Restoring forests for sustainable development: policies, practices and impacts
There is a long history of conservation, reforestation and tree planting for various purposes in different parts of the world. But, due to the continuing alarming rates of deforestation and forest degradation the past decades have seen an unprecedented increase in the acknowledgement of the urgent need to restore forest ecosystems and political commitments towards this aim.
The United Nations has declared 2021-2030 the ‘Decade of Ecosystem Restoration’ and multiple international, national and sub-national initiatives now promote the restoration of degraded forest lands. Estimates of the degraded or deforested forest lands (or landscapes) that could potentially be restored range from 0.9 to 2 billion ha (Bastin et al. 2019; Minnemeyer et al. 2011).
The Special Project on World Forests, Society and Environment (IUFRO-WFSE) will provide an overview of the history of forest restoration, current commitments, assessments of restoration potentials and current achievements, and conduct a comprehensive review of and contribute to the knowledge on institutional, social, economic, ecological and technical issues that influence forest restoration and the outcomes and impacts of restoration efforts.