Resolving land tenure security is essential to deliver forest restoration

Date

2023-05-23

Authors

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Springer Nature

Abstract

Tropical countries are making ambitious commitments to Forest Landscape Restoration with the aim of locking up carbon, conserving biodiversity and benefiting local livelihoods. However, global and national analyses of restoration potential frequently ignore socio-legal complexities which impact both the effectiveness and equitability of restoration. We show that areas with the highest restoration potential are disproportionately found in countries with weak rule of law and frequently in those with substantial areas of unrecognized land tenure. Focusing on Madagascar, at least 67% of the areas with highest restoration potential must be on untitled land, where tenure is often unclear or contested, and we show how unresolved tenure issues are one of the most important limitations on forest restoration. This is likely to be a bigger problem than currently recognized and without important efforts to resolve local tenure issues, opportunities to equitably scale up forest restoration globally are likely to be significantly over-estimated.

Description

Keywords

FOREST RESTORATION, BIODIVERSITY, LIVELIHOODS, LAND TENURE, MADAGASCAR, SOUTH OF SAHARA

Citation

URI

http://hdl.handle.net/10625/62024
 https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-023-00847-w

DOI

Collections

IDRC Research Results / Résultats de recherches du CRDI
2020-2029 / Années 2020-2029
Research Results (CLARE) / Résultats de recherches (CLARE)
Research Results (CRFS) / Résultats de recherches (SARC)