The protection and revival of degraded and deforested land is the need of the hour. In order to tackle the issues that arise as a consequence of degradation and deforestation, principles of forest landscape restoration are being globally promoted. The Bonn Challenge is a global effort to bring 150 million hectares of deforested and degraded land into restoration by 2020 and 350 million hectares by 2030. The government of India made a Bonn Challenge pledge to bring under restoration 13 million hectares of degraded land by 2020 and an additional 8 million hectares by 2030.

Biodiversity is inherent in forest landscape restoration. As global initiatives like the Bonn Challenge and New York Declaration on Forests inspire nations to pursue sustainable landscapes and economic growth, on the ground, biodiversity binds people and nature to their shared future. Restoring ‘forward’ to meet current and future landscape challenges requires novel approaches and nature-based solutions. Restoration has the potential to generate billions in economic returns and to mitigate many of the effects of humaninduced climate change.

Financing forest restoration with the private sector – Does it work? 

Constructive critique. This book provides a critical, evidence-based analysis of REDD+ implementation so far, without losing sight of the urgent need to reduce forest-based emissions to prevent catastrophic climate change.

REDD+ as envisioned has not been tested at scale. Results-based payment, the novel feature of REDD+, has gone untested. International funding (both public and private) remains scarce, and demand through carbon markets is lacking.

This collection of 12 stories from women and men in nine countries in different parts of Africa shines a light on the efforts of communities, some of them decades-long, in restoring degraded forests and landscapes. The stories are not generated through any rigorous scientific process, but are nonetheless illustrative of the opportunities communities create as they solve their own problems, and of the many entry points we have for supporting and accelerating community effort.

The residents of the Ganges and Mekong River deltas face serious challenges from rising sea levels, saltwater intrusion, pollution from upstream sources, growing populations, and infrastructure that no longer works as planned. In both deltas, scientists working for nearly two decades with communities, local governments and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have demonstrated the potential to overcome these challenges and substantially improve people’s livelihoods.

Forest conversion in the tropics is increasingly driven by global demand for agricultural forest-risk commodities such as soy, beef, palm oil and timber. In order to be effective, future forest conservation policies should include measures targeting both producers (the supply side) and consumers (the demand side) to address commodity-driven deforestation.

Variants of Indigenous forest management reflect distinct historical and political-economic contexts. Indigenous forest management was largely unrecorded in the colonial period and, in the present, can range from industrial to ecosystem-based forest management, autonomous management and rentier practices. Evidence of Indigenous forest management has assumed political importance in those nation-states that require historical evidence of past land use and occupancy as the basis for negotiation of Indigenous-titled lands.

The aim of this thesis is to evaluate the influence of edge effect on vegetation succession in black alder forests. 30 permanent study plots with size of 20×50 m were established with strips at several distances from the edge towards the center of the stand. Stands in study plots fell into three categories – with adjacent clearcut to S or SW created up to 10, 20-40 or more than 41 year ago. In all study plots living trees and dead wood was measured and vegetation was described by layers and the presence of rare epiphytic lichens was recorded.

For the review at hand, Clarivate Analytic's web of science search platform was searched for the keyword combination forest+plantation. The search found 944 articles with the mentioned keywords in their topic that were published between 2010 and 2017. The top 3 subtopics identified were soil, carbon and water in order of abundance. The overview over current research in each of these subtopics to plantation forests naturally show strong overlaps with biodiversity as well as ecological aspects of plantation forests.

Study region : In this study, 33 catchments across the Lower Mekong Basin in Southeast Asia are examined to detect historical changes in their hydrological response via a model-based methodology.Study focus : Intensive development over the past half century across Southeast Asia’s Lower Mekong Basin has inevitably affected natural resources. Large areas have been converted from forests for subsistence and commercial agriculture, and urban development. We implement an innovative approach to screen hydrologic data for detecting impacts of such large-scale changes on hydrological response.