Stephanie Mansourian

Forest Restoration in Landscapes

WWF’s vision for the forests of the world, shared with its long-standing partner, the World Conservation Union (IUCN), is that“the world will have more extensive, more diverse and higher-quality forest landscapes which will meet human needs and aspi-rations fairly,while conserving biological diversity and fulfilling theecosystem functions necessary for all life on Earth.”WWF’s approach to forest conservation has evolved over timeinto a global programme of integrated field and policy activitiesaimed at the protection, responsible management, and restorationof forests, whilst at the same time working to address the keythreats which could potentially undermine these efforts. Those ofparticular concern to WWF are illegal logging and forest crime,conversion of forests to plantation crops of palm oil and soy, forestfires, and climate change.The Forests for Life Programme consists of a global network ofmore than 250 staff working on over 300 projects in nearly 90 coun-tries. Regional forest officers coordinate efforts in each of the fiveregions, supported by a core team based at WWF International inSwitzerland. The programme also draws on the complementaryskills and support of partners to help achieve its goals.

Forest Landscape Restoration in Context

People have been actively using forests since long before the beginning of history. The oldest known written story, the Epic of Gilgamesh recorded on 12 cuneiform tablets in Assyria in the seventh century b.c., includes reference to the problems of forest loss. The need for good tree husbandry was stressed in Virgil’s pastoral poem The Georgics in 30 b.c., written to promote rural values within the Roman Empire. The oldest records of forest management in the world have been kept without a break for 2000 years in Japan, relating to forests managed to produce timber for Shinto temples. The need for large-scale restoration has also been recognised for centuries; for example, the English pamphleteer John Evelyn wrote a tract calling for major tree planting during the time of Queen Elizabeth I in the 1600s. In more recent times, forest departments around the world have developed major efforts at reforestation in Europe, eastern North America, Australia, New Zealand, and increasingly in parts of the tropics. In the last 20 years, hundreds of aid and conservation projects have promoted and carried out tree planting schemes and the development of tree nurseries, aimed at both supplying goods such as fuelwood and at restoring ecological functions and protecting biodiversity. Following the Society for Ecological Restoration International (SERI) and its chapters around the world, the scientific knowledge on ecological restoration has been conceptualised and applied to many different types of ecosystem, including forest landscapes. Good books have already been published. Why then do we need another book about restoration? The arguments for forest restoration are becoming more compelling. Forest loss and degradation is a worldwide problem, with net annual estimates of forest loss being 9.4 million hectares throughout the 1990s and those for degradation uncalculated but universally agreed to be even higher. The most severe losses are currently concentrated mainly, although not exclusively, in the tropics, with 1 Forest Landscape Restoration in Context

Overview of Forest Restoration Strategies and Terms

When forests are lost or degraded, we lose far more than just the trees that they contain. Forests provide a large number of goods and services, including habitat for species, homeland for indigenous peoples, recreational areas, food, medicines, and environmental services such as soil stabilisation.And as forest areas are reduced, pressure on remaining forests increases. Efforts at reversing this trend have had only limited success. For many, restoration signifies large-scale afforestation or reforestation (mainly using fast growing exotic species), which have only limited conservation benefits. This has been the approach taken by many governments that are seeking to support a timber industry or create jobs or, equally, those who have taken a simplistic approach to flood or other disaster mitigation. On the other hand, some have sought to re-create original forests, a near-impossible feat in areas where millennia of human intervention have modified the landscape and local conditions. Many different terms are used to describe these different approaches and can result in some confusion or misconceptions. We attempt here to cover most of the terminology used in English taken from the Society for Ecological Restoration International (SERI), which has 2 Overview of Forest Restoration Strategies and Terms

Why Do We Need to Consider Restoration in a Landscape Context

Conservation strategies that rely solely on protected areas and sustainable management have proved insufficient either to secure biodiversity or to stabilise the environment. The United Nations Environment Programme now classifies a large proportion of the world’s land surface as “degraded,” and reversing this damage is one of the largest and most complex challenges of the 21st century. Habitat loss is already so severe that conservation programmes need to include restoration if they are to deliver long-term success. Analysis of the WWF Global 200 ecoregions—identified as those of the highest conservation importance— demonstrates the problems. Over 80 percent of the G200 forest ecoregions need restoration in at least parts of their area; deforestation is a key threat to water quality in 59 percent of G200 freshwater ecoregions, and three quarters of G200 mangrove ecoregions are under threat. Even where forest is stable or increasing, parallel losses of forest quality create the need for restoration. In Western Europe, for instance, research by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe found that most countries had less than 1 percent of their forests surviving in an unmanaged state. Forest loss is not only of concern to conservationists.The United Nations estimates that 60 million people are directly dependent on forest 7 Why Do We Need to Consider Restoration in a Landscape Context?

A Way Forward: Working Together Toward a Vision for Restored Forest Landscapes

The primary aim of this book has been to gather knowledge and experience from a number of practitioners around the world in order to assist conservationists and others in their efforts to restore forests. Restoration has been presented here in the context of a landscape approach, which we believe is a more practical scale for making decisions about returning healthy forest cover and functions to areas where they have been lost or degraded. We have been fortunate in persuading many leading experts to help us in putting the book together, and some of the key lessons or current state of knowledge are summarised briefly below. It has also become apparent during our research that a large number of unknowns remain. Another emerging purpose of the book is therefore to highlight areas for further development and to call on the conservation community, and others, to address these needs. One important gap that has appeared in different chapters is the need for a comprehensive framework. Using the information gathered through this extensive book, we have attempted to sketch out a framework for the restoration of forests in landscapes. It is hoped that this framework will serve as a guide for practitioners, although it is not meant to be a rigid template. It will need to be used, tested, and refined. Many gaps and research needs have also emerged through this book and the most salient of these are highlighted and summarised under the framework below. More specific ecological research needs can also be found in Appendix 1.

Forest Landscape Restoration: Progress in the Last Decade and Remaining Challenges

Forest landscape restoration (FLR) aims to restore forests in a landscape to meet both human needs and ecological priorities. Although the term was first defined in 2000, it has recently become popular and is being promoted as a solution to many of the environmental and social problems associated with land degradation. We take a step back and reflect on developments in FLR in the last twelve years, using as a framework 13 key issues raised in 2005. A decade ago, when the term “forest landscape restoration” had only recently been defined, we identified and documented several pre-requisites, tools, and approaches necessary for its development, as well as outstanding issues. Today FLR is the subject of significant government commitments, and has entered into the language of large multilateral environmental agreements, notably the three so-called Rio Conventions. While FLR can provide an important means of achieving multiple objectives in forested landscapes, outstanding challenges to its effective and widespread application remain. Our analysis of progress to date suggests that particular challenges for the effective implementation of FLR concern implementation of truly large-scale restoration initiatives that have both ecological and socio-economic objectives, tackling governance challenges, focusing on both quality and quantity of restored landscapes, promoting the links between FLR and climate change, and ensuring adequate and long-term monitoring. Given the significant advances in both development and uptake of FLR, we hope this reappraisal of 2005 challenges will help restoration practitioners and decision-makers to prioritize future interventions.