Global forest restoration has gained much momentum in recent years. However, economic challenges can present an obstacle to the feasibility and success of restoration initiatives. A new study highlights seven innovative restoration approaches that rise both to the ecological and the economic challenges of forest restoration, often outperforming more commonly used methods.
The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration is a rallying call, running from 2021 through 2030, to revive degraded ecosystems all over the world. It is a critical endeavour in light of the twin crises of biodiversity loss and climate change. One key ecosystem type widely threatened by degradation are forests. But while many initiatives exist to restore the world’s forests, identifying the ideal mix of techniques for varying environmental and socioeconomic conditions remains a challenge.
Not only do restoration approaches have to be ecologically effective; there are also a myriad of economic considerations to be made. For their long-term success, restoration initiatives need to be economically viable for local communities, and therefore must be cost-effective with potential to be scaled-up at little cost. This can be hard to take into account where land is particularly degraded, since a more hands-on, active restoration approach is needed (like planting trees) – which is more costly than passively letting nature regenerate on its own.
Seven forest restoration innovations and their benefits
Brand new insights in the journal One Earth from scientists of Crowther Lab at ETH Zurich, however, now show that these economic challenges can be tackled. By combing through 1000s of studies and closely assessing restoration outcomes from almost 150, they identified seven restoration techniques that have big potential to improve forest restoration outcomes: the use of a diverse mix of native species, the use of fast-growing, profitable species in the initial stage of recovery, the placing of seedlings in more natural clusters instead of even distances, directly seeding instead of using more costly tree seedlings, the addition of live soil microbiome to the plants, and integrating agricultural waste and biochar to soils during planting efforts.
What makes these seven innovations so extraordinary is that they significantly outperform more common methods, such as monoculture plantations, in the regions they are being applied in. So far, all innovations – in particular using mixed and economically profitable species in restoration – have been shown to result in improved vegetation recovery, such bringing back plant diversity more quickly or drawing down more carbon.
What’s more: the studies reviewed show that low-tech approaches can also be cost-effective. They often either reduce restoration costs per hectare or lead to higher restoration benefits per hectare. By planting seedlings in more natural patterns for example, implementation costs can be cut by half on average. And using economically profitable species can even offset restoration costs completely, all while generating extra income for local communities.
Ensuring long-term restoration success
“Integrating the needs and desires of local communities in the entire restoration process is key to implementing these innovations appropriately”, notes Dr. Leland Werden, lead author of the research. ” To ensure restoration success, it’s imperative to involve local stakeholders in the entire restoration process while ensuring that their livelihoods are met, that local, traditional, and Indigenous knowledge, rights, and values are woven into project plans, and that projects rely on local labour markets.”
Given the local and regional nature of the studies reviewed, guarantees for their widespread use across the world cannot be made. The lack of data and application cases about the true benefits and costs of the restoration initiatives both limit our knowledge about their full potential and call for more research on the matter. More context-dependent analyses on their cost-benefit ratio as well as ecological and socioeconomic feasibility is of critical importance.
That said, at a time when global forest restoration targets are difficult to hit for a lack of funds, this new assessment showcases that there are already various existing tools available to drive the restoration movement forward – and to be scaled up in a more cost-effective way than conventional methods. Nearly halfway through the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, this message is a most welcome one.
Want to learn more about the study? Check out our more in-depth interview with Dr. Leland Werden!
Reference
Werden, L. K., Cole, R. J., Schönhofer, K., Holl, K. D., Zahawi, R. A., Averill, C., Schweizer, D., Calvo-Alvarado, J. C., Hamilton, D., Joyce, F. H., San-José, M., Hofhansl, F., Briggs, L., Rodríguez, D., Tingle, J. W., Chiriboga, F., Broadbent, E. N., Quirós-Cedeño, G. J., & Crowther, T. W. (2024). Assessing innovations for upscaling forest landscape restoration. One Earth, 7(9), 1515–1528. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2024.07.011