Hurdles and Opportunities for Landscape-Scale Restoration

Abstract

A priority outcome from the 2012 United Nations Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development (1) was the target to restore, by 2020, 150 million ha of disturbed and degraded land globally (2). An initiative of this scale is estimated to cost U.S. $18 billion per year and to provide U.S. $84 billion per year to the global economy (2). Although such initiatives have transformative potential because of their scope and backing, they require technology and knowledge capacity to deliver proven, scalable restoration (3). Restoration processes must achieve the greatest value for money, as far as socioeconomic and biodiversity conservation outcomes, while avoiding costly and simplistic plantings (4).Although we recognize that preventing loss and damage in the first place is a far better investment than restoration after damage has occurred, we propose a four-point plan to ensure that restoration sustains and enhances ecological values: (i) identify focal regions with high restoration demands, (ii) identify knowledge gaps and prioritize research needs to focus resources on building capacity, (iii) create restoration knowledge hubs to aggregate and disseminate knowledge at the science-practice interface, and (iv) ensure political viability by establishing economic and social values of functioning restored ecosystems. These points are interrelated and may occur in parallel.Ecological restoration, not just a matter of planting trees (5), involves assisting the recovery of a damaged or destroyed ecosystem (6). Landscape-scale restoration includes large, contiguous, or fragmented areas (equal to or greater than several km2). Restoration often takes place in an unpredictable socio-ecological context, involving multiple stakeholders and interests, where local actions aggregate into a broader context that considers landscape flows and connectivity (see the figure). A realistic assessment of prior knowledge, technological capacity, financial viability, and social license is needed for understanding scientific and practical constraints to achieving global restoration targets. Recent examples, such as China's Great Green Wall and Grain for Green programs, although politically viable, could threaten ecosystem services through ill-placed restoration (7). In such situations, the scientific support behind less-popular options may have been ignored or simply may not be available. A key limitation is the lack of information on successes and failures in landscape-scale restoration projects (8) to guide more effective practice. Early engagement with science will be critical, such as Future Earth: Research for Sustainability, launched at Rio+20, which proposes coordination and facilitation of global science (9).