This article is originally by Mark Aldrich - Senior Advisor and Fran Price - Practice Leader both Forest Practice, WWF International.
Restoring forest landscapes is about much more than just planting - or rather growing - trees. It’s just as important to address the underlying issues that drive deforestation and landscape degradation and enable people to improve their quality of life in a sustainable way.
In the Kaptagat landscape in Kenya, an innovative collaboration, ‘Greening Kaptagat’ is bringing together local communities, civil society organisations and the local government to deliver restoration and tree planting and including the establishment of agroforestry and clean energy solutions via a participatory community process. It also includes the training of 1,000 farmers on climate smart practices for improved productivity and zero waste and improving incomes via access to enhanced resources for developing scalable and sustainable business models (for local zero deforestation commodities).
The project has also led to the construction of a water tower and a solar-powered pumping system, which now pipes running water to 172 households, as well as a primary school, a vocational training college, a church and a mosque. Before, local people – mainly women and girls – had to trek long distances through the hilly terrain to collect water from springs. Now, they have more time for work,education, and other activities. Farmers no longer have to bring their cattle to drink from the springs, reducing erosion and water pollution.
In the Usambara Mountains of Tanzania, WWF is working in collaboration with local partners The Friends of Usambara Society and 4H, using innovative landscape restoration approaches to enhance the wellbeing of local people and support biodiversity. The project is restoring degraded and deforested areas, and also working with communities to ensure social needs are met through agroforestry - for example, avocado and cocoa trees, and various spices are being planted on farms, alongside efforts to restore native forest.,
These are just two of many examples in WWF’s Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) in Africa Programme, which aims to support and enable governments and people in Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe to restore forest landscapes in a way that promotes sustainable development, improves livelihoods and conserves biodiversity.
The Programme supports the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100), a country-led effort to bring 100 million hectares of land in Africa into restoration by 2030.
What makes FLR different from simply tree-planting, or tree-growing projects?
It’s about working closely with local communities, governments, and other stakeholders to align efforts on the ground with national development priorities and promote enabling policy and institutional frameworks. It also requires the evolution of appropriate business models, financial mechanisms/incentives, markets and related opportunities that restore degraded lands and deforested landscapes, improve local livelihoods and enable wildlife habitat connectivity. At the crux of it is ensuring that local communities drive and implement these sustainable land restoration efforts through an inclusive FLR approach.
Most importantly, FLR is about much more than just planting, or growing trees – it is about restoring the whole landscape to meet the present and future needs of people and biodiversity. And it is at the landscape scale that ecological, social and economic priorities can be balanced.
The focus on landscapes – FLR (sometimes also phrased as Forest and Landscape Restoration) - takes place within and across entire landscapes, not individual sites, representing mosaics of interacting land uses and management practices. As such, FLR can encompass a range of restoration interventions, including tree planting, natural regeneration (managed, or assisted), agroforestry, seed planting, or improved land management. An FLR approach can also accommodate a mosaic of land uses, including planted forests and woodlots, sustainable agriculture, protected and conserved areas, watershed protection,and connectivity for key species, and more… Planned at the landscape level, these interventions can help deliver impact at a large scale in a way that’s sustainable.
A beautiful example of working towards achieving this balance is the Terai Arc Initiative in Nepal and India, which was recently awarded as a UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration flagship. [watch an 8-minute documentary about the Terai Arc Initiative here]
Guidance and Best Practice
However, while there are many positive results and impacts being reported, there have recently been a small spate of articles raising concerns about the threats of inappropriate tree planting as a part of FLR initiatives in Africa, in particular related to the risks to savanna and grasslands or other non-woodland (forest) areas.
Within this context, in order to promote best practice, and High Quality FLR and to reduce the risk of the potential threats highlighted in the articles mentioned previously, a number of sets of Principles or Guidelines have been developed, most notably by the Global Partnership on FLR - GPFLR, of which WWF is a founding member, and the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, of which WWF is a Global Partner.
The GPFLR’s six FLR principles include.
- Focus on landscapes;
- Engage stakeholders and support participatory governance;
- Restore multiple functions for multiple benefits;
- Maintain and enhance natural ecosystems within landscapes;
- Tailor to the local context using a variety of approaches;
- Manage adaptively for long-term resilience.
Grasslands and savannas are included under natural forests or other ecosystems, and so if this principle/guidance is implemented then the potential threats to those ecosystems will be minimised.
WWF has set a challenge for itself and all our implementing partners to ensure that all the FLR programmes that we are implementing, and up-scaling globally are of ‘High Quality’, which entails ensuring that these key principles are considered and adopted by our teams and partners. As an example, restoration interventions need to consider the local context and the ecosystem types, such that tree planting and growing activities as part of FLR interventions will only take place where and when appropriate, and not damage other related ecosystems, such as grasslands and savannas.
WWF and partners are working to implement FLR as part of an integrated approach to protect, restore and sustainably manage forests, and halt deforestation, for the benefit of people, nature, and climate. WWF also raises awareness about the value and unique attributes of grasslands and savanna ecosystems worldwide through the Global Grasslands and Savannahs Initiative.
Taking a landscape approach is a key element towards achieving the many global targets under the three Rio Conventions, including the recently adopted Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, or the ‘Biodiversity Plan’, no less than a plan “for life on earth”, on the scale that is needed. There is no doubt that we are at a crucial moment to bring nature back and that High Quality FLR has a massive and very important role to play.
The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030, led by the United Nations Environment Programme, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and its partners, covers terrestrial as well as coastal and marine ecosystems. As a global call to action, it will draw together political support, scientific research and financial muscle to massively scale up restoration. Find out how you can contribute to the UN Decade. Follow #GenerationRestoration.