the
identified threat can lead to natural regenera-
tion or restoration with only limited interven-
tions. This is also a necessary choice in cases
when a field project cannot start until the threat
has been addressed.
Depending on the social and economic
context, some threats may be much easier to
address than others.For instance,illegal logging
is in itself a very complex issue, which may well
be beyond the remit of a restoration project.
However, knowledge of key areas affected can
help determine where (or even whether) and
how to establish a restoration programme. It is
important to recognise threats that cannot be
addressed, or resources may be pumped into a
hopeless situation.
3.2. Changing Government Policies
Often, a change in government policy may
provide the right conditions to promote
restoration (also see “Policy Interventions for
Forest Landscape Restoration”). In some cases
it may be necessary to lobby for more sup-
portive policies, while in others, it may be
necessary to remove destructive ones. The
European Union’s (EU’s) Common Agricul-
ture Policy (CAP) has for instance invested
significantly in afforestation with limited social
and ecological results (see case study “The
European Union’s afforestation Policies and
their Real Impact on Forest Restoration”).
WWF and other local partners are trying to
address this in many EU countries (particularly
in southern Europe) by demonstrating alterna-
tive, more socially and environmentally appro-
priate forms of restoration that could be
financed by the same CAP subsidies. It will be
important and relevant to focus efforts on gov-
ernment policies when these have been identi-
fied as a key factor in causing the loss and
degradation of forests (e.g., perverse incen-
tives) or when there is a clear opportunity to
engage the government in supportive policies
(e.g., a new forest plan being developed). In
some countries, like Vietnam or China, there
are huge government programmes promoting
investments in reforestation/afforestation.
Because of the scale of these programmes, it is
often wiser (and economically more efficient)
to engage in these processes than to invest
efforts in a separate project.
19. Practical Interventions that Will Support Restoration 139
3.3. Using Advocacy Levers
Some advocacy, lobbying, and economic tools
can be used to encourage change that supports
forest restoration or that removes or reduces
the pressure on forests.
• Market pressure: The market may be used
to promote the use of products from well-
managed forests or forests that are being
restored. For example, WWF has worked on
the palm oil markets in Switzerland to
promote better practices in Malaysia where
the oil palm plantations have significantly
damaged natural forest cover and where
restoration of natural forest is now having to
take place.This signifies engaging in research
on market routes and raising awareness at
the consumer end, as well as promoting solu-
tions for better practices at the production
end.
Pressure using multilateral donors: Multilat-
eral donors may be used as a lever for change
either through their own projects or through
imposing conditionality on loans. For
example, agencies such as the Asian Devel-
opment Bank (ADB) have active projects
related to forest policy, but they also finance
plantation projects. In Vietnam, for instance,
the ADB is one of the main donors to the
government’s Five Million Hectares Refor-
estation Programme. Working together with
such institutions may be a way of improving
practices within their projects and also
encouraging change in those projects that
they finance.
Communications/media tools such as Gifts to
the Earth: WWF developed the Gifts to the
Earth tool, a public relations mechanism, to
pay tribute to major acts that favour the envi-
ronment. This is one of many creative tools
that may be used as an incentive for a gov-
ernment or other decision maker to change
current policies or adopt new ones that
would be more beneficial to or supportive of
restoration.
Campaigning: mobilising many stakeholders
to put pressure on the relevant decision
makers (governments, multilateral agencies,
the private sector) is an effective means of
ensuring change. It does need to be used
carefully, however, and must be founded on
good data.
3.4. Changing Companies’ Practices
Traditionally, conservation organisations have
not worked much with the private sector. Yet
given that the largest companies are larger
financial players than most governments and
that they often determine future land-use
options (e.g., mining companies, plantation
companies, infrastructure companies), it is
important to work with them in any large-
scale restoration effort in order to ensure that
restoration is well integrated in their plans.
This is, for instance, an effective way of
encouraging companies to adopt best (or at
least “better”) practices. Many companies are
happy to work with civil society organisations
especially if improvement in their standards
means some form of certification, media oppor-
tunities, and even in some cases the additional
bonus of more efficient (cheaper) production.
The sorts of sectors that may be influential
include the infrastructure sector, the mining
sector, and the forestry sector.WWF is currently
engaging with large plantation companies such
as Stora Enso to not only promote better man-
agement of their estates but also assist them to
restore areas of the land that they manage.
3.5. Valuing Forests
Governments sometimes neglect or mismanage
forests because the goods and services that they
produce have not been properly valued. By
obtaining recognition of the value of forests
from either the government (if it is the major
cause of concern) or local communities,restora-
tion of those values can be promoted.
This can be done a number of ways:
Through a traditional cost-benefit analysis that
would provide a good argument for restora-
tion for governments (see the Bulgaria
example, above)
Through research and surveys with local
communities, particularly elders, to identify
what values have been lost and what values
140 S. Mansourian
they would like to see restored. For example,
in Vietnam WWF has engaged with commu-
nities and the provincial government in the
central Annamites to identify the forest
values that have been lost as a starting point
for setting future restoration objectives.
While recognising the value of forests is one
important step, it is but the first step. Govern-
ments and other decision makers then need
to take necessary measures to ensure that
those values are protected and where relevant
restored.183
3.6. Specific Research
Often a large-scale programme to restore a
range of forest functions cannot start until
a number of specifications of the landscape
are better understood. Initial research can be
carried out with limited funds as a way to start
a larger-scale programme.
This research may be related to any of the
following, for example:
Restoration techniques: While a number of
restoration techniques have been tried and
tested, it is not always easy to know which
one will work best under local conditions. A
small-scale trial plot can help identify those
(see example on Borneo, above).
Species’ mix: Often exotic species have been
used because they are better understood
than local ones.Research money may be well
spent on identifying the growth rate of and
necessary conditions for specific local species
as well as on the optimal mix of species.
Removal of invasive species: Invasive species
can often be the single most important
impediment to natural regeneration or
maintenance of forest quality within existing
forests.Applied research can help test differ-
ent techniques to remove the invasive species
while promoting indigenous ones.
Communities and stakeholders: Socioeco-
nomic research may be necessary to under-
stand better the profiles of stakeholders in
the landscape and their motivations, pres-
sures, livelihood conditions, and aspirations.
• Market research: Market research may be
helpful when seeking to promote alternative
income generating activities.
Upstream versus downstream: In a landscape
context, it may be important to identify
the types of activities upstream and their
impact downstream. For example, deforesta-
tion upstream may be causing sedimentation
problems downstream.To encourage restora-
tion within the landscape context, such cause
and effect will need to be clearly demon-
strated to stakeholders and substantiated by
suitable research.
The above represent but a few of the numer-
ous research topics.There are many others that
are specific to different conditions.
3.7. Awareness Raising
If there is no identified need from the local
population for restoration, then attempts at
restoration are likely to fail. It is important to
ensure that relevant stakeholders understand
the linkages between restoration and the things
that matter to them (availability of useful
plants, soil protection, provision of forest prod-
ucts, etc.), and this may necessitate an
awareness-raising campaign. For example, in
New Caledonia, WWF is one of nine partners
engaging in the protection and restoration of
the dry forest.The project has a number of com-
ponents, including active engagement of stake-
holders (particularly land owners), and it has
spent considerable time and resources working
with local landowners to mobilise their support
for restoration and to help them understand the
implications of restoring the dry forest (bene-
fits and costs).
There are a number of different forms of
publicity (different media, workshops) and part
of the skill in successful advocacy is in identify-
ing the one that will reach the target audience
(e.g.,radio is often a good way of reaching rural
populations in poorer countries).
3.8. Training and Capacity Building
One tactical intervention may consist of offer-
ing training in relevant restoration techniques.
For instance in Morocco, WWF has been
183 Sheng, 1993.
19. Practical Interventions that Will Support Restoration 141
invited to help redesign the university’s forestry
curriculum to include specific restoration
elements.
The sorts of training that can be provided
include the following:
• Nursery design and development: Training
can be provided to farmers and other com-
munity members on managing tree nurseries.
This may also include elements of seed
recognition and collection.
• Agroforestry techniques: When agricultural
practices are an issue, training farmers in
techniques such as agroforestry that are
more compatible with some form of natural
forest cover can be a useful approach within
a forest landscape restoration initiative.
Training can be provided in alternative
income-generating activities (see below) to
reduce the impact people are having on
forests while offering them a realistic liveli-
hood alternative.
Improved grazing practices may sometimes
be a simple way of returning areas of land to
natural forest.
In relevant cases, training may involve better
fire management practices (to remove fire
risks, to control them, or to undertake pre-
scribed burns).
3.9. Forest-Friendly Economic
Activities (Microenterprise
Development)
In many countries the pressure on forests,
the conversion of forests, or the hindering of
natural regeneration is driven by the poorest
people, who rely on forests for their immediate
needs but are under too much short-term pres-
sure to invest in long-term restoration strate-
gies. One way of addressing this may be by
providing training in improved practices that
will help both sustain their own resource base
and reduce forest degradation, or, on the other
hand, by offering new economic activities that
reduce their detrimental impact on forests. For
a conservation organisation, this will generally
require partnering with development organisa-
tions with expertise in, for example, microen-
terprise development.
