Strategies for Landscape-Scale Restoration in the Tropics

Yale International Society of Tropical Foresters
Strategies for Landscape-Scale Restoration in the Tropics

From January 26 to 28, 2012, the Yale Chapter of the International Society of Tropical Foresters convened practitioners and researchers from government, academia, and environmental and development institutions from around the globe for information exchange on challenges and emerging strategies in scaling-up restoration in the tropics to provide ecosystem services and benefit biodiversity and local livelihoods. The three-day conference took place in Kroon Hall at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (F&ES) in New Haven, Connecticut.

  1. 12.06.2012

    Large-Scale Tropical Forest Restoration – Necessary Policies and Important Research Questions

    Considerable reforestation was undertaken around the world in the second half of the twentieth century. Nonetheless, very large areas of degraded land and forest still remain present across the tropics. Indeed, these areas continue to increase. Several countries do have experience in undertaking large-scale reforestation including Japan, Korea, China and Vietnam. There are lessons to be learned from their experiences but not simple recipes for others to follow. Ecological and socio-economic differences mean that those undertaking reforestation must adjust their approaches to suit the circumstances present in particular locations. The task is made even more difficult because the conditions under which future reforestation might be undertaken are changing. For example, there is uncertainty about the availability of land (because of the need for increased food production), the impact of urbanization, the future markets for forest products and ecosystem services and about how to establish forests able to adapt to a changing climate. Given this background, several policy issues need resolution if reforestation is to be undertaken on a large scale. These include deciding (i) how much reforestation should be undertaken in particular landscapes, (ii) just where in these landscapes this should be done, (iii) the types of reforestation to be carried out in these different areas, (iv) who should make these decisions, and (v) how reforestation should be implemented. All of this means there is a rich field of study for silviculturalists wishing to look beyond establishing simple monocultures of fast-growing exotic species. Silvicultural systems designed for industrial timber plantations are not necessarily those suited to overcoming forest and land degradation where a variety of stakeholders are involved and where these stakeholders are interested in the provision of ecosystem services as well as (or instead of) goods such as timber. It also means that foresters will have to bridge the divide between the natural or physical sciences and the social sciences rather better than has been done in the past. I will highlight some of the key questions (though not necessarily the answers) that I think deserve more attention than they have received hitherto.

    3 сек.
  2. 12.06.2012

    The Role of Old Maps & Nursery Entrepreneurs in Restoration of Forests in Eastern & Southern Africa

    In this paper we discuss two specific inputs aimed to increase restoration success in Eastern and Southern Africa. While deforestation in this part of Africa has been severe it is also an area that is blessed with old maps and nursery entrepreneurs. Obviously successful restoration requires that a whole range of technical and socioeconomic conditions are fulfilled, but here we will concentrate on two neglected areas that could have profound influence on restoration success. Restoration of ecosystems and ecological communities requires development of a strong theoretical base. But most often landscapes are described by ecoregional classification with little possibility to transfer the general knowledge to physical landscapes, while detailed knowledge of small ares are not generalized to an understanding of how the ecological conditions vary across landscapes. However, old botanical maps produced around the time of independence of many African countries can provide this link between the general and the specific. Providing an understanding of successional pathways, alternative stable states, and ecotones. Restoration can be implemented as centralized restoration of protected areas or as part of decentralized collaborative forest management schemes. In both types of schemes seeds and seedlings need to be procured and distributed. Two practical requirements for implementation of restoration based on experience from agroforestry can inform on how this could be done on a large scale (i) Identifying suitable seed sources based on understanding potential provenance areas for species that have never been tested (basically all indigenous species), and (ii) public/private collaboration with decentralized small-scale private nursery entrepreneurs procuring and distributing seeds and seedlings for dispersed planting agents.

    1 сек.
  3. 12.06.2012

    Restoring Landscapes, Governing Space

    Forest landscape restoration seems to have become a new hype. Driven by climate change, there currently are many efforts to establish restoration projects across the globe. Biophysical and economic potentials are assessed, innovative financial mechanisms are developed, and ambitious targets are set to restore the world’s lost forests. However, landscape restoration is nothing new. People have always been constructing, re-constructing and restoring their landscapes, to safeguard their lives and livelihoods. A better understanding of these localized practices will help to better perceive, plan, and implement new restoration initiatives, and potentially scale up to higher levels of policy making. Understanding localized practice means firstly to understand how landscapes are historically shaped by people, through their sense of belonging, and deep attachment to their place. It is this sense of identity and ownership that forms the basis for agency and collective action, for landscape inhabitants to restore their degraded landscapes. Secondly, it means to understand how these endogenous landscape dynamics relate to governance. Landscapes are often cut across by administrative boundaries, not having a formal position in the political-administrative scaling of governance. This means that administratively steered planning processes do not make use of the endogenous agency of landscape inhabitants to govern their place. Thinking of governance from a landscape perspective however allows for a ‘specialization’ of governance, as a means to re-connect governance to landscape, citizenship to place. Adopting a landscape perspective to governance allows to cross administrative and political boundaries. It also allows a broader group of actors not only at the local level, but also at higher politics of scale to engage in governance and decision-making processes concerning their landscape. Such landscape governance does not mean adding an extra scale of formal political-administrative decision-making. But it does offer the opportunity to construct multiple scale networks within and between landscapes, for landscape learning to take place. This is the rationale behind the learning network, which is currently being constructed by the Global Partnership on Forest Landscape Restoration.

    1 сек.

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From January 26 to 28, 2012, the Yale Chapter of the International Society of Tropical Foresters convened practitioners and researchers from government, academia, and environmental and development institutions from around the globe for information exchange on challenges and emerging strategies in scaling-up restoration in the tropics to provide ecosystem services and benefit biodiversity and local livelihoods. The three-day conference took place in Kroon Hall at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (F&ES) in New Haven, Connecticut.

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