Continuing depletion of forest resources, particularly in tropical developing countries, has turned vast areas of intact ecosystems into urbanized and agricultural lands. The degree of degradation varies, but in most cases, the ecosystem functions and the ability to provide a variety of ecosystem services are severely impaired. In addition to many other challenges, successful forest restoration of these lands requires considerable resources and funding, but the ecological, economic and social benefits have the potential to outweigh the investment.

"Landscape approaches" seek to provide tools and concepts for allocating and managing land to achieve social, economic, and environmental objectives in areas where agriculture, mining, and other productive land uses compete with environmental and biodiversity goals. Here we synthesize the current consensus on landscape approaches. This is based on published literature and a consensus-building process to define good practice and is validated by a survey of practitioners.

Multifunctional Forest Landscape Restoration planning for Central Chile

Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) have emerged as the main tool for defining, communicating and potentially reporting party contributions to the Paris Agreement on climate change. Agroforestry has been identified as a key part of most developing country NDCs, hence it is a potentially important contributor to global climate objectives. This policy brief seeks to explore the degree to which agroforestry is represented in current NDCs ambitions, how its application is envisaged and how its contribution could be enhanced.

The Restoration Diagnostic is a structured method for determining the status of enabling conditions within a landscape being considered for restoration and for designing the requisite policies, practices, and measures needed for successful restoration. The Diagnostic was developed as part of the Restoration Opportunities Assessment Methodology (ROAM) by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Degraded lands—lands that have lost some degree of their natural productivity through human activity—account for over 20 percent of forest and agricultural lands in Latin America and the Caribbean. Some 300 million hectares of the region’s forests are considered degraded, and about 350 million hectares are now classified as deforested. The agriculture and forestry sectors are growing and exerting great pressure on natural areas. With the region expected to play an increasingly important role in global food security, this pressure will continue to ratchet up.

The importance of restoration continues to grow, and this book integrates the restoration of forest functions into landscape conservation plans. The global conservation organization WWF has made forest landscape restoration a key topic and priority for its environmental work.  Due to the WWF’s extensive global reach, and together with its many partners and counterparts, it has acquired a significant level of experience on the topic of forest restoration at large scales.

Paul Richards argues that the war in Sierra Leone and other small wars in Africa do not manifest a "new barbarism". What appears as random, anarchic violence is no such thing. The terrifying military methods of Sierra Leone's soldiers may not fit Western models of warfare, but they are rational and effective. The war must be understood partly as "performance", in which techniques of terror compensate for lack of equipment.

Local finance for forest and landscape restoration. Featuring Lucy Garrett, Specialist on financing mechanisms for sustainable food systems and landscape restoration at FAO. Facilitators: Maria Nuutinen (FAO) and Natalia Krasnodebska (LFL) and participants from around the world. Join us for a lively discussion. The Landscape Finance Lab is an initiative of the WWF (the Worldwide Fund for Nature) and made possible through support from EIT Climate-KIC and the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT).

Ecological restoration is a suitable tool to revert land degradation in semiarid areas. Social participation is increasingly considered as a guarantee for the long-term success and sustainability of restoration projects. In rural areas of North African countries, experiences of participatory restoration are still not frequent, and poverty and illiteracy with top-down approaches boost land-use conflicts and raise skepticism toward restoration programs.

New global forest restoration initiatives present an unparalleled opportunity to reverse the trend of deforestation and forest degradation in the coming years. This effort will require the collaboration of stakeholders at all levels, and most importantly, the participation and support of local people. These ambitious restoration initiatives will also require monitoring systems that allow for scalability and adaptability to a range of local sites.

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