For example, in Madagascar, the main threat
to forests is slash-and-burn agriculture with
short fallow periods.In a country with such high
poverty levels,the only way to reduce this pres-
sure on forests is to provide alternative liveli-
hood options for those local communities. A
number of successful microenterprise develop-
ment programmes have been attempted by
entities such as USAID (US Agency for
International Development),184 the U.N., and
CARE. These programmes may not have been
explicitly intended to reduce pressure on
forests, but in partnering with conservation
organisations two objectives could be reached:
improving livelihoods while ensuring that
forests are protected and, where appropriate,
restored. When promoting such alternative
livelihood options, it is important to undertake
suitable feasibility and market studies, and not
engage people, for instance, in honey produc-
tion if there is no market for it.
3.10. Paying Communities for
Better Practices
It may sometimes be necessary or appropriate
to use project money to compensate communi-
ties for the loss they suffer by accepting restora-
tion on land they own or use. This could be a
first activity before developing alternative
livelihood options. It can also be a way of
engaging communities that may not otherwise
be very receptive to the project. One risk with
this approach is that of getting communities
accustomed to compensation and expecting it
over the long term. This clearly needs to be a
short-term activity with a clear plan to move
into other activities.
4. Future Needs
In an ideal world, a comprehensive restoration
programme would be well thought out, would
address a range of stakeholders’ priorities,
would be implemented at various scales
(national, local, regional), and would be given
the necessary resources and time to succeed.
184 ARD-RAISE Consortium, 2002.
142 S. Mansourian
Unfortunately, this is often not the case, and
therefore punctual interventions like those
listed above may become necessary first
actions. All of the actions listed above would
benefit from being integrated into large pro-
grammes that aim to restore forest functions
within landscapes for the benefit of people and
biodiversity. One future need, therefore, is for
decision makers and donors to allocate suffi-
cient resources to allow for the implementation
of the large-scale programmes that are required
to achieve the restoration of forest functions in
many regions of the world. Another need is
for more creative partnerships between public,
private, and civil society organisations, as
well as between development and conservation
organisations to achieve the ambitious aims of
restoring forest functions in landscapes.
References
ARD-RAISE Consortium. 2002. Agribusiness and
forest industry assessment. Report submitted to
USAID–Madagascar, November 18.
Brooks, T.M., Mittermeier, R.A., Mittermeier, C.G.,
et al. 2002. Habitat loss and extinction in the
hotspots of biodiversity. Conservation Biology 16
(4):909–923.
Ecott, T. 2002. Forest Landscape Restoration:
Working Examples from Five Ecoregions. WWF,
Gland, Switzerland.
Sheng, F. 1993. Integrating Economic Development
with Conservation. WWF International, Gland,
Switzerland.
The Nature Conservancy (TNC).2002. Geography of
Hope Update: When and Where to Consider
Restoration. The Nature Conservancy, Arlington,
Virginia.
Additional Reading
Lamb, D., and Gilmour, D. 2003. Rehabilitation
and Restoration of Degraded Forests. IUCN and
WWF, Gland, Switzerland.
Mansourian, S., Davison, G., and Sayer, J. 2002.
Bringing back the forests: by whom and for
whom? In: Sim,H.C., Appanah, S.,and Durst, P.B.,
eds. Bringing Back the Forests: Policies and Prac-
tices for Degraded Lands and Forests. Proceedings
of an International Conference, 7–10 October
2002. FAO, Thailand, 2003.
Ormerod, S.J. 2003. Restoration in applied ecology:
editor’s introduction. Journal of Applied Ecology
40:44–50.
Sayer, J., Elliott, C., and Maginnis, S. 2003. Protect,
manage and restore: conserving forests in multi-
functional landscapes. Paper prepared for the
World Forestry Congress, Quebec, Canada.
Section VII
Monitoring and Evaluation
1. Long-Term Impacts of
Restoration on Forest
Ecosystems
Understanding of the long-term dynamics of
different ecosystems to help develop realistic
restoration targets
Understanding the ability of different forest
ecosystems to recover quality over time and
particularly about the likely speed of recov-
ery and the length of time after degradation
when a forest can still recover (linked, for
instance, to survival time of buried seed
populations), all of which are critical for
determining whether natural regeneration
will suffice or more active efforts are required
Measuring the sustainability of different
restoration efforts, from ecological, social,
and economic viewpoints
Identifying the opportunities for manipulat-
ing natural succession to favour desired
outcomes
Understanding what could enhance natural
succession after land abandonment
2. Climate Change and
Adaptation
Implementation of field projects to test and
if appropriate develop restoration’s role in
mitigating as well as in building resilience to
climate change
Creative partnerships to analyse climate
impacts and proposed restoration activities
3. Knowledge of Species
Understanding the role that individual
species and microhabitats have in the
restoration of ecosystem processes
Clarifying the potential of indigenous species
in restoration where planting is necessary,
including information on genetics, propaga-
tion techniques, the dynamics of ecological
succession, the relationships between differ-
ent species, the performance of indigenous
species in plantation conditions, and the pro-
duction of specific species in nurseries
Disseminating information on where to
obtain seed of indigenous species, how to
store the seeds, how to raise seedlings, and
how to establish these seedlings in the field
4. Plantations
Developing user-friendly and location-
specific silvicultural guidelines for plantations
with indigenous species to increase their
adoption by local farmers
• Gathering more information on the long-
term dynamics of tree regeneration in plan-
tations (to date, most studies have focussed
on young plantations)
Enhancing understanding of the role and
limitations of plantations in landscapes
Appendix 1
Selection of Identified Ecological
Research Needs Relating to
Forest Restoration
424
Appendix 1 425
5. Linkages and Connectivity
Understanding the role of corridors and eco-
logical stepping stones and in particular how
to make these most effective, conditions in
which they will and will not work, challenges,
problems to avoid, information about dis-
tances species will disperse over unsuitable
habitat, use of corridors by invasive or pest
species
Developing greater experience on issues
related to connectivity of forests across land-
scapes; for example, connectivity can be at
least obtained through the use of lines or
even isolated trees in the landscape, serving
to buffer plantation areas, changing the
“shape” of the plantation, etc.
6. Fires
Increasing understanding of natural fire
regimes including the forest structure needed
to avoid high-intensity destructive fires and
the associated management implications
Developing cost-effective fire control meas-
ures with minimal biodiversity impacts
7. Invasive Species
Improving methods for the control of inva-
sive species
Developing a comprehensive solution for
dealing with invasive alien species as part of
forest restoration
8. Artificial and Natural
Disturbance
• Drawing up codes of practice and perhaps
principles for artificial disturbance
• Developing and disseminating methods of
enriching degraded or regrowth forests
• Developing enrichment planting guidelines
that are species- and site-specific
9. Water and Forests
Developing tools and methodologies for cal-
culating net gains of different restoration and
management actions from the perspective of
water supply
Improving understanding of watershed-scale
processes
10. Links Between Site
Conditions and Species
Clarifying species-site relationships—there
is often surprisingly little knowledge of the
distribution patterns and site requirements
of most tropical tree species
Quantifying better the influence of site con-
ditions (precisely for each parameter) on
species’ development and growth and on
communities’ composition, and diversity,
along with a better comprehension of the
potential trajectories of the communities
(i.e.,rupture thresholds,lag of time response).
