Publications

Wetlands International... October 2023

This report summarizes the main wetland restoration experiences and projects implemented by Wetlands International since 2000, totaling 30 projects across its network of offices. It also aims to preliminarily map restoration approaches used and define enabling environments conducive to successful wetlands restoration.

Daniel Wiegant, Jara Bakx, Nina Flohr, Pieter van ... June 2022

Water funds are task-specific organisations that conserve and restore watersheds. While implementing conservation and restoration efforts at the local level, these groups encounter scale challenges, consisting of mismatches between the ecological and the governance scale and misalignment between governance levels. This study's aim is to identify and unravel both the scale challenges with which two Ecuadorian water funds (FONAG and FORAGUA) were confronted and the scale-sensitive governance strategies that they planned and deployed to overcome them.

René Zamora-Cristales, Maggie Gonzalez, Victoria R... February 2022

This issue brief evaluates the public incentives of six Latin American countries and calculates how much they pay farmers and other landholders that restore land.

Pablo J. Donoso et al.... January 2022

 South America has the largest area of temperate forests in the Southern Hemisphere, which grow in diverse site conditions. The aim of this paper is to review the practices of silviculture applied and recommended for these temperate forests, and to discuss prospects to develop new silvicultural proposals to improve sustainability, adaptation and in-situ conservation of forest ecosystems.

Brazilian Coalition on Climate, Forests and Agricu... January 2022

With enormous agricultural capacity and as one of the most biodiverse countries in the world, Brazil has the potential to become a leader in generating wealth with native species. The country has a great opportunity to increase and upscale silvicultural activities using native species to produce timber, vegetable oils, fruits, and a variety of other forest products. However, Brazilian forest products are still far from reaching their full potential in national and global supply chains. One of the barriers to scaling up this forest economy is a lack of knowledge on existing models, their economic returns, and the organizations who can accelerate implementation. This publication aims to fill that gap. Leveraging the vital work developed by the Brazilian Coalition on Climate, Forests and Agriculture, this study also aims to facilitate arrangements between the private sector, governments, civil society and academia to jointly promote this new model of economic development based on a low-carbon economy.

Daniel Firebanks-Quevedo, Jordi Planas, Kathleen B... November 2021

Understanding existing public policies for restoration is very labor-intensive. To address this, we developed a semiautomated policy analysis tool that uses state-of-the-art Natural Language Processing (NLP) methods to mine policy documents, assist the labeling process carried out by policy experts, automatically identify policies that contain incentives and classify them by incentive instrument.

Suzanne Ozment, Maggie Gonzalez, Anelise Schumache... October 2021

This paper discusses how the Latin American and Caribbean region is on the verge of a transition from experimenting with nature-based solutions (NBS) to adopting it on a much wider scale that can transform infrastructure planning and investments for the better. NBS can contribute to equitable and sustainable development across this region, and can provide benefits to multiple sectors and societal challenges.

Lizzie Marsters, Ana Gabriela Morales, Suzanne Ozm... October 2021

This paper aims to connect unmet nature-based solutions (NBS) investment needs in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) with new financial resources. It highlights five strategies that leverage private capital to finance NBS, including green bonds, land-based financing strategies, blended market-rate and concessional loans, insurance policies, and endowments.

Emmie Oliver, Suzanne Ozment, Alfred Grünwaldt, Ma... October 2021

Countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) face a substantial investment gap in their work to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) to the Paris Agreement. This paper discusses how nature-based solutions present the IDB with an opportunity to maximize the impact of finance leveraged towards these goals in a way that prioritizes social inclusion and environmental sustainability.

