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.

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.

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.

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