modelling tools, 104
reestablishment, 195, 247–248
reservoirs, 360
survey methods, 19–20
Biodiversity Conservation
Network, 163
biological targets, 116–117
biological values, in plantations,
394–395
biomass, incorporation in soil, 351
bird species, habitat restoration
for, 200
Bitterroot National Park, USA,
336
Borneo
forest regeneration, 137, 187,
310
log landings rehabilitation, 364
rubber, 276
Brazil
Atlantic forest
forest loss, 19
tree cover restoration, 252
commercial plantations,
380–381
forest rehabilitation, 405, 406,
409–410
Plantar project, 172–173
restoration after mining, 292, 373
bridging substitutes, 206
British Columbia, carbon
sequestration payments,
168–169
buffer strips, 246
buffer zones, 35–36, 309–310
Bulgaria, forest policy change,
137–138
burning, prescribed, 186–187, 272
A
abandoned land see land
abandonment
access controls, 211
access rights, clarification, 235
adaptive management approach,
417
ADPM, 335
advocacy, 124, 139
afforestation, definition, 10
agriculture, shifting, 274
AGROCANP, 409
agroforestry, 247, 274–279, 406,
407–409
“agriculture in stages”, 410
definition, 275
future needs, 279
overcoming impediments, 296
techniques, 141
tools, 278–279
Al Shouf Cedar Reserve,
Lebanon, 187
Albatera, Spain, forest
restoration, 316–317
Algeria, reforestation, 317–318
alley cropping, 275, 277–278
Altai Sayan, Russia, 122
Alternative Association of
Producers (APA), 409
Amazon, coca in, 234
amenity, emphasis on, 104
Amur honeysuckle, 388
ancient woodland, definition, 112
Andresito, Argentina, 237, 253
animal dispersal, 357
anthropogenic disturbance
control, 251–252
Appalachian region, 264
Index
427
Area de Conservación
Guanacaste (ACG), Costa
Rica, 251–252
Argentina, Atlantic forest
restoration, 75, 237–238, 253
“artificial negative selection”, 286
Asian Development Bank
(ADB), 139
Australia
exclusion zones, 211
fire control, 272
linkage corridors, 292
mining reclamation, 372–373
monoculture plantations,
292–293
Tasmania, southern forests, 205
avalanche control, 104
B
Bai Bang Pulp and Paper Mill,
Vietnam, 409
Bandipur National Park, India, 111
barrier elimination, 254
BATNA, 129
bauxite mines, forest restoration,
292, 372–373
beetles, saproxylic, 186, 203
beneficial use laws, 79
Bialowieza forest, Poland, 204
bilateral donors, 139, 163
biodiversity
conservation
goals, 42
payments for, 167, 169–170
plantation management in, 382
in even-aged plantations see
even-aged plantations
forest loss impact, 17–21
428 Index
C
C-Plan, 119
California, giant forest
restoration, 335
campaigning, 139
Canada
carbon sequestration
payments, 168–169
eastern, deciduous hardwood
restoration, 242–243
Pacific Northwest forests,
205
capacity building, 127, 133, 421
carbon knowledge projects,
171–175
carbon market, 172, 174, 175
carbon sequestration, 32, 382
estimation, 174
payments for, 167, 168–169
carbon sinks, 171
Carrifran, 9
case studies, as policy change
stimulus, 124
CATIE, 263, 264, 266
Catskill State Park, USA, 230
cattle grazing, 254
CEAM Foundation, 154
Cebu, Philippines, 407–408
CEDISA, 408
CELOS system, 362
Central America
and Kyoto protocol
modification, 123
shade-grown coffee, 276–277
Central Truong Son initiative,
Vietnam, 69, 153–154,
157–158
Centre for International Forestry
Research (CIFOR), 405
Co-learn tools, 411
institutional agreement
indicators, 412
Review of Forest
Rehabilitation Initiatives,
405
see also rehabilitation,
sustainable
socioeconomic impact
indicators, 412
Centre for Tropical Forest
Science (CTFS), 111
change drivers, 103
Chesapeake Bay watershed,
USA, 309–310
Chiapas, Mexico, 358
Chile, temperate forest
restoration, 324–325
China
forest ownership policy, 86
forest rehabilitation, 405, 406,
407, 410–411
Grain-for-Green programme,
80
mobile dune stabilisation,
352–353
restoration benefits and
incentives, 87–88
restoration drivers, 91
slope stabilisation, 352
CIFOR see Centre for
International Forestry
Research
Clean Development Mechanism
(CDM), 172, 174
climate change
and invasive alien species, 349
link to CO2emissions, 171
research needs, 424
restoration in face of, 31–36
threat to biodiversity, 31
Climate, Community, and
Biodiversity (CCB)
standards, 174
closures, 254
cloud forest, 229, 303–305
CO2Fix, 174
coal mines, forest restoration,
373–374
cocoa, 276
codes of practice, 124
coffee, shade-grown, 276–277
Colombia, biodiversity
conservation payments, 169
commercial plantations, in forest
landscape restoration,
379–382
Common Agricultural Policy
(CAP), forestry-related
incentives, 80, 82–83
communications
about forest landscape
restoration, 176–180
messages for specific
audiences, 177
after storms, 343
effective, 133–134
proactive, 179
rapid-response, 179–180
tools, 139
via Web sites, 180
communities, compensating, 141
community-based cost-benefit
analysis, 28
community-based fire
management (CBFiM), 337
community-based forest
management (CBFM),
407–408
company practices, changing, 139
conceptual modelling, 76
conflict management, 126–135
analytical tools, 132–133
building blocks, 127
capacity building, 127, 133, 421
creative thinking, 134
effective communications,
133–134
examples, 130
types of conflict, 126–127
see also negotiation
connectivity
in plantation biodiversity
restoration, 389
research needs, 425
strategy, 47
see also fragmentation
consensus building workshops, 62
conservation
by design, 55
landscapes see landscape(s)
Conservation Measures
Partnership (CMP), 147
conservationists, training, 422
cork oak forests, 217–218
Coronado National Forest,
Arizona, USA, 210
Corrimony, Scotland, UK, 242
cost-benefit analyses, 418
alluvial forests, 311–312
community-based, 28
extended, 62
Costa Rica
anthropogenic disturbance
control, 251–252, 259
biodiversity conservation
payments, 169
degraded pasture restoration,
264–265
forest regeneration, 210, 287
habitat linking, 54
mixed plantations, 386–387
thinning in teak plantations, 387
watershed protection
payments, 168, 231
Côte d’Ivoire, cocoa, 276
Index 429
critical thresholds, for species, 17
cultural keystone species (CKS),
234
cultural values, restoring
landscape for, 233–236
D
dams, 308
Dana Nature Reserve, Jordan, 209
deadwood
assessment, 205
future needs, 206–207
habitats provided by, 186, 204
importance, 203
restoration, 186, 199, 203–207
artificial, 201–202, 206
zoning, 206
decision support tools, future
needs, 57, 420
deforestation
definition, 23
see also forest loss and
degradation
degradation
causes, 257
definition, 23
removing cause of, 243
vs. restoration, 101–102
see also forest loss and
degradation
Denmark, arable land
afforestation, 265
designer landscapes, 103–104
development trajectories, 103
diagnostic sampling, 366
direct planting, 367
direct seeding, 244–245
dispersers, management of, 254
disturbance(s)
natural, 299
patterns, influencing, 188
research needs, 425
using, 244
diversity nuclei/islands, 252, 254
donor engagement, 177
drivers of change, 103
dry tropical forests see tropical
dry forests
Dyfi estuary, Wales, UK, 186,
189–190
E
Earth Conservation Toolbox, 55
East Kalimantan, Indonesia,
334–335
ecolabelling, 167
ecological attributes, vital, 153
ecological integrity, 5
definition, 18
ecological processes, 47
ecological reconstruction,
245–246
ecological restoration, definition, 9
ecological succession see
succession
economic analysis, 104, 124
economic incentives, 124
ecoregion(s)
definition, 4
Global 200, 42, 51, 422
terrestrial, 42, 43
ecoregion conservation (ERC),
41–49
determining area to restore, 48
goals, 42
restoration and, 44–48
tools available, 49
ecoregional planning tools, 54–55
ecosystem(s)
definition, 192
long-term impacts of
restoration on, 425
ecosystem consumption,
management, 258
ecosystem fragmentation, 35, 292
see also connectivity
ecosystem processes, 192
restoration, 192–196
ecosystem service payment
schemes, 28
ecosystem values, evaluation, 359
Ecuador
payment for watershed
services scheme, 162–163
water management, 229–230
edge effects, 35
egalitarianism, 87
empowerment, 419
endangered local species
saving, 263
see also native species
engagement, 419
Enhanced 5-S Project
Management Process, 147
enrichment planting, 245, 260,
295–296, 364, 367
environmental change, planning
for, 47–48
environmental education
programmes, 255
environmental externalities,
persistence, 79
environmental values, in
plantations, 395
equity
intergenerational, 86
issues in community-owned
forests, 87
ERDAS, 119
erosion
control, 69, 299, 350–355, 375
future needs, 355
tools, 353–355
hill slope, 350
in Iceland, 193, 194
mass movement, 351–352
models, 374–375
wind, 351
ESRI, 119
Ethiopia, user rights for forest
restoration, 88–89
ethnobotanical surveys, 236
European Union
afforestation policies, 80, 82–83
forest reserves, 111
grazing in woodlands, 123
subsidies after storms, 342, 343
evaluation see monitoring
even-aged plantations, 384
biodiversity restoration in,
384–390
factors influencing natural
regeneration, 388–389
future needs, 389–390
planting to improve
microclimatic conditions, 388
seed dispersal agent
attraction, 388
factors altering biodiversity,
385–386
evolutionary processes, 47
exclusion zones, 211
F
Fagerön, Sweden, managed
forests, 186
Fair-Trade Labelling
Organisation (FLO),
certification, 220
fallow, improved, 277
farmers
market information for, 296
species preferences, 264, 390
training, 421
FARSITE model, 271, 272
430 Index
fencing, 260
financing, 161–165, 255, 404
domestic public sources, 163
international systems of
payments, 164
payment for goods and
services, 164
private for-profit sources, 164
private not-for-profit sources,
163–164
sustainable, 420
Finland
boreal forest restoration,
327–328
deadwood requirements, 199