Cristian Echeverría, Paula Gatica, Sergio Román, A... August 2021

A través de 132 páginas y fotografías a todo color, los autores buscan acercar la disciplina a la sociedad. Se presentan los principios y estándares internacionales de restauración ecológica, y los atributos e indicadores que se deben recuperar en un ecosistema destruido e invadido por especies exóticas. Asimismo, el libro documenta la experiencia y los aprendizajes obtenidos en una década de investigación aplicada para la restauración ecológica de bosques nativos en zonas invadidas por especies exóticas en un área protegida del Estado, como lo es el Parque Nacional Nonguén, en la Región del Biobío, al sur de Chile. La publicación incluye también un apartado sobre la biodiversidad presente en este Parque Nacional -que contiene uno de los últimos remanentes de bosque nativo y el de mayor tamaño de toda la Provincia de Concepción-, incorporando bellas ilustraciones de especies nativas de flora y fauna, como el michay araucano, pitao, naranjillo, cangrejo tigre, güiña, pudú y otros, cuya conservación está hoy amenazada.

Giulia Clerici y Daniela Álvarez Keller... August 2021

El proyecto ACCIÓN Clima, financiado por el Ministerio Federal de Ambiente, Protección de la Naturaleza y Seguridad Nuclear de Alemania (BMU por sus siglas en alemán) y ejecutado por la Cooperación alemana para el desarrollo (GIZ), presenta esta publicación como una forma de contribuir al aprendizaje horizontal entre los proyectos financiados por la Iniciativa Climática Internacional (IKI) del BMU en Centroamérica y el Caribe, en el tema de las finanzas climáticas. A través de la recopilación de experiencias, prácticas y lecciones aprendidas por los equipos implementadores al diseñar y aplicar mecanismos de movilización de fondos adicionales, se busca demostrar cómo los fondos climáticos internacionales (como los de la IKI) pueden destinarse a apalancar nuevos recursos y, por ende, aumentar las inversiones para acciones de mitigación y adaptación al cambio climático.

Giulia Clerici and Daniela Álvarez Keller... August 2021

The ACCIÓN Clima project, funded by the Germany Federal Ministry of Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU for its German acronym) and implemented jointly by the German Development Cooperation (GIZ) and Costa Rica’s Climate Change Directorate (DCC), presents this publication to contribute to horizontal learning among projects funded by the BMU’s International Climate Initiative (IKI) in Central America and the Caribbean on the subject of climate finances. This collection of experiences, practices, and lessons learned by the implementing teams in devising additional fund mobilisation mechanisms seeks to demonstrate how international climate funds (such as IKI’s) can leverage new resources and, therefore, increase investment for climate change mitigation and adaptation actions.

Larson et al.... August 2021

Who decides what kind of transformation is needed, of what, and for whom? What principles guide those decisions, and how are decision-makers held accountable? This commentary article argues that these governance questions are central in any solution in order to simultaneously address the planetary crises of forest and biodiversity loss and degradation and growing inequality.

Tracey Osborne, Samara Brock, Robin Chazdon, Susan... August 2021

This publication outlines a set of ten principles for achieving long-lasting, resilient, and equitable ecosystem restoration. These principles are guided by political ecology, a framework that addresses environmental concerns from a broadly political economic perspective, attending to power, politics, and equity within specific geographic and historical contexts. Drawing on the chain of explanation, this multi-scale, cross-landscapes Playbook aims to produce healthy relationships between people and nature that are ecologically, socially, and economically just – and thus sustainable and resilient – while recognizing the political nature of such relationships.

Sergio Miguel López-Ramírez, Alex Mayer, Leonardo ... August 2021

A number of conservation policies have been implemented to protect tropical montane cloud forests (TMCF), but many impact assessment models are targeted towards temperate zones. This study uses local evapotranspiration and streamflow datasets to calibrate and validate an improved version of the Soil and Water Assessment Tool model for the Tropics (SWAT-T).

Atkinson et al.... August 2021

The ideal structure of a seed system integrates five components: seed selection and innovation, seed harvesting and production, market access, supply and demand, quality control, and an enabling environment. The authors propose 15 indicators to evaluate these key components and trial them by assessing national seed systems in 7 Latin American countries.

