The Restoration Opportunities Assessment Methodology (ROAM)1 was developed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the World Resources Institute (WRI) to assist countries in identifying opportunities for forest landscape restoration (FLR), analysing priority areas at a national or sub-national level, and designing and implementing FLR interventions. FLR is the long-term process of regaining ecological functionality and enhancing human well-being across deforested or degraded forest landscapes.

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.

We are probably at the most crucial crossroad of humanity’s history. We are changing the earth’s climate as a result of accelerated human-made Greenhouse Gases Emissions (GHG) and biodiversity loss, provoking other effects that increase the complexity of the problem and will multiply the speed with which we approach climate chaos, and social too.

In collaboration with the University of Riau, the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) has established permanent plots in Tanjung Leban village, Bengkalis regency, Riau province. The site, which is owned by the local community, is about 50 km east of the city of Dumai and easily accessed by car.

The values ascribed to industrial tree plantations are often controversial. Hence knowledge of their perceived impacts is important for improving their integration in rural landscapes. In 2016 we conducted household surveys with 606 respondents living in villages adjacent to acacia, teak and pine plantations across three islands in Indonesia (Java, Borneo, Sumatra). Results show that perceptions toward pine and teak plantations tend to differ from those toward acacia pulpwood plantations in several ways.

The humid tropics are exposed to an unprecedented modernisation of agriculture involving rapid and mixed land-use changes with contrasted environmental impacts. Afforestation is often mentioned as an unambiguous solution for restoring ecosystem services and enhancing biodiversity. One consequence of afforestation is the alteration of streamflow variability which controls habitats, water resources, and flood risks. We demonstrate that afforestation by tree planting or by natural forest regeneration can induce opposite hydrological changes.

Vietnam has pilot-tested a payment for forest environmental services (PFES) program in an effort to restore and protect forest areas, some of which have been severely degraded by the excessive cutting of trees by small-scale farmers planting annual crops on steep, sloping lands. The pilot program implemented in southern Vietnam seems to be successful, yet the program in northern Vietnam has not produced the desired rates of planting and maintaining forest areas.

Land-use and land-cover changes are driving unprecedented changes in ecosystems and environmental processes at different scales. This study was aimed at identifying the potential land-use drivers in the Jedeb catchment of the Abbay basin by combining statistical analysis, field investigation and remote sensing. To do so, a land-use change model was calibrated and evaluated using the SITE (SImulation of Terrestrial Environment) modelling framework.