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Participatory Forest and Landscape Restoration

We champion locally led restoration of degraded lands, empowering communities to take control and ensuring they benefit directly from their restoration efforts.

The problem

Globally, more than one billion hectares of land is degraded due to unsustainable practices and uncontrolled fires. This degradation threatens local livelihoods, reduces biodiversity, and accelerates climate change. Restoration initiatives are often large-scale, top-down efforts that focus on a few fast-growing tree species and overlook local community needs. The success rate of these projects is limited, as they tend to lack local support, especially when they restrict people’s access to the lands they depend on for their livelihoods.

Opportunity

Restoring degraded lands through participatory approaches offers a way to reverse environmental damage while enhancing local livelihoods. Local communities possess valuable knowledge about sustainable land use, and when they are empowered to lead restoration efforts, these initiatives are more likely to succeed. By tailoring restoration to local needs, the outcomes provide tangible benefits for communities while successfully transforming degraded areas into healthy, resilient ecosystems.

Our goal

We promote locally led restoration of degraded lands to improve local livelihoods, while also contributing to biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation.

What we do

Our approach is built around four components.

1. Sustainable livelihoods: We facilitate bottom-up efforts to restore degraded areas in our focus landscapes, based on local priorities, and resulting productive lands with both immediate and lasting benefits. This includes the development of business ideas and innovative financial models, with a particular focus on youth-led ventures, as they bring fresh perspectives and long-term commitment to sustainable practices.
2. Diverse ecosystems: We work closely with local communities to build resilience in restored areas by incorporating a variety of plants and trees suited to local conditions, drawing on local knowledge of species best adapted to the region’s soils and climate. We foster mutual learning between communities to share best practices.
3. Inclusive landscape governance: We empower local communities, especially women and youth, to develop the skills and confidence needed to actively participate in restoration decision-making and advocate for their rights and needs.
4. Supportive restoration programmes and policies: We document and share lessons from our landscape-level restoration initiatives to promote bottom-up, locally led restoration among NGOs and government programmes. Additionally, we advocate for policies that secure land tenure for smallholders and communities, ensuring long-term success and sustainability.

Contact

To learn more about our initiatives or to collaborate with us, please contact Humberto Gómez, Thematic lead on Participatory Forest and Landscape Restoration at humberto.gomez@tropenbos.org