René Castro Salazar, Rene Castro Cordero, Sarah Co... July 2021

In the last quarter of 2020, the Costa Rican Ministry for the Environment and Energy (MINAE) announced the signing of two major agreements, the last of the country's first-generation Payment for Environmental Services (PES) programs. This paper syntheses government pledges, interviews, and the authors’ experience working with the first generation of PES, and presents initial recommendations to increase the effectiveness and impact of PES 2.0.

Lydia Slobodian, Adriana Vidal and Carole Saint-La... June 2021

A successful process to advance forest landscape restoration (FLR) needs to motivate, enable and resource its implementation. This brief offers a preliminary exploratory analysis of some of the range of policies that respond to each of these three requirements. 

Alejandro Imbach and Adriana Vidal... June 2021

This study identifies key factors related to the success and impact of ICMs for FLR and presents elements that should be considered when developing new or assessing current ICMs.

Rene Zamora Cristales... May 2021

Many governments have developed robust plans and strategies to prioritize areas for restoration under multiple environmental, social and economic objectives. But once these processes are finished, restoration often stalls. Why?

Daniel Pinillos, René Poccard-Chapuis, Felix J.J.A... May 2021

This study analyzed the views of medium and large landholders on Legal Reserves and their relation to agricultural intensification in the municipality of Paragominas, eastern Amazon. Since Brazillian Legal Reserves have major implications for forest conservation and agricultural production, it is key that we understand landholders’ perceptions towards them.

la Secretaría de Iniciativa 20x20... May 2021

Información sobre los socios, compromisos y experiencia técnica que la Iniciativa 20x20 hace posible.

Initiative 20x20 Staff... May 2021

This infographic shows the partners, the commitments, and the technical know-how that make Initiative 20x20 possible.

Daniella Schweizer, Marijke van Kuijk, Jaboury Gha... March 2021

Gathering the perceptions of actors within non-governmental organizations engaged in Forest and Landscape Restoration across countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America about what FLR is and their perceived challenges and strategies for implementation.

Jan R. Bannister, Manuel Acevedo, Germán Travieso,... January 2021

The first study documenting the performance of Nothofagus nitida planted seedlings

Manuel Acevedo, Carolina Álvarez-Maldini, R. Kaste... January 2021

Facing rapid loss of biodiversity as a consequence of climate change, Chile has formally pledged to restore 600,000 ha of native forest by 2035. This effort, however, has not considered the amount and quality of native plants required to meet this pledge. Thus, we examined data collected during the annual, government-conducted census of small- and medium-sized nurseries from central Chile, which account for 78% of the nation’s total plant production, to assess if current production is sufficient to meet Chile´s restoration needs. We coupled this with data collected during our series of ongoing research projects to determine if nurseries are currently meeting minimum seedling quality standards based on morpho-physiological attributes. Our four-year analysis (2016–2019) shows that the number of native seedlings has increased by only 4%, but because only 19% of nursery managers have training, just 29% of all seedlings meet quality criteria for restoration. Thus, under the current rate and quality of plant production, meeting restoration pledges desired by the year 2035 would not be achieved until 2181. This timeline can be accelerated through an urgent expansion of nursery space, implementation of a continuous program for technology and knowledge transference, and strong support through governmental policies. 

Klaus N. Kremer, Jan R. Bannister, and Jürgen Bauh... January 2021

A landscape-replicated experiment to test the influence of different harvesting treatments (clearcut, strip-cutting and unharvested control) on the early establishment of native tree species in 20-year-old Pinus radiata plantations.

René Zamora-Cristales, Marie Andrée Liere, Ebal Ab... November 2020

El presente artículo tiene como objetivo proponer un marco de referencia para la optimización económica en la priorización y asignación de los incentivos forestales de la Ley de fomento al establecimiento, recuperación, restauración, manejo, producción y protección de bosques de Guatemala—PROBOSQUE—para la restauración de bosques riparios.