prescribed burning, 186–187,
327–328
protected area interventions,
210
southern region restoration
policy, 204–205
species’ transfers, 200–201
fire
as degradation factor, 334
historical account, 331
impacts, 332–333
in the landscape, 331–332
as natural disturbance, 333–334
research needs, 425
restoration after, 333–338
potential adverse impacts, 336
tools, 336–337
as tool, 334
fire-dependent specialist species,
199, 201
fire management, 141, 201, 337,
396
fire risk, 82
management strategies,
269–270
firebreaks, 269–273
widths, 270, 271
floodplain forests
characteristics, 306–307
restoration, 306–312
assessment, 310
bedload transport, 307–308
examples of measures,
308–309
forest structure, 308
future needs, 311–312
hydrological connections,
307
integrated river basin
management, 310–311
monitoring, 310
scales, 307
focal species, 45
focus groups, 61
fodder harvest, 223
FONAFIFO, 168
Fontainebleau Forest, 204, 210,
340–341
forcefield analyses, 132
forest authenticity, 18
assessment of levels, 187, 188
Forest Biodiversity Indicators
Project, 148
forest certification, 389
NTFPs and, 220
forest dependence
degree of, 85
poverty and, 22, 26
forest dynamics plots, 111
forest fires, mimicking see fire
management
forest fragments, 113, 205, 301
forest landscape restoration
(FLR), 8
active vs. passive, 95
after fire see fire, restoration
after
background, 3–4
balancing needs, 6, 404
broader approach, 4–6
capacity, 97
challenges based on
experience to date, 94–98
commercial plantations in,
379–382
communications about see
communications
definition, 5, 10–11
end point, 96
framework, 417–422
funding see financing
goals, 94–95, 101–105, 109, 419
growing recognition of need,
401–402
guidelines, 12
integration with protection
and management, 402
key elements, 11
lessons learnt, 415–417
planning see restoration
planning
practical interventions see
tactical interventions
as a process, 402
process of, 53
reasons for landscape scale, 6, 52
as resilience/adaptation
strategy, 35–36
resources, 96
social impact, guiding
questions, 26–27
suite of responses required,
402–403
support needed, 404
trade-offs in see trade-offs
valuation of goods and services,
95–96, 139–140, 170
forest loss and degradation
addressing underlying causes,
418
impact assessment, 418
impact on biodiversity, 17–21
impact on human well-being,
22–29
examples, 25, 27–28
forest ownership
communal, 86–87
definitions, 84–85
and forest restoration, 84–92
future needs, 91–92
tools to address issues, 90–91
and goods and services rights,
86
stability, 86
forest plantations, definition, 379,
384
forest quality
assessment, 20, 187, 188
restoration, 185–189
Forest Stewardship Council
(FSC), 164
certification, 220–221
forestry officers, training, 421
Forests for Life Programme, 422
Forests of the Lower Mekong
ecoregion, Indochina, 44
“founder effect”, 244
fragmentation, 35, 292
see also connectivity
“framework species” approach,
245, 252–253, 289
France
badlands restoration, 152–153,
265
deadwood, 204
floodplain forest restoration,
309
forest management, 177–178
Japanese knotweed invasion,
210
Index 431
lack of ecological monitoring,
69
restoration after storm,
341–342
storm disturbance data,
340–341
frontier forest
analysis, 20
definition, 112
fuel management, 271
vs. fire suppression, 272
fuelwood, 223
forest restoration for, 223–226
plantation eras, 224–226
Fundación Vida Silvestre
Argentina (FVSA), 75,
237
G
gap analysis, 57, 113
gap planting, 364
gene flow, 47
genetic diversity, maintenance, 36
genetic selection, 263, 265–266
geographic information system
(GIS) tools, 119
in conservation/restoration
planning, 49, 325, 374
in fire risk analysis, 271
in suitability modelling,
117–118
in threat assessment, 76–77
Ghana, collaborative forest
management, 27
Gifts to the Earth tool, 139
Glen Affric, Scotland, UK,
323–324
Global 200 ecoregions, 42, 51,
422
global change issues, and
invasive alien species,
349
Global Environmental Facility
(GEF), 164
Global Invasive Species
Programme (GISP), 347
Global Partnership on Forest
Landscape Restoration,
422
global warming, 32, 287
see also climate change
goods and services
payment for, 164
valuation, 95–96, 139–140, 170
government incentives, 78–81
government policies
changing, 138
and erosion control, 355
grazing management, 353–354
green markets, facilitating access
to, 29
Greenhouse Emissions
Reduction Trading
(GERT), 169
GTZ
property legislation principles,
91
Sustainable Forest
Management Project,
334
Guanacaste National Park,
Costa Rica, 210, 259,
287
Guangdong, China, 410–411
Guatemala, montane forest
restoration, 299–300
Guinea, forest restoration, 53–54
Gunung Kidal, Indonesia, 410
H
habitat
loss, 386
modelling, 116
provided by deadwood, 186,
204
reconnection, 46, 54
Hawaii
alien grass control, 346–347
native forests, 195, 205
hedgerow intercropping, 275,
277–278
“hidden forest harvest”, 219
high conservation value forests
(HCVF), 20, 235
high conservation values
(HCVs), 235
Hmong people, and land rights,
88
home gardens, 235
multistorey, 276
homogeneous monocultures,
restoration, 201
human well-being
definition, 11, 23
forest loss impact, 22–29
examples, 25, 27–28
Hungary, mine site regeneration,
259
hurricanes, 299
hydrological models, 374–375
I
Iceland, substrate stability, 193,
194
IDRISI, 118, 119
IFOAM, certification, 220–221
impact, definition, 23
India
joint forest management, 27
Nilgiri Biosphere, 111
sacred forests, 234
indigenous species see native
forests; native species
Indonesia
cloud forest conservation,
303–305
enrichment planting, 364
forest rehabilitation, 405, 406,
407, 410
plantation development
incentives, 79
protection forests, 89–90
pulp plantations, 380, 381
rainforest rehabilitation,
334–335
Indonesian deer, 347
industrial plantations
best practice guide, 394–397
era of, 225
inoculation, 264, 289, 294
institutional arrangements, for
rehabilitation projects,
407, 410–411
integrated approach, 417
Integrated Conservation and
Development Projects
(ICDPs), 403
intergenerational equity, 86
International Erosion Control
Association, 355
International Institute of
Rural Reconstruction,
advice on land tenure
issues, 91, 92
International Plant Protection
Convention (1951), 347
International Tropical Timber
Organisation (ITTO)
planted forest guidelines,
381–382
restoration guidelines, 90, 382,
412
invasive (alien) species (IASs),
345–346
control/removal, 346–349,
387–388
432 Index
invasive (alien) species (IASs)
(cont.)
by planting native species,
253
future needs, 347–349
methods, 187, 189, 260
research, 140, 348
tools, 347
impact, 195
introduced intentionally, 346,
347
introduced unintentionally, 346
research needs, 425
J
Jari plantations, Brazil, 380–381
Jarrah forest,Australia, 372–373
Jordan, forest regeneration, 209
K
Kenya
improved fallow, 277
montane forest restoration,
299
quarry restoration, 9, 123
water supply protection, 230
keystone species, 195, 198
cultural (CKS), 234
Kinabatangan River, Malaysia,
137, 187, 310
Kings Canyon National Park,
USA, 335
KMYLB, 407–408
knowledge, dissemination and
exchange, 421
Kyoto protocol, 123, 168–169, 172
L
La Selva Biological Station,
Costa Rica, 264–265
Lafarge, quarry rehabilitation,
123–124
land abandonment, 356
forest restoration after,
356–360
active, 358–359
passive, 358
socioeconomic tools, 359
land care, 104
land mapping, 90, 117
land ownership see forest
ownership
land tenure see tenure
land-use scenarios, 67
land value, mapping, 117
landscape(s)
multifunctional, 6, 60, 216
promotion, 95
see also forest landscape
restoration
landscape architecture, 104
landscape beauty, payment for,
167
landslides, 298–299
Latvia, forestry regulations, 122
learning by doing, 105
Lebanon, forest management,
187
liberation thinning, 366
line planting, 364
livelihood(s)
analysis, 28–29, 278
definition, 23
needs, in rehabilitation
projects, 406–407, 409–410,
412
lobbying, following storms, 340,
343
local participation, in
rehabilitation projects,
406, 407–409, 411–412
log landings rehabilitation, 364
logging
biodiversity impacts, 362
monocyclic, 362
polycyclic, 362
reduced-impact (RIL), 363
see also overlogged forests
Lombok, Indonesia, 303–305
LULUCF, 174
M
Madagascar
choosing priority landscape, 97
forest restoration, 74–75,
107–108, 288
microenterprise development
programmes, 141
plantation projects, 10
seed dispersal problems, 357
Malaysia
forest reconnection, 187, 310
log landings rehabilitation, 364
native species silviculture, 293
priority species identification,
98
restoration methods research,
137
Mandena Conservation Zone,
Madagascar, 74
mangrove restoration, 32–34,
47–48
mapping
examples, 118–119
future needs, 119
in long-term modelling, 118
of opportunities, 117–118
to meet or set targets, 116–117
market pressure, 139
market research, 140, 413
marketing, of forest landscape
restoration, 176–177
Mediterranean region
forest degradation, 313–314
forest restoration
activities, 314–315
after fires, 335–336
examples, 315–318
future needs, 319
programme evaluation, 154
tools, 318–319
land tenure, 314
NTFPs in, 217–218
plantation management,
357–358
reference forests, 111
wildfires, 314
Meket district, Ethiopia, 88
METSO, 205
Mexico
active restoration research, 358
natural forest regeneration,
358
pilot forest plan based on
NTFPs, 220
Scolel Té project, 173–174
shade-grown coffee, 277
microenterprise development,
141
migration, 47
mine site regeneration, 259
see also open-cast mining
reclamation
mixed species plantations, 247,
266–267, 389
Model Code of Forest
Harvesting Practices, 363
modelling tools, 420
Mombasa, Kenya, disused quarry
rehabilitation, 9, 123
monitoring, 150–155, 420–421
