GUIDE: Where to restore?

Using spatial data to inform restoration prioritization for climate, biodiversity and community benefits

Restoring forests to mitigate climate change can be a win-win effort that helps communities and biodiversity adapt to our changing world. For example, forests could be restored to enhance landscape connectivity and therefore aid migration that is critical to species conservation in a changing environment. Implementation using principles of community and stakeholder engagement, good governance, livelihood compatibility, and sustainably managing and maintaining native forests can help restored forests persist on the landscape — which is fundamental to attaining long-term goals such as carbon sequestration, benefits to communities, and biodiversity conservation. This guide provides critical information on where and how to prioritize restoration actions that will unlock efficient restoration and use a range of strategies at scale. It fills a gap in the existing resources available on spatial analysis for restoration by outlining how to combine social and ecological information and providing guidance for identifying opportunities that range from national to local scales.

This guide explains how to use spatial data to identify opportunities for restoration. It also presents a wide range of alternative restoration strategies suited to different ecological and socioeconomic contexts. The goal of this guide is to help countries, projects and organizations identify where and how to restore forests using readily available data. It focuses on restoration that facilitates forest succession, enhances forest resilience in the face of climate change and complements existing forest conservation initiatives. The restoration strategies highlighted here include assisted natural regeneration, silvopasture, agroforestry, applied nucleation, direct seeding, enrichment planting and tree planting. Aimed at practitioners and restoration managers, the guide details how to use spatial data to decide where to restore and provide information on different strategies to inform restoration on the ground. Included in the guide are case studies from Brazil and Fiji.