Restoring functionality and productive capacity to forests and landscapes in order to provide food, fuel, and fiber, improve livelihoods, store carbon, improve adaptive capacity, conserve biodiversity, prevent erosion and improve water supply.

1. Making Forest and
Landscape Restoration
a Force for Change

2. Forest and landscape restoration
• Restoring functionality and productive
capacity to forests and landscapes in order
to provide food, fuel, and fiber, improve
livelihoods, store carbon, improve adaptive
capacity, conserve biodiversity, prevent
erosion and improve water supply.

3. Potential Extent of Forests and Woodlands
Where forests would grow if climate and soils were the only constraint

4. Current Extent of Forests and Woodlands
Where they are today
More than a quarter has been lost...

5. A landscape is an interconnected mosaic
Protected Degraded Primary Forest
Primary
Forest Plantations Secondary forest
Secondary forest
Degraded Permanent
Forest Lands pasture
Permanent
pasture
Intensive
agriculture land
Permanent
pasture

6. Forest and Landscape Restoration:
Not a top-down, one-size fits all solution
• Bring people together to
identify, negotiate, and
implement practices . . .
• . . . that restore an agreed
optimal balance of the
ecological, social, and economic
benefits of forests and trees . . .
• . . . within a broader pattern of
land uses
www.ideastransformlandscapes.org

7. Forest and Landscape Restoration:
Characteristics
Think long-term/large-scale.
Monitor, learn, adapt.
Treat the landscape as
a mosaic of sites
Restore functionality and
productivity, not ”original” forest
Balance local needs and
high-level priorities
Manage natural regrowth or
plant new trees
Use trees to enhance food
production (agroforestry)
www.ideastransformlandscapes.org

8. Map-based assessment of
restoration opportunities
• Vast areas of once-forested land have been cleared or
support only degraded forests. Some of these lands can
be restored.
– How much?
– Where?

9. Mapping a sequence of questions
• Where would forests be if
climate and soils were the
only limitation?
• Where are forests today?
(What has been lost or
degraded?)
• Where are the
opportunities for
restoration?
– Wide scale
– Mosaic
– Remote

10. Wide-scale restoration
Wide-scale restoration
of forests is possible in
less populated areas
with less intensive land
use where closed forests
can grow back on a
large scale once barriers
such as fire or grazing
are controlled.

11. Opportunities for
wide-scale restoration
• Degraded or deforested
lands, sparsely populated;
not croplands.
China
Madagascar

12. Mosaic-type restoration
Mosaic-type restoration
of woodlands and trees
is suitable where the
population density is
higher, including on lands
where closed forests
cannot grow. The result is
a mix of forest, trees, and
other land uses including
agroforestry and
smallholder agriculture.

13. Opportunities for
mosaic-type
restoration
Degraded or deforested
lands, may have high
population density; not
croplands.
Rukungiri District, Uganda
China

14. Remote restoration
Remote opportunities for
restoration exist in
unpopulated areas, but are so
far from human habitation that
restoration may not be feasible.
In these areas, forests have
been lost or degraded by
natural and human-influenced
forces such as
fire, drought, extreme climatic
events, or pests and disease.

15. Croplands
Croplands and settled areas
on former forest lands may
benefit from tree planting on
steep slopes, along waterways
and other targeted places to
prevent soil erosion, to protect
waterways, absorb storm
water, increase soil
fertility, and enhance soil
moisture capacity.

17. Mosaic restoration is the most
widespread opportunity

18. Africa has the greatest restoration
opportunity area

19. Most restoration opportunities
are in the tropics

20. Restoration opportunities in Latin America
Leading countries by region

21. Restoration opportunities in Africa
Leading countries by region

22. Restoration opportunities in Asia
Leading countries by region

23. A window of opportunity has
opened…
Global agreements call for restoration:
UN Millennium Development Goals
• Eradicate extreme poverty & hunger, ensure
environmental sustainability
REDD-Plus
• Slow, halt, and reverse forest cover and carbon loss
Convention on Biological Diversity
• Restore 15 percent of degraded ecosystems by 2020
Bonn Challenge
• Restore 150 million hectares of lost and degraded
forests by 2020