in adaptive management
context, 145–148
common mistakes, 147
framework for, 152
Index 433
future needs, 155, 420–421
indicator selection, 151–152
as key to success, 403
long-term, 96, 118
as management tool, 103
of plantations, 397
pressures, 288
tools, 154–155
vital attributes, 153
monoculture plantations, 246,
292–293
monocultures, mosaics of, 246
Morocco, forest restoration, 318
Mount Kenya national park, 299
mountain gorillas, 19
Mudumalai Wildlife Sanctuary,
India, 111
multicriteria evaluation (MCE),
62, 115, 117–118
multidisciplinary teams, 420
multifunctionality, 6, 60, 216
promotion, 95
multilateral donors, 139, 163
multipurpose tree, 275
mycorrhizae inoculation, 264,
289, 294
N
Nairobi, Kenya, water supply, 230
national level surveys, 19–20
native forests
definition, 112
restoration, 186, 190–191, 195
native species
endangered, saving, 263
issues related to use, 263–264
planting, 253
silviculture, 293
natural communities
representation, 44–45
seral stages, 45
natural regeneration stimulation,
250–255, 367
anthropogenic disturbance
control, 251–252
diversity nuclei use, 252
“framework species” method,
252–253
future needs, 254–255
invasive species elimination,
253
limiting factors, 251
tools, 254
vegetation as regeneration
facilitators, 253
natural succession see succession,
natural
naturalness
assessment, 210–211
components, 185–186
Neem tree, 235
negotiation
alternative to, 129
cultural considerations, 130
need for, 418
phases, 132
principles, 128, 131
process, 130–132
skills, 131
of trade-offs, 61–62, 279
Nepal, community forestry, 27
New Caledonia
forest loss, 18
invasive species control, 347
tropical dry forests
programme, 68–69, 97–98,
140, 287–288
New York City, water supply, 230
New York State, salvage logging
ban, 341
Nicaragua, biodiversity
conservation payments,
169
Niger, watershed restoration, 353
nontimber forest products
(NTFPs)
community-based income-
generating systems based
on, 220
definition, 215
environmental values, 216
and forest certification, 220
impact of loss of, 26
legal frameworks for, 221
in national forestry curricula,
221
as response to poverty,
216–217
restoration guidelines, 219
socioeconomic benefits, 215, 216
valuing in rural development,
219
Novo Paraíso, Brazil, 409–410
nurseries
design, 141
seed availability in, 264
O
Oaxaca, Mexico, 358
obstructions, above-ground, 354
old-growth, definition, 112
open-cast mining reclamation,
9–10, 264, 292, 370–375
conceptual framework, 371
future needs, 375
laws, 375
planning, 371
problems of mine soils, 372
tools, 374–375
opportunity costs, 86, 104
Oregon, USA, H.J. Andrews
Experimental Forest,
110–111
organic matter addition, 195
original forests, definitions, 112
outgrower schemes, 162
overland flow, 350
overlogged forests
definition, 361
restoration, 363–367
area protection, 365
future needs, 367
logging practice
improvements, 363
planning, 365–366
reasons, 363
silvicultural interventions,
366–367
overseas development assistance
(ODA), 162, 163
overstorey removal, 366
ownership, forest see forest
ownership
P
PALNET system, 421
Paluarco river, Ecuador,
162–163
Panama, reforestation in
catchments, 230
participatory appraisal, 132
participatory rural appraisal
(PRA), 90–91, 278
PASOLAC, 27
payment for environmental
services (PES), 162,
166–170, 231
valuation tools, 170
people first era, 225–226
Peru
Croton restoration, 218–219
forest rehabilitation, 405, 406,
408–409
pests, 346
control, 396
434 Index
Philippines, forest rehabilitation,
405, 406, 407–408
Plan Vivo system, 174
plant ecology, 266
Plantar project, 172–173
plantation companies, training,
396–397, 421
plantation trees, as nurse plants,
259
plantations
best practice guide, 394–397
commercial, in forest
landscape restoration,
379–382
even-aged see even-aged
plantations
locating, 393
managing, 393–397
mixed species, 247, 266–267, 389
monoculture, 246, 292–293
monospecific, 384
research needs, 424
rubber, 379
sustainability elements,
392–393
tree species selection, 262–267
future needs, 267
goals, 263
issues related to native
species use, 263–264
tools, 265–267
Poland, Bialowieza forest, 204
policy changes, 402, 403
policy incentives
perverse, 78–81
redirection of, 81
policy interventions, 121–125
tools, 124
political environment,
supportive, 418–419
pollen analysis, 113
polyacrylamides (PAMs), 355
population viability analysis
(PVA), 45–46
Portugal, restoration after fires,
335–336
poverty
avoidance/mitigation, 26
degrees of, 24
elimination, 26
and forest dependence, 22, 26
mapping and assessment, 104
NTFPs as response to, 216–217
predator–prey dynamics, 47
pressures, monitoring, 288
Prestige oil spill, 178
primary woodland, definition, 112
prioritisation, 418
tools, future needs, 57
priority landscapes, 42
identification, 67
implementing conservation in,
55
problem trees, 132
process management, 128, 129
PROCYMAF project, 28
property
definition, 84–85
rights, problems, 79
types, 85
protect–manage–restore
approach, 44, 52–53, 55
stages, 56–57
protected areas
categories, 211
restoration in, 208–212
threats, 208
zoning, 211
Puerto Rico
restoration via natural
succession, 292
substrate stability, 193–194
tree plantations, 259, 386
Q
quality, forest see forest quality
Quintana Roo, Mexico, pilot
forest plan, 220
Quito, Ecuador, water supply,
229
R
racks, installation of, 254
Rainforest Alliance, Smartwood
Programme, 221
range maps, 117
Rapid Ecological Assessment
methodology, 20
rapid rural appraisal (RRA),
90–91, 278
rattan, 218
REACTION programme, 154, 319
reclamation see open-cast mining
reclamation
reduced-impact logging (RIL),
363
reference forests/landscapes, 55,
103, 109–113, 258
tools, 112–113
reforestation, definition, 10
“regeneration nuclei”, 251
rehabilitation
definition, 9
sustainable, 405–413
future needs, 413
institutional arrangements,
407, 410–411
lessons from past projects,
406–407
local participation, 406,
407–409, 411–412
socioeconomic needs,
406–407, 409–410, 412
tools, 411–412
relics, 366
representation, natural
community, 44–45
resilience-building, and forest
restoration and
protection, 33
restoration databases, 155
restoration planning
framework, 66–68
future needs, 70
goals and targets, 94–95,
101–105, 109, 419
multiple scales, 419
need for, 65–66
tools, 69–70
restoration trajectories
identification, 68
reappraisal, 68
Rhone River, 309
rills, 350
Rinjani National Park,
Indonesia, 303–305
Rio Cumbaza Basin, Peru,
408–409
RISEMP, 169
risk, sources of, 26
river basin management,
integrated, 310–311
rubber, 276
plantations, 379
runoff control, 375
Rural Development Regulation
(RDR), 82
RUSLE model, 375
Russia, woodland certification,
122
S
Sabah, Malaysia
forest regeneration, 137, 187,
310
Index 435
log landings rehabilitation, 364
sacred groves/forests/gardens,
234
safety net, forests as, 24
Saignon, 152
salvage logging, 342
banning, 341
SAPARD, 80, 82
Saracá-Taquera National Forest,
Brazil, 373
scattered tree plantings, 245
scenarios, 62, 102–103
modelling tools, 102
Scolel Té project, Mexico,
173–174
Scotland
commercial plantations, 380,
381
natural regeneration with
grazing, 242
pine forest restoration,
323–324
SEAGA, 91
secondary forests, 246, 276
restoration potential,
321–322
seed
availability, 264
collection, 141, 294
dispersal, 357, 388
seeding, direct, 244–245
Sequoia National Park, USA, 335
Shaanxi Province, China, 352–353
shifting agriculture, 274
Sichuan Province, China, 352
Sierra de las Minas, Guatemala,
299–300
Sierra Espuña, Spain,
reforestation, 315–316
SilvaVoc, 12
silvopastoral systems, 169
SIMILE, 102
site-level restoration, 241–248
approach determination,
241–242
degrading influence reduction,
243
future needs, 248
management considerations,
247–248
reforestation for productivity
and biodiversity, 246–247
tree cover initiation/
improvement, 244–246
site-scale survey methods, 20
SITES/Marxan, 119
skid trails rehabilitation, 364
Slovakia, Tatra National Park,
341
Smartwood Programme, 221
social values, 394
see also cultural values;
socioeconomic needs
Society for Ecological
Restoration International
(SERI), 421
Socio-economic and Gender
Analysis (SEAGA), 91
socioeconomic needs, in
rehabilitation projects,
406–407, 409–410, 412
socioeconomic research, 140
socioeconomic targets, 117
Soil Association, Woodmark
Programme, 221
soil conditioners, 355
soil microcarbon analysis, 113
soil nutrient reduction, 195
soil protection, 351, 354
soil remediation, 372, 375
soil stabilisation, 266, 351
soil surface manipulations, 351,
354
Song Thanh Nature Reserve,
Vietnam, 75, 122, 293
SOS Sahel, 89
South Africa
outgrower schemes, 162
toxic conditions amelioration,
194
South Wales coalfield, 374
Southeast Asia, rattan
production, 218
Spain
firebreaks, 271–272
mining reclamation, 373–374
natural regeneration
stimulation, 253
Prestige oil spill, 178
reforestation, 314–316
spatial modelling, 325
species
knowledge of, research needs,
424
transfers of, 200–201
species-based targets, 117
species-site relationships, 295,
425
Sri Lanka, silvicultural treatment
guidelines, 390
staff training, in plantations,
396–397, 421
stakeholder(s)
external, 60
primary, 60
in scenario development, 102
secondary, 60
stakeholder analysis, 91, 132
STEEP, 132
STELLA, 102, 303
Stockholm, Sweden, water
supply, 230
storm disturbance
forest restoration after,
339–343
key ideas, 340–341
Stradbroke Island, Queensland,
Australia, 211
subsidies, government, 79
substrate fertility, 194
substrate stability, 193, 194–195
succession, 192
direction/manipulation, 194,
195, 244, 257–260
tools, 259–260
dynamics of, 254–255
minimal intervention design,
258–259
natural
causes halting, 257
stimulation, 244
understanding, 257–258
