Economic rationale

There is no shortage of people ready to testify to the benefits of forest and landscape restoration. But, if we are to target resources and methods towards the most appropriate sites, we need more than voices; we need better data.

Money for restoration does not grow on trees, and information about the economic costs and benefits of FLR is thin on the ground. Some information on individual projects exists but it is hard to access and it has never been brought together in a coordinated way.

To remedy the situation, and generate the kind of information database on which sound policy and practice decisions can be based, the Global Partnership on Forest and Landscape Restoration is carrying out the first-ever comprehensive economic appraisal of forest landscape restoration practice.

Our initial study will focus on three key, connected areas:

Financial flows: the money paid out and received on restoration projects. This is a straightforward analysis of cash payments and receipts.
Economic flows: the flows of inputs and benefits that don’t involve a cash transaction, such as unpaid labour, cleaner water and improved soil fertility. This analysis ascribes monetary values to these inputs and benefits, and is more complex, including all products and services delivered by the restored forest, even those that aren’t traded.
Equity: an analysis of who bears the costs and who receives the benefits, and the fairness of the arrangement.

A guide for policy-makers

This first study will cover a wide range of projects and approaches, from different countries and with different aims. Each case study will consider the background, tenure, access and usage rights of the site, explain the rationale for FLR and the techniques used, and identify the costs and benefits generated. There are often many stakeholder groups involved in FLR projects, so separate cost-benefit analyses will be developed for each one.

Once complete, the study will offer policy-makers the chance to understand the financial, economic and equity issues involved in FLR. It will also form the foundation for a more comprehensive study. Our ultimate aim is to provide information that can give direction and focus to decision-making and allow policy makers and planners:

To ‘browse’ alternative restoration options within countries, by location and approach
To fine-tune the type, scale and timing of their approach to deliver alternative mixes of benefits
To gain guidance in how to share benefits more fairly among stakeholder groups
To plan commercial land uses so that benefits are optimised
To design guidelines, regulations and fiscal measures relevant to land use that take into account biological, environmental, social and technical considerations
To pinpoint where further research is needed on the costs, benefits, timing and scale of FLR approaches in specific situations
To fix the scale, pattern and other aspects of FLR projects to deliver specific benefits and values.

Real projects, real data

The source of our data will be a series of FLR projects from around the world, to be expanded later into a comprehensive database. The case studies will include:

Sabah, Malaysia, where over-cutting of commercial timber species has threatened forest-dependent communities and populations of flagship conservation species such as orang-utan, Asian elephant and clouded leopard
Uganda, where reforestation with commercial timber species has been promoted with technical support and grants for planters and changes to the fiscal treatment of forestry, reducing pressure on natural forests
Thailand, where widespread application of the ‘framework method’ using indigenous species has boosted biodiversity and secured supplies of higher-value timber for extractive use
The UK, where there has been extensive work on restructuring the existing forest estate as well as on restoring former industrial land and mining spoil to create new products and services
Tanzania, where a community-based approach to restore badly degraded dry (Miombo) woodland has generated a wide range of tradeable products and revived local livelihoods
China, where forest restoration in the degraded watershed that provides water for Beijing is enhancing local people’s access to forest products and increasing household income
Guatemala, where farming by marginalised but dense populations on steep hillsides is being renewed by restoration of the degraded water catchment