Forest and landscape restoration monitoring frameworks: how principled are they?

Abstract

Forest and landscape restoration (FLR) aims to simultaneously restore ecological functionality to deforested or degraded landscapes and ensure the provision of ecosystem services essential for human well-being. Interest in FLR has followed the ambitious commitments made to restore degraded forest by 2030 under the Bonn Challenge and the New York Declaration on Forests. To clarify and define FLR, the Global Partnership on Forest and Landscape Restoration articulated six principles that underlie this approach, but other sets of principles have also been developed. Our paper examines if and to what extent these principles and their interdependencies are captured in frameworks currently used to monitor FLR. We conducted a literature review to identify FLR monitoring frameworks that linked criteria to principles, but found only five appropriate publications. These frameworks were strictly hierarchical and thus unlikely to capture the interactions and interdependencies among different elements of FLR. Two of the five addressed all six principles. Second, we conducted a series of group exercises with experts to characterize the topology of FLR monitoring frameworks by linking criteria to principles and examining interconnections. We cataloged 18 criteria and 76 indicators, in a non-exhaustive exercise. Cognitive mapping of the interconnections between FLR principles and criteria showed that criteria are typically linked to more than one principle indicating the need to consider networked frameworks. However, no FLR monitoring frameworks currently exist for understanding and operationalizing all six principles, and integrating the interconnected processes underpinning FLR planning, monitoring, and assessment.