Agencia para a Gestao Integrada de fogos rurais... November 2020

2030 National Plan for integrated wildland fire management

FAO... October 2020

Restoring the Earth - The next decade

Patricia Quijano Vallejos, Peter Veit, Pedro Tipul... October 2020

Undermining Rights: Indigenous Lands and Mining in the Amazon

Kathleen Buckingham, Sabin Ray, Carolina Gallo Gra... October 2020

El Camino de La Restauracion Guía de identificación de prioridades e indicadores para monitorear la restauración de bosques y paisajes

Ministerio de Ambiente, Panamá... October 2020

El Programa Nacional de Reforestación con énfasis en cuencas productoras de agua

Z. Carter Berry et al.... September 2020

Evaluating ecosystem service trade-offs along a land-use intensification gradient in central Veracruz, Mexico

Douglas Sheil & Aida Bargués Tobella... September 2020

The restoration of tree cover influences water availability. Many people — some experts, too — believe incorrectly that greater tree cover has an invariably negative impact on local water availability. Where do these beliefs come from?

Thlago Chagas, Hilda Galt, Charlotte Streck, Donna... August 2020

A close look at the quality of REDD+ carbon credits

Andriana S. Miljanic, Xingwen Loy, David L. Gruene... August 2020

Bee communities in forestry production landscapes: interactive effects of local-level management and landscape context

Evert Thomas, Rachel Atkinson, Maria Franco... August 2020

The supply of appropriate planting material is the backbone of Initiative 20x20 and needs to be planned in advance for quality restoration.

Andrés Ettera, Angela Andrade, Cara R. Nelson, Jul... July 2020

The authors identify over 6M ha of priority areas for restoration in Colombia, targeting the restoration of 31 (75 %) of the country’s endangered ecosystems.

Leonardo Saenz... July 2020

This report presents results from a rapid eco-hydrological assessment to evaluate the impacts of deforestation on the Paraguay section of the Itaipu Dam. Itaipu Binational is one of the most economic and financially efficient hydropower projects in the world (WCD, 2000). However, our assessment qualitatively indicates that recently high deforestation rates in proximity to its multiannual reservoir may have increased substantially the potential amount of soils to be transported to the reservoir.

Eduardo Delgado Assad, Luiz Claudio Costa, Susian ... June 2020

This working paper presents a set of sustainable practices for the Brazilian agriculture in the short and long-terms, that contribute to the provision and maintenance of ecosystem services, conservation and restoration of biomes, and more resilient low-carbon productive systems that are more adapted to current and future impacts from climate change.

Daniel Wiegant, Wageningen University, Netherlands... May 2020

How the forest and landscape restoration (FLR) targets that are set as part of Initiative 20x20 are advanced locally remains largely undocumented. To achieve landscape restoration targets, actors at multiple levels of the governance scale aim to influence relevant restoration processes on the ecological scale. In doing so, governance actors have often been critiqued to focus more on the specific number of restored hectares of degraded and deforested lands, without sufficiently considering the effectiveness of restoration efforts themselves, which has a lot to do with how they are governed.

Thais Vilela, Alfonso Malky, Aaron Bruner, Vera L... March 2020

The rapidly expanding network of roads into the Amazon is permanently altering the world’s largest tropical forest. Most proposed road projects lack rigorous impact assessments or even basic economic justification. This study analyzes the expected environmental, social and economic impacts of 75 road projects, totaling 12 thousand kilometers of planned roads, in the region.

Stephanie Mansourian, Ignacio Daniel González Mora... March 2020

In Oaxaca, Mexico, a long-running project is restoring forests, soils, water – and hope for the future.

René Zamora Cristales, Doribel Herrador, Nelson Cu... March 2020

The Sustainability Index for Landscape Restoration is a field-tested tool for measuring the impact of restoration efforts and can be used in countries willing to develop monitoring systems at the landscape level.

Alejandro A. Imbach and Adriana Vidal | IUCN... February 2020

This report presents a package of tools, principles and guiding questions that can be used to develop new or assess existing inter-sectoral coordination mechanisms (ICMs) for forest landscape restoration (FLR). This study also presents a package of tools, principles and guiding questions that can be used to develop new or assess existing ICMs for FLR.

