Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) is one of the most powerful tools at our disposal to address the triple crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and socio-economic inequality. Healthy forests play a critical role in sequestering carbon, protecting biodiversity, and supporting the livelihoods of millions of people around the world. Yet despite the many benefits of FLR, not all restoration efforts deliver on their potential — and the experience we gain and the lessons learned from both successes and failures are key to ensuring future projects achieve lasting impact.
The Urgency of High-Quality Forest Restoration
FLR has gained significant traction as part of global efforts to reach climate and biodiversity targets. However, the quality of restoration matters as much, if not more, than the quantity. Restoring forests is not simply a matter of planting trees — it is a long-term process of rebuilding ecosystems, strengthening community resilience, and creating sustainable livelihoods.
Poorly designed restoration projects can inadvertently cause more harm than good. For example, planting fast-growing, exotic species in semi-arid areas can deplete water resources and increase fire risks. Meanwhile, planting a ‘monoculture’, without taking into account the diversity of tree species that make up natural ecosystems, can result in a change to or reduction in vital habitat for wildlife. These unintended outcomes underscore the importance of careful planning and community engagement.
Many restoration efforts also take place in dynamic landscapes where land use is in flux. If the underlying drivers of degradation — such as poverty, insecure land tenure, or unsustainable agricultural practices — are not addressed, there is a high risk that restored areas will be lost again in the future.
We are already mid-way through the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration and the urgency to meet global climate and biodiversity goals is increasing. Fostering a culture of continuous improvement in our work is vital. Now supporting forest restoration across 13 countries through our ReForest Fund, we have gained insights that will help guide us to stronger, more resilient results in future:
- Budgeting for success
- Community based decision making
- Transparency, monitoring and the role of technology
- Climate risks and the challenge of permanence
- Scaling up: moving from philanthropy to market based finance
Budgeting for Success: The True Cost of Restoration
One of the biggest challenges facing FLR is the persistent underestimation of the true cost of successful restoration. Too often, projects focus on the upfront costs of planting trees without adequately budgeting for the use of rights-based approaches in designing and delivering restoration, as well as the long-term care and maintenance that is essential for forests to recover and thrive. Further, restoration projects that fail to invest in addressing the root causes of forest degradation will result in unsustainable short-term gains, undermining the long-term ecological and social impacts.
While offers such as the dollar-per-tree approach might sound appealing, they often fail to account for the broader investment needed to secure long-term restoration outcomes. This includes factors such as site preparation, community engagement, monitoring, and contingency planning. Without proper budgeting, projects risk setting communities and ecosystems up for failure. We’ve highlighted this issue and provided some essential considerations when budgeting for forest restoration projects, in our white paper on the true cost of restoration.
Community Participation and Land Use Change
Restoration projects often require adapting and shifting land use — whether transitioning from single crop agriculture to mixed crops and agroforestry or restoring degraded pastureland to forest. These changes can have profound implications for local livelihoods and well-being, making community participation and rights-based approaches essential. It is clear that restoration efforts that fail to engage local stakeholders and employ appropriate environmental and social safeguards are unlikely to succeed.
A pragmatic approach is needed — one that respects the rights and knowledge of local people, where necessary taking the approach of Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) while ensuring that agreements are clear, transparent, and documented. The example of Trillion Trees partner, WCS’s work in the Cañamomo Lomaprieta Indigenous Reservation in Colombia demonstrates how restoration efforts can align with local cultural values and traditional knowledge and practices, building broad-based community support.
Transparency and Monitoring: The Role of Technology
Transparency is vital for ensuring the credibility and impact of FLR efforts, and to improve success rates and move away from methodologies that may be less effective. However, monitoring restoration outcomes is often complex, time-consuming, and expensive. Monitoring needs to be flexible so that approaches can be tailored at the field level yet sufficiently standardised to ensure common metrics across a portfolio of projects. Minimum consistent standards, that strengthen the ownership and agency of local rights holders are more suitable, sustainable and inclusive than state of the art high tech solutions.
Trillion Trees has improved its data management and monitoring systems through the adoption of FORMAPP — our web-based platform that integrates geographic, ecological, and socio-economic data from our projects. By using simple, open-source tools like KoboCollect, our projects can systematically track progress and gather critical information on land use history, land ownership, and the restoration interventions being employed. Tech, used appropriately, has an important role to play in improving the accuracy and consistency of restoration monitoring.
Climate Change and the Challenge of Permanence
Climate change presents an ever-growing threat to the long-term success of forest restoration. Extreme weather conditions such as droughts, floods, and shifting unpredictable rainfall patterns can all undermine restoration efforts. Strategies including choosing the right species to be fit for the future alongside preparations to remediate if initial survival is below expectations, are important considerations. Planning for long term maintenance and potential risk, including for example, fire management and pests are key. Addressing water shortages in drought-prone areas can include installing wells or systems that harvest rainwater near tree nurseries and restoration sites. The ability to respond and adapt to changing climatic conditions will be critical to the future success of FLR efforts.
Scaling