suitability modelling, 115,
117–118
Sumatra, Indonesia, pulp
plantations, 381
surveys, stakeholder, 61–62
sustainability analysis, 132
Sustainable Forest Market
Transformation Initiative
(SFMTI), 163
sustainable rehabilitation see
rehabilitation, sustainable
Sweden
deadwood microhabitat re-
creation, 186
water quality protection, 230
Switzerland, continuous cover
forestry, 53
SWOT, 132
systems approach, 417
T
tactical interventions, 136–142
Tanzania, agroforestry, 243
436 Index
target species
categories, 197–198
as indicators of successful
restoration, 198–199
restoration for, 197–202
future needs, 202
planning, 200–201
stand-level restoration
methods, 201–202
targets
biological, 116–117
socioeconomic, 117
Tasmania, southern forests, 205
Tatra National Park, Slovakia, 341
Tebang Pilih system, 362
temperate forests
characteristics, 320–321
ecological attributes, 321, 322
restoration, 320–325
future needs, 325
issues, 321–323
tools, 325
tenure
clarification, 235
customary, 84, 85
mapping, 117
rights of, 29
security of, 86
Terai Arc, Nepal, 46, 47
Thailand
“framework species”
approach, 252–253
land rights, 88
thinning, 260, 292, 387, 389
liberation, 366
threat(s)
direct, 73–74
examples, 138
indirect, 73, 74
potential, 73–74
removal of, 138
threat assessment
future needs, 77
information needed, 73
tools, 76–77
threat mapping, 76
threat matrices, 76
threshold barriers, 257–258
tigers, 46
timber, production objectives,
104
timber stand improvement (TSI),
366
Tonda de Tamajón woodland,
Spain, 253
toxic conditions amelioration,
194, 195
tracking tools, for landscapes, 105
trade-offs, 59–62, 248
negotiation, 61–62, 279
types, 60–61
win–win situations, 59
training
in restoration techniques,
140–141
tailored, 421–422
transects, 90, 278
tree crops, 104
and forest restoration, 276–277
Trombetas, Brazil, 9, 373
tropical dry forests (TDF)
attractiveness to people, 286
characteristics, 285–286
restoration
active, 289
Guanacaste National Park,
Costa Rica, 210, 259, 287
monitoring pressures, 288
New Caledonia, 68–69,
97–98, 140, 287–288
passive, 288–289
reasons for, 286–287
soil fertility, 289
tropical moist forests
restoration, 291–296
choice of method, 293–294
choice of species, 294
fostering animal diversity,
295
future needs, 295–296
obtaining seed, 294
production-biodiversity
trade-off, 295
raising seedlings, 294
tropical montane forests
characteristics, 298
overcoming natural succession
barriers, 300
restoration, 298–301
choice of species, 300–301
in face of natural
disturbance, 299
remnant forest role, 301
socioeconomic rationale,
298–299
Tunisia, access to NTFPs, 220
U
Uganda, forest loss, 19
umbrella species, 198
underplanting see enrichment
planting
understorey development
encouragement, 247
United Kingdom
plantations, 54, 381
see also Scotland; Wales
United States
alien grass control, 346–347
buffer zone restoration,
309–310
fire control, 272
giant forest restoration, 335
Hawaiian forests, 195, 205
H.J. Andrews Experimental
Forest, 110–111
honeysuckle control, 388
longleaf pine ecosystems,
146–147
mine spoil restoration, 264
salvage logging ban, 341
water supply protection, 230
wilderness values restoration,
210
wildfires, 336
urban/forest interface, fire risk,
270–271
urban frontier, proximity to, 48
Utrillas coalfield, Spain, 373–374
V
Valdivian ecoregion, Chile, 324
vegetation, as regeneration
facilitators, 253
VENSIM, 102
viable populations, of species,
45–47
Vietnam
forest rehabilitation, 405, 406,
407, 409, 411
integrated restoration
approach, 69
land rights, 88
mangrove restoration, 34
participatory monitoring
system, 153–154, 157–158
pressures on remaining forests,
97
reforestation programme,
122–123, 293
three-dimensional model of
threats, 75–76
vision(s)
development, 102–103
fine-tuning tools, 104
Index 437
working together toward,
422–423
voice, development of, 28
vulnerability
household, 23–24
to climate change, 34–35
W
Wales
commercial plantations, 381
mining reclamation, 374
native forest restoration, 186,
190–191
Walomerah protection forest,
Indonesia, 89
water
quality and quantity, 228–231
research needs, 425
scarcity, 228
Water Framework Directive, 311
watershed protection, payments
for, 167, 168, 231
watershed values, 231
weed control, 396
well-being see human well-being
Western Europe, forest loss,
18–19
wetland, restoration, 189–190
wilderness
assessment, 210–211
re-creation, 209
wildfires
in Mediterranean region, 314
in United States, 336
wildwood, definition, 112
wind
erosion by, 351
resistance to, 340–341
windbreaks, 301
wood harvesting methods, 354
woodlot era, 225
Woodmark Programme, 221
WWF
challenges based on
experience to date,
94–98
and forest management in
France, 178
Forests for Life Programme,
422
lessons from experience to
date, 401–404
Y
yerba mate, 253
Ynyshir bird reserve, Wales, UK,
186
Z
Zambia, improved fallow, 277
... A term was defined by a group of experts in 2000 as "a planned process that aims to regain ecological integrity and enhance human well-being in deforested or degraded landscapes". However, today, the term FLR has evolved and is interpreted in diverse ways, partly reflecting the variety of environmental and social issues worldwide, including those associated with land degradation and climate change" (Mansourian 2005;Mansourian et al. 2017;Stanturf et al. 2017). The Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) approach is conceptualized through: A focus on landscape; Maintaining and enhancing natural ecosystems within landscapes; Engaging stakeholders and supporting participatory governance; Tailor to the local context using a variety of approaches; Restore multiple functions for multiple benefits; Manage adaptively to enhance the resilience of the landscape and its stakeholders over the medium and long-term (UNFCCC 2003;Besseau et al. 2018). ...
... It focuses on preserving remnant forest elements and the development of green infrastructure, promoting the connectivity of green and public spaces, and establishing valuable forests as a climate infrastructure. This approach prioritizes the development of valuable urban landscape forests by creating multifunctional spaces, such as blue-green corridors, bicycle paths, and pedestrian routes that integrate education, culture, and historical heritage, rather than merely 'restoring forest cover across an entire landscape,' as noted by Mansourian (2005) and Lamb (2014). ...
Article
Full-text available
“Planning at the landscape scale” is the new paradigm of spatial development which embraces the management, protection, and restoration of the landscape character distinguished through “landscape approach” which differs from traditional sectoral and project-based approaches. The institutionalization of “the planning at the landscape scale” has shown an upward trajectory since the Republic of Serbia ratified the European Landscape Convention (ELC). The ELC aims to promote the institutionalization of landscape planning, management, and protection across all landscapes, whether urban, rural, or natural. The landscape planning approach integrates the principles of landscape ecology, principles of landscape aesthetics, and transdisciplinary research. This approach is solution-oriented, aiming to preserve, restore, and enhance the landscape’s character – the distinctive structure and image of the landscape. It achieves this through the “conservation and development of landscape patterns (mosaic), considering land use, the relationship between built and open spaces, and the distinct qualities of the buildings." (Spatial Plan of the Republic of Serbia, 2035). As one of the novel tools that can effectively support the achievement of national-level spatial planning objectives, the development of the Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) methodology holds the potential for incorporating the following goals and principles related to landscape planning, protection, and sustainable utilization: - Integrating the landscape approach (emphasizing the value of landscape character) into the forestry planning and management system; - Forestry development aligned with the recognized values of the landscape character (quality objectives, landscape capacity, and sensitivity); - Urban landscape restoration, preservation, and enhancement of the characteristic structure and image of landscapes through; a) establishing urban spatial order and preserving remnant elements of the rural landscape (reforestation and afforestation within agroforestry areas, peri-urban mosaics complexes, surface watercourses) in suburban areas; d) preserving space for green infrastructure development, as a measure of the city's adaptation to climate change, and creating a network of green and public spaces that connect the natural and cultural values of urban settlements. In this paper, we present the Surčin Forest Landscape Restoration Plan case study, demonstrating landscape character assessment (LCA) as a research method. This method evaluates the sensitivity of landscape character, addressing both resource and visual aspects. The methodological approach seeks to address the critical questions of “what”, "where" and "how" in the context of establishing new forest areas within the broader landscape framework of the forest restoration plan. By providing a strategic and spatially informed approach, it ensures that the restoration efforts are not only ecologically sound but also optimally positioned to enhance the resilience, biodiversity, landscape diversity, and connectivity of forest ecosystems, as well as to improve the cultural ecosystem services of the Municipality of Surčin.
... Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) is a planned process that aims to regain ecological integrity and enhance human well-being in deforested or degraded forest landscapes (Mansourian, 2005;Maginnis and Jackson, 2007). FLR is an important strategy to restore land resources and improve the resilience of local communities globally, and a means of implementing Bonn Challenge targets to restore 150 million ha of degraded lands by 2020 (Pistorius et al., 2017). ...
... Moreover, variables that are likely to influence participation in FLR and its impacts on outcomes variables of interest were selected and used in the study. The explanatory and outcome variables were selected based on empirical works of literature on FLR initiatives implementation (Mansourian, 2005;Maginnis and Jackson, 2007;Pistorius et al., 2017;MEFCC, 2017;Kassa et al., 2017;Kassa, 2018;Zeleke and Vidal, 2020;Pedercini et al.,2021;Djenontin et al., 2021). ...
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Ethiopia has pledged to restore 22 million ha of degraded and deforested lands by 2030. With the massive Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) efforts underway, however, there are no sufficient empirical studies that signify the effectiveness of FLR in the country. Therefore, the study evaluated the impact of the FLR program on rural households’ livelihoods in Sodo, Southern Central Ethiopia. A two-stage random sampling technique was followed to draw the sample households, and 260 sample households (120 households from FLR participating and 140 households from non-FLR participating) were chosen randomly. Data on socio-demographic characteristics, head of household assets, access to credit, land size, household income and related expenditures were considered. In addition, data was gathered through key informant interviews, focus group discussions, direct field observations, and reviewing project documents and activity reports. The data was analyzed using descriptive statistics and Propensity Score Matching (PSM) technique. The results showed that FLR participants are likely to gain higher total and crop income than non-FLR participants. The average off-farm income of FLR participants also increased by 10252.4 ETB (200 USD). The number of beehives and the amount of honey produced was higher with FLR participants. FLR participants received more training and had better access to credit. Moreover, several households benefited from the FLR initiative's program offer to sustain their livelihoods by producing sheep and poultry. In conclusion, FLR initiatives should be combined with agricultural intensification and diversification as well as business-oriented forest development for better impact. Int. J. Agril. Res. Innov. Tech. 13(2): 14-21, Dec 2023
... resource-based livelihood and food security, adaptation needs, and poverty reduction with climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation goals (Djenontin et al. 2018;Mansourian 2005). Nevertheless, FLR interventions continue to fail to adequately integrate and address local aspirations and expectations and to explicitly pursue livelihood outcomes. ...
Chapter
Full-text available
This book takes a multidisciplinary perspective to analyze and discuss the various opportunities and challenges of restoring tree and forest cover to address regional and global environmental challenges that threaten human well-being and compromise sustainable development. It examines forest restoration commitments, policies and programs, and their planning and implementation at different scales and contexts, and how forest restoration helps to mitigate environmental, societal, and cultural challenges. The chapters explore the concept of forest restoration, how it can restitute forest ecosystem services, contribute to biodiversity conservation, and generate benefits and synergies, while recognizing the considerable costs, trade-offs, and variable feasibility of its implementation. The chapters review historic and contemporary forest restoration practice and governance, variations in approaches and implementation across the globe, and relevant technological advances. Using the insights from the ten topic-focused chapters, the book reflects on the possibility of sustainable and just approaches to meet the challenges that lie ahead to achieve ambitious international forest restoration targets and commitments.
... Ante la acelerada transformación de las áreas prístinas, la creación de áreas naturales protegidas no ha sido suficiente, razón por la cual la restauración del paisaje ha surgido como respuesta ante la eminente necesidad de revertir los daños ambientales ocasionados por las actividades antrópicas (Arroyo- Rodríguez et al., 2017;wwf y uicn, 2000). En el año 2000, la Unión Internacional para la Conservación de la Naturaleza (uicn) definió el término "Restauración Forestal del Paisaje" como un proceso planificado que tiene como objetivo recuperar la integridad ecológica y mejorar el bienestar humano en paisajes deforestados o degradados (Mansourian, 2005;wwf y uicn, 2000). Este enfoque comprende múltiples propósitos; uno de los principales es conectar fragmentos de bosque aislados, que permita el restablecimiento del flujo génico y aumente la permeabilidad de los fragmentos existentes a nivel de paisaje (Urban y Shugart, 1986;Metzger y Muller, 1996). ...
Chapter
Full-text available
La pérdida de biodiversidad se ha incrementado en las últimas décadas. La conexión del paisaje por restauración permite conectar fragmentos de bosque aislados para mejorar flujo génico, En Jalpan Puebla se analizó la fragmentación, la conectividad y las variables socioeconómicas del paisaje con imágenes de satélite de 1999 y 2021, Calculándose tres índices de fragmentación: número de parches, tamaño promedio de parche y la suma del área total de parches y el Índice Integral de Conectividad y el delta del Índice Integral de Conectividad. Se consideraron características ecológicas y biológicas de dos especies Herpailurus yagouaroundi y Leopardus pardalis. En los últimos 22 años, la vegetación de selva alta perennifolia, ha disminuido en más del 50% . Los índices de fragmentación de parches disminuyeron, de 3730 en 1999 a 2616 en 2021 y el promedio del tamaño de parches se redujo, de 0.9 a 0.6 ha. Disminuyendo la conectividad del paisaje. Se identificaron 30 sitios prioritarios para la restauración para el incremento de la concetividad del paisaje.
... Controlling competition from weeds and grasses is a major ecological threat, affecting both traditional and drone-based forest restoration (Brancalion & Holl, 2020;Mansourian, 2005). A key difference is that while hand-planters can remove weeds or apply herbicides simultaneously while planting seeds or seedlings, drones currently cannot-they are unable to physically remove weeds, while trials to 'spot spray' herbicides are ongoing but viewed apprehensively by some respondents who are against herbicide use altogether. ...
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Forest restoration is critical for meeting global objectives related to climate change mitigation, biodiversity conservation and sustainable livelihoods. Recently, new technologies such as unmanned aerial vehicles (hereafter drones) have been promoted to support activities across the planning, implementation, monitoring and maintenance stages of forest restoration. Yet, there is little empirical data on how the development and application of drones are perceived by restoration managers and stakeholders and how drones intersect with existing forest social–ecological systems (SESs). Here, we investigate how drone tree planting initiatives in Australia can support ecosystem restoration. Through interviews and focus groups with key actors, we examine the opportunities and challenges that have been experienced or are foreseen with drone use. Opportunities included the ability of drones to access degraded sites that are difficult or unsafe to access on foot, for example, following bushfires, floods or landslides. They were also perceived to ease the labour shortage of bush regenerators in Australia. Drones were considered particularly useful when operating at scales of around 20–100 ha. Challenges included restrictive flying regulations that prohibit use of artificial intelligence to plot courses through complex terrain, their unproven ability to control or eradicate weeds and the uncertain supply, germination and survival rates of seeds—upon which drone‐based restoration relies. Drone use may also reduce the emotional, spiritual and cultural connections of people to the land, as compared to hand‐planting seeds or seedlings. We conclude by conceptualising how drone‐assisted restoration can be embedded within a forest SESs management framework. Ultimately, we argue that drones offer a ‘boutique’ restoration approach that supports, rather than replaces, traditional forest restoration techniques. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.
... Деградација шума представља озбиљан еколошки, социјални, економски и културни проблем глобалних размјера. Квантификовање размјера овог проблема веома је проблематично, имајући у виду да дегрaдација шума има много узрока, јавља се у различитим облицима и с различитим интензитетом, а такође, различите заинтересоване стране доживљавају је на другачије начине (Mansourian 2005;FAO 2011 − за извјештавање на међународним конвенцијама о статусу и квалитету шумских ресурса; − за креирање и имплементацију политика, програма и мјера газдовања шумама за предузимање превентивних и корективних мјера које се односе на мелиорације деградираних шума, мелиорације деградираних шумских земљишта и одрживо газдовање шумама; − за креирање и имплементацију финансијских механизама и других подстицајних шема за услуге шумских екосистема, као што је ублажавање климатских промјена, везивање угљеника, заштита биодиверзитета и др. ...