Daniel Pinillos, Felix J. J. A. Bianchi, Rene Poc... February 2020

Sustainable food production requires approaches that reconcile agricultural production with the conservation and sustainable use of natural resources, biodiversity and associated ecosystem services. This paper's results, reviewed by Initiative 20x20, suggest that the simultaneous delivery of multiple ecosystem services may require land-use pathways that combine land sparing and sharing approaches, including restoring currently degraded land. The analysis can inform integrated land-use planning initiatives where, historically, the supply and demand for agricultural commodity production have been the single dominant driver for the current landscape configuration.

Sara Löfqvist and Jaboury Ghazoul | Nature... November 2019

Private-sector capital is needed to scale-up forest and landscape restoration initiatives globally. To ensure the delivery of social and environmental restoration objectives, investors need to be matched appropriately to different types of restoration projects, while policies need to realign investment incentives away from degradation-driving activities.

Leah Gichuki, Rens Brouwer, Jonathan Davies, Adria... November 2019

This report shows through policy analysis in 13 selected countries that linkages and complementarity between the nature and objectives of Bonn Challenge pledges and the LDN targets are robust, therefore the opportunity to optimize synergies and impact needs to be realized. Pathway to this include strengthening (inter)sectoral coordination, consolidating reporting schemes for FLR and LDN, and aligning investments and actions within the national restoration agendas and LDN agendas.

Kathleen Buckingham, Sabin Ray, Carolina Gallo Gra... October 2019

The Road to Restoration A Guide to Identifying Priorities and Indicators for Monitoring Forest and Landscape Restoration

Duncan Gromko, Till Pistorius, Matthias Seebauer, ... October 2019

Building off of IUCN and WRI's Restoration Opportunities Assessment Methodology (ROAM), Unique Forestry and Land use has developed an easily applicable, customizable economic framework to evaluate the costs, benefits, and impact of forest landscape restoration (FLR).

Samir Gonçalves Rolim, Fátima C. M. Piña-Rodrigues... October 2019

The development of native species silviculture is imperative to promote the forestry sector in Brazil and help the country to achieve its NDC (Nationally Determined Contribution) to the Paris Agreement. A pre-competitive Research & Development (R&D) Platform needs to be built in order to boost the sector. This working paper describes four investment scenarios to establish an R&D Platform based on native species from the Amazon and Atlantic Forest biomes of Brazil. Some of the main findings include: (1) based on the four investment scenarios, investments from USD 3.79 (BRL 14.6) to USD 7.30 (BRL 28.1) million may be required, which represents less than 0.05% of Brazilian investment in R&D, and (2) an area as small as 10,000 hectares would already justify an investment in the R&D Platform. One of the proposed investment scenarios showed a return of USD 2.39 in benefits for each USD 1 invested in R&D.

Rachel Bass, Peter Murphy, Hannah Dithrich... April 2019

Scaling Impact Investment in Forestry assesses asset owners’ motivations and needs when investing in sustainable and impact forestry, a sector which offers both the commercial viability and the scale necessary to stem the effects of climate change. The report also describes the key features, revenue sources, and drivers of risk for asset managers active in the sector. Findings are based on 24 interviews with asset owners, asset managers, and intermediaries as well as a database of 39 sustainable and impact forestry funds. The report features five in-depth profiles that illustrate investors’ different strategies for generating revenues, such as sales of timber, carbon offsets, and other forest products and leasing and sales of land. Additionally, the report elevates five concrete opportunities to scale and strengthen the sustainable and impact forestry market going forward.

CSF and WWF... March 2019

CSF-Brazil, in partnership with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF-Brazil), conducted a feasibility study of economically promising forest restoration business models for private investment in southern Amazonas (AM) state, Brazil.

