Restoring nature in alignment with social and environmental justice
As world leaders are preparing to meet at the World Biodiversity Summit in Montreal this December, the imperative of accelerating ecosystem restoration and protection has never been more clear. Yet, despite ambitious policies and strong financial interest, restoration efforts continuously fail to realize both social and ecological benefits. A stronger focus on equity can be part of the remedy.
Ecosystem restoration has in recent years propelled to the forefront of the global environmental policy agenda. Whilst policy measures to decarbonize still meet forceful resistance from world leaders, ecosystem restoration and its potential to mitigate climate change, promote ecological recovery, and improve human well-being renders close to unanimous enthusiasm across political divides.
In the last decade multiple ambitious restoration targets have been formed and agreed upon. The One Trillion Trees Initiative aims to grow, protect, and restore a trillion trees by 2030, the Bonn Challenge aims to restore 350 million hectares of land by 2030, and the UN Decade of restoration aims to catalyze restoration globally during the present decade. Powerful financial actors such as Jeff Besoz, Marc Benioff, and Elon Musk have all pledged to support the restoration cause, donating billions of dollars to various tree-focused initiatives.
Restoration science has in turn fueled the momentum around restoration, and several studies have pointed to restoration as a multifaceted solution to key global sustainability issues. Most attention has perhaps been given to global mapping studies, providing estimates of geographic scope of restoration, and suggesting global priority areas for restoration.
The attention towards restoration from science, policy, and industry is in every way to be celebrated. Restoration of degraded ecosystems is one of the most important tasks facing our generation. Yet, the momentum around restoration has so far not translated into action, and current restoration trajectories come with tangible risks for both ecological systems and social and environmental justice.
Environmental policies targeting landscapes are inherently complex, due to the multiple ways in which landscapes are used and cultivated. In a recent study, colleagues and I show how areas with the highest restoration priority are inhabited by more than a billion people who disproportionately belong to groups with below-average health outcomes, education levels, and income. These people are in many cases directly dependent on their landscape for food security, and also often have strong cultural ties to their lands. In other words, some of the most vulnerable people globally have the most to both and win and lose from how ecosystem restoration is carried out.
Whether or not a restoration intervention sustains in a landscape depends on both ecological and social processes. Ecologists have so far provided crucial insights on how hydrological conditions, soil properties, and climate all influence what type of restoration is suitable in what ecological context. Mapping studies have in turn provided important advances on the global scope of restoration and the geographical heterogeneity of the challenge.
The issue is that natural science studies have been given disproportionate influence on restoration discourses, at the expense of insights on the social processes which are equally important in shaping restoration outcomes. Social dynamics such as power imbalances, governance systems, and the different values different actors see in a landscape vary substantially, and all have a strong influence on whether or not a restoration project is equitable and ecologically effective.
Restoration takes place in the context of strong power imbalances, where the people who are most vulnerable to its outcomes often are the ones with least say in how, where, and if restoration is executed. This issue is exacerbated by the fact that many local and indigenous groups lack legal tenure to the land they have used for generations. Power imbalances in restoration are especially problematic as the favored objectives of restoration are likely to differ substantially between actors. Trade-offs are inevitable in land systems and those actors with least power are most likely to draw the short stick when these trade-offs materialize.
Whilst local people tend to benefit from restoration projects that are integrated in agricultural systems, follow cultural forest practices, and/or yield economic benefits, northern financers often favor restoration projects with strong climate change mitigation profiles. Private finance is therefore likely to bias towards fast-growing monoculture carbon farms, which may go directly against the objectives of local people and may have detrimental effects on ecosystems.
The global interest in restoration for carbon and biodiversity offsets can be an opportunity to galvanize funding from the financial sector, acting as repair finance for harm communities in the Global South have experienced from colonization and climate change. For this to happen policy mandates need to be in place to ensure that finance is actively channeled towards projects that are ecologically sound and aligned with local people’s desires. Yet, the private financial system left to its own devices is likely to drive restoration trajectories in ways that misalign with what is ecologically sound and socially and environmentally just.
In all of this, the question of who governs a landscape becomes apparent. Land-use policies driven by actors in the Global North but implemented in the Global South commonly have a burdensome track-record of increasing marginalization of local people for the benefit of carbon objectives, especially when decisions are made by distant but powerful stakeholders. Conversely, a growing body of evidence shows how local people can benefit from sound ecosystem restoration when decision-making is decentralized and equitable.
There is an obvious moral argument to be made when arguing that restoration should be centered on equity. The people living in restorable areas are the most affected and most vulnerable to how a landscape is altered, and should therefore have the strongest say in decision making. In many cases, these people still suffer from legacies of colonialism, often by the same countries who have caused the climate change these people are disproportionately struck by.
But beyond ethical reasoning, restoration projects will be more likely to sustain, and thereby to realize ecological objectives, if they align with local people’s desires for their landscapes. Restoration that is not rooted in local people’s desires for their landscapes is unlikely to sustain over time, as recent devastating reports from India show. By increased recognition that restoration needs to center on equity, the global community has a better chance of repairing both the social and ecological damages driven by decades of unethical land use practices and fossil fuel driven development.
So where does this leave us? We suggest 5 action point for science and policy to focus on people in the context of restoration.
- Placing people at the center of restoration practice
Restoration decision making should be placed in the hands of the local people who are most affected. This is especially important as distant funders of ecosystem restoration often favor carbon farms, which may be both ecologically and socially destructive.
2. Increasing focus on people in the study, design, and implementation of restoration
Restoration outcomes that seem feasible in an assessment looking only at ecological indicators may not be what will actually emerge if political or financial support for the project is low. The study of the social, political, and economic systems at play in potentially restorable areas need to become a mainstream part of restoration science.
3. Elevating case study knowledge in global agenda setting efforts
So far, a narrow set of spatial restoration studies have been given disproportionate influence in global agenda setting efforts. These studies have been instrumental in providing understanding of the global scope of restoration and in mobilizing attention and effort. Yet, in order to scale restoration in an equitable way, case study knowledge on various social realities in different contexts need to be elevated.
4. Improving scientific communication around restoration
Restoration is complex and caveats in restoration studies are often lost as media and policy makers are quick to pick up the most simple and catchy messages. It is important that scientific communication is clear on what different types of studies should be used for, and that communication on the social aspects that are crucial for restoration effectiveness and equity is improved.
5. Redesigning targets to better measure social and ecological outcomes.
Current restoration targets largely measure success in quantitative outcomes such as numbers of trees planted or numbers of hectares restored. A non-native tree planted in the wrong place or a hectare restored without local consent can have detrimental effects on both ecosystems and people. Moving forward, it is important that the global community starts measuring success based on social and ecological metrics that actually indicate equity and effectiveness of interventions. Examples for this could be increased income equality or increased species richness in an area, but should also be adjusted to local contexts.
Through measures like these, the global community will have a better chance of promoting restoration that is effective in reaching ecological objectives and promoting social and environmental justice. This type of bottom-up equitable restoration is likely to be both slower and more resource-intensive than some measures to, for example, increase tree cover. Yet, speed will not be of value if restoration projects keep failing at the rate they have so far. By increasing focus on equity, the momentum on restoration in science, policy and finance, could unlock unprecedented action on ecosystem restoration. In turn, this can lead to climate change mitigation, improved ecosystem functionality, and enhanced well-being for vulnerable people today and for generations to come.