Forest restoration’s pledges

The top 15 countries with the largest areas of restoration hotspots are distributed across all tropical rainforest regions around the world. Three are in Central and South America, five are in Africa and the Middle East, and seven are in Asia and the Pacific.

Importantly, 89% of the hotspots we identified were located within areas that have already been identified as biodiversity conservation hotspots in tropical regions. These conservation hotspots have exceptionally high concentrations of at-risk species. They have been been focal areas for investment and activities to promote biodiversity conservation for nearly 20 years.

This finding makes sense, since two criteria for designating conservation hotspots – high rates of forest loss and high concentration of endemic, or locally distributed, species – were also variables in our study. Our results strongly support the need to develop and implement integrated solutions that protect remaining forest ecosystems and restore new forests within these high-priority regions.

We also found that 73% of tropical forest restoration hotspots are in countries that have made commitments under the Bonn Challenge, a global effort to bring some 580,000 square miles (150 million hectares) of the world’s deforested and damaged land into restoration by 2020, and 1.35 million square miles (350 million hectares) by 2030. By making these pledges, Bonn Challenge participants have shown that they are politically motivated to restore and conserve forests, and are looking for restoration opportunities.

Forest restoration on small farms bordering Mpanga Forest Reserve, Uganda, can bring high levels of benefits and is relatively feasible to achieve.
Forest restoration on small farms bordering Mpanga Forest Reserve, Uganda, can bring high levels of benefits and is relatively feasible to achieve.
Image: Robin Chazdon, CC BY-ND

A means toward many ends

The 88% of the lands we analyzed that did not qualify as restoration hotspots also deserve careful attention. These landscapes could be prioritized for restoration interventions that increase food, water and fuel security through agroforestry practices, watershed protection, woodlots for producing firewood and local timber or commercial tree plantations. All of these areas can provide benefits for people and the environment through combinations of different restoration approaches, even if they are not the best candidates for a full-scale effort to restore a high-functioning forest.

Forest restoration is also urgently needed in other types of forests across the world, such as seasonally dry tropical forests and temperate forests that are heavily managed for timber. Identifying key restoration opportunities in these regions requires separate studies based on their unique benefits and challenges.

Our study helps to highlight how restoring tropical forests can provide multiple benefits for people and nature, and aligns with existing conservation and sustainable development agendas, as discussed in a newly published perspective related to the new findings in Science. We hope that our map of restoration opportunities and hotspots will provide useful guidance for nations, conservation organizations and funders, and that local communities and organizations will be engaged in and benefit from these efforts.

Robin Chazdon, Professor Emerita of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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