I. Wanyama, D. E. Pelster, K. Butterbach-Bahl, L. ... February 2019

Soil carbon dioxide and methane fluxes from forests and other land use types in an African tropical montane region

José M. Rey Benayas, Adison Altamirano, Alejandro ... January 2019

Guidance for large-scale restoration of natural or semi-natural linear vegetation elements that takes into account the need to maintain human livelihoods such as farming is often lacking.

Walter Vergara, Luciana Gallardo Lomeli, Ana R. Ri... November 2018

Degraded lands—lands that have lost some degree of their natural productivity through human activity—account for over 20 percent of forest and agricultural lands in Latin America and the Caribbean

Shoana Humphries, Álvaro Cabrera Paredes, María Fr... November 2018

Un estudio de iniciativas de restauración de bosques andinos a nivel comunitario en lacomunidad de Kiuñalla, en la región Apurímacen Perú, y a nivel de fincas en el departamentode Antioquia en Colombia.    

Angélica Vásquez Grandón, Pablo J. Donoso, and Vic... October 2018

The present work proposes stand-level guidelines for identiﬁcation of a degraded forest according to a list of structural, compositional and regeneration criteria and characteristics. Emphasis is put on the need for local deﬁnitions of forest degradation, and identiﬁcation of thresholds that determine the points where the processes of degradation ﬁnalize into degraded forests.

Kathleen Buckingham, Sabin Ray, Ana Gabriela Moral... August 2018

The guidebook takes a new approach to environmental governance by focusing on identifying the social capital of actors within the landscapes. It centers on two main approaches: 1) mapping actors’ resource flows and 2) mapping actors’ priorities and values. Co-written by WRI international offices, this methodology has been tested in Brazil, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, and Rwanda. The guidebook focuses primarily on restoration, but the same methodologies can be adapted to broader analysis of natural resource governance. By using this guidebook, environmental practitioners can be more efficient with resources, collaboration, and outreach, and better anticipate potential conflicts and bottlenecks.

Jan R. Bannister, Rodrigo Vargas‐Gaete, Juan F. Ov... August 2018

Restoring over 500,000 ha in Chile using mainly native species seems like a daunting task by 2035. The practice of forest restoration needs to become massive and successful at a landscape scale. For this purpose, the authors discuss the three major bottlenecks that currently constrain the restoration efforts of forest ecosystems in Chile.

Thais Vilela, José Carlos Rubio Ayllón, Anita Juli... February 2018

El Sistema Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas por el Estado (SINANPE) del Perú no solo protegen el patrimonio natural del país, sino también contribuyen al desarrollo económico local. Este documento de Conservation Strategy Fund y Andes Amazon Fund resume los resultados de un estudio acerca de una de estas contribuciones - el turismo sostenible. Se encontró que el efecto económico local directo producto del turismo dentro del sistema nacional de ANP fue de S/ 2,340 millones (US$ 723 millones) en el 2017. Esta cifra es 40 veces más de lo que gasta el Estado actualmente en mantener el sistema. Además, el turismo en ANP generó más de 36,000 empleos en las localidades y ciudades circundantes.

Sofia Faruqi, Andrew Wu, Andrés Anchondo Ortega, A... January 2018

In recent years, hundreds of companies have entered the restoration industry. They represent a wide range of business models that deliver financial returns for investors while restoring forests and agricultural lands.

Helen Ding, Sofia Faruqi, Andrew Wu, Juan-Carlos A... December 2017

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the benefits and costs of restoring forests and landscapes in countries around the world

Bernal F. Herrera, Olivier Chassot, Guiselle Monge... May 2016

Much biodiversity conservation undertaken in recent decades has not been able to reverse trends in biodiversity loss (WWF 2015).

Craig Hanson, Kathleen Buckingham, Sean DeWitt an... December 2015

The Restoration Diagnostic, A Method for Developing Forest Landscape Restoration Strategies by Rapidly Assessing the status of Key Success Factors, is a structured method for determining the status of enabling conditions within a landscape being considered for restoration and for designing the requisite policies, practices, and measures needed for successful restoration. The Diagnostic was developed as part of the Restoration Opportunities Assessment Methodology (ROAM) by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

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