Rehabilitation and Restoration Of Degraded Forests (PDF) - IUCN

Chapter 10: Promoting forest landscape restoration
• the extent of degraded forest land;
• the cost of this degradation in economic and human terms;
• the options available for rebuilding productive forest ecosystems;
and
• the benefits in economic and human terms of restoring degraded
forest ecosystems.
Some of the messages to be conveyed could be drawn from examples
from different ecological regions where forest restoration has been
carried out. A lessons-learned segment could include the practical
implications of what has been attempted, along with an analysis of the
requirements (institutional, policy, legal, tenure, etc.) for successful
outcomes.
10.2 Putting Forest Landscape Restoration on the policy agenda
Forest Landscape Restoration must be on the policy agenda at global,
regional and national levels. IUCN and WWF have for some years
included forest restoration among their strategic objectives at the
international level, and this agenda is steadily being taken up at
regional levels. A concerted effort to raise the issue of forest restoration
or rehabilitation as a positive response to forest loss and degradation in
all available policy discussions at all levels will steadily build momentum
for change. A targeted approach is probably the most effective,
initially targeting those groups likely to be responsive, and then
moving on to others.
10.3 Incorporating restoration into land-use planning and action
Forest Landscape Restoration must be incorporated into national,
regional and local land-use planning and action. Significant change
will not come about until governments and local communities are
willing to expend scarce resources on restoration activities. Both smalland
large-scale activities should be encouraged. This process can be
assisted by setting up pilot projects in a range of ecological regions.
Such pilot sites can also be used to show that restoration or rehabilitation
is in the interests of both local and national government. While
site-level approaches are probably the easiest to demonstrate, significant
advances will depend on demonstrating approaches to working at
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