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Деградација шумских екосистема, заједно са климатским промјенама, представља један од најзначајнијих проблема данашњице. Посљедње процјене указују да је више од 2 милијарде хектара шума у свијету деградирано, при чему је очекивана тенденција њихове даље деградације усљед повећаних притисака на шумске екосистеме. Мелиорације деградираних шума ослањају се на основне принципе теорије и праксе гајења шума, представљају веома комплексне процесе и захтијевају специфичан узгојни приступ који подразумијева примјену компликованих и често финансијски захтјевних метода у циљу постизања задовољавајућих резултата. Велики значај мелиорације деградираних шума огледа се у њиховом потенцијалу за обезбјеђивање одрживости шумских екосистема, очување и повећање биодиверзитета, унапређење функција шумских екосистема, као и ублажавање глобалних климатских промjена. Адаптивно управљање и мелиорација деградираних шума су основни начини за критичне стратегије усмјерене на повећање функционалности и стабилности шума под вишеструким притисцима глобалних промјена.
... Ante la acelerada transformación de las áreas prístinas, la creación de áreas naturales protegidas no ha sido suficiente, razón por la cual la restauración del paisaje ha surgido como respuesta ante la eminente necesidad de revertir los daños ambientales ocasionados por las actividades antrópicas (Arroyo- Rodríguez et al., 2017;wwf y uicn, 2000). En el año 2000, la Unión Internacional para la Conservación de la Naturaleza (uicn) definió el término "Restauración Forestal del Paisaje" como un proceso planificado que tiene como objetivo recuperar la integridad ecológica y mejorar el bienestar humano en paisajes deforestados o degradados (Mansourian, 2005;wwf y uicn, 2000). Este enfoque comprende múltiples propósitos; uno de los principales es conectar fragmentos de bosque aislados, que permita el restablecimiento del flujo génico y aumente la permeabilidad de los fragmentos existentes a nivel de paisaje (Urban y Shugart, 1986;Metzger y Muller, 1996). ...
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La pérdida de biodiversidad se ha incrementado de manera alarmante en las últimas décadas. A pesar de los esfuerzos realizados para incentivar la conservación de ecosistemas, especies y genes, las tasas de extinción siguen siendo altas. Una estrategia para mitigar estos impactos es impulsar acciones de restauración a nivel de paisaje. El principal propósito debe ser conectar fragmentos de bosque aislados, que permitan el restablecimiento del flujo génico y aumente la permeabilidad de los fragmentos existentes. En este trabajo se analizaron la fragmentación, la conectividad y las variables socioeconómicas de los paisajes de Jalpan, Puebla, con el objetivo de identificar áreas prioritarias para su restauración. Con imágenes de satélite Landsat se generó la cartografía de cobertura y uso de la tierra para los años 1999 y 2021 y se calcularon tres índices de fragmentación: número de parches, tamaño promedio de parche y la suma del área total de parches. También se estimó el Índice Integral de Conectividad y el delta del Índice Integral de Conectividad. Se consideraron características ecológicas y biológicas de dos especies que han sido observadas en el área de estudio, Herpailurus yagouaroundi y Leopardus pardalis. Los resultados muestran que en los últimos 22 años, la vegetación de selva alta perennifolia, considerada como principal hábitat, de ambas especies, ha disminuido en más del 50% a una tasa de cambio de -3.8%. Los índices de fragmentación evidencian que el número de parches de selva alta perennifolia disminuyó, de 3730 en 1999 a 2616 en 2021; de igual forma, el tamaño promedio de parches se redujo, pasó de 0.9 a 0.6 ha. Esta condición ha ocasionado la disminución de la conectividad del paisaje. Estos índices permitieron identificar 30 sitios prioritarios para la restauración, acción que podrá aumentar la conectividad a nivel de paisaje.
... Ante la acelerada transformación de las áreas prístinas, la creación de áreas naturales protegidas no ha sido suficiente, razón por la cual la restauración del paisaje ha surgido como respuesta ante la eminente necesidad de revertir los daños ambientales ocasionados por las actividades antrópicas (Arroyo- wwf y uicn, 2000). En el año 2000, la Unión Internacional para la Conservación de la Naturaleza (uicn) definió el término "Restauración Forestal del Paisaje" como un proceso planificado que tiene como objetivo recuperar la integridad ecológica y mejorar el bienestar humano en paisajes deforestados o degradados (Mansourian, 2005;wwf y uicn, 2000). Este enfoque comprende múltiples propósitos; uno de los principales es conectar fragmentos de bosque aislados, que permita el restablecimiento del flujo génico y aumente la permeabilidad de los fragmentos existentes a nivel de paisaje (Urban y Shugart, 1986;Metzger y Muller, 1996). ...
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La Microcuenca Estero El Salado localizada en la ciudad turística de Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, alberga el Área Natural Protegida (ANP) homónima. Sin embargo, su alta biodiversidad y servicios ecosistémicos están amenazados por actividades antrópicas que han acelerado el cambio de coberturas y usos de suelo. Este trabajo evaluó la dinámica del paisaje y la fragmentación de esta área en el periodo 2000 2021. Se generaron mapas temáticos de coberturas y usos del suelo con imágenes de satélite Landsat 5 y 8 para los años 2000 y 2021, y se calcularon métricas de composición y configuración del paisaje. La microcuenca evidencia una predominancia de los usos de suelo urbano, pastizal y agrícola, que pasaron de ocupar un 73.56% de la superficie (2000) a un 78.33% (2021). Las coberturas y usos de suelo registraron cambios en el 38.86% de la superficie. Los cuerpos de agua y bosque tropical disminuyeron su superficie un 75% y 23.86% respectivamente, mientras que el uso urbano la incrementó un 82%. La cobertura de vegetación acuática registró cambios en su configuración espacial, caracterizados por la disminución del número de parches (NP= 127 vs 26) y el aumento del área de los mismos (ÁREA= 2.25 vs 15.05 ha), con mayor agregación hacia la parte baja de la microcuenca (IA= 81.91 vs 95.38), evidenciando que el ANP brinda una protección efectiva a este ecosistema. Las coberturas y usos de suelo presentaron una disminución en el número de parches (NP= 942 vs 849) y un aumento en la distancia entre ellos, principalmente en la selva tropical (ENN_MN= 107.60 vs 180.86 m). El paisaje de la microcuenca mantiene una baja conectividad (Connect= 11.52%-48.65% vs .3.57%-18,15%), por lo que es necesario elaborar instrumentos de planeación territorial que regulen los cambios de uso de suelo, particularmente en las partes altas de la microcuenca.
... Ante la acelerada transformación de las áreas prístinas, la creación de áreas naturales protegidas no ha sido suficiente, razón por la cual la restauración del paisaje ha surgido como respuesta ante la eminente necesidad de revertir los daños ambientales ocasionados por las actividades antrópicas (Arroyo- wwf y uicn, 2000). En el año 2000, la Unión Internacional para la Conservación de la Naturaleza (uicn) definió el término "Restauración Forestal del Paisaje" como un proceso planificado que tiene como objetivo recuperar la integridad ecológica y mejorar el bienestar humano en paisajes deforestados o degradados (Mansourian, 2005;wwf y uicn, 2000). Este enfoque comprende múltiples propósitos; uno de los principales es conectar fragmentos de bosque aislados, que permita el restablecimiento del flujo génico y aumente la permeabilidad de los fragmentos existentes a nivel de paisaje (Urban y Shugart, 1986;Metzger y Muller, 1996). ...
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El presente libro reúne una serie de trabajos cuidadosamente seleccionados, los cuales fueron presentados por estudiantes e investigadores de México y Latinoamérica dentro del marco del Primer Simposio Nacional sobre Estudios en Conectividad del Paisaje. El Simposio se desarrolló en el Centro de Investigaciones en Geografía Ambiental de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, campus Morelia, del 13 al 15 de septiembre de 2022. La obra está conformada por 14 capítulos que fueron seleccionados después de ser revisados por pares académicos a doble ciego, bajo estrictas normas editoriales y dictaminados por evaluadores expertos en el tema, a los cuales les agradecemos su tiempo y dedicación. Los trabajos abordan temas sobre análisis de la fragmentación, conectividad estructural y funcional del paisaje, además de conectividad hidrológica, y elaboración de propuestas de corredores y sitios prioritarios para la conservación del paisaje.
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This book takes a multidisciplinary perspective to analyze and discuss the various opportunities and challenges of restoring tree and forest cover to address regional and global environmental challenges that threaten human well-being and compromise sustainable development. It examines forest restoration commitments, policies and programs, and their planning and implementation at different scales and contexts, and how forest restoration helps to mitigate environmental, societal, and cultural challenges. The chapters explore the concept of forest restoration, how it can restitute forest ecosystem services, contribute to biodiversity conservation, and generate benefits and synergies, while recognizing the considerable costs, trade-offs, and variable feasibility of its implementation. The chapters review historic and contemporary forest restoration practice and governance, variations in approaches and implementation across the globe, and relevant technological advances. Using the insights from the ten topic-focused chapters, the book reflects on the possibility of sustainable and just approaches to meet the challenges that lie ahead to achieve ambitious international forest restoration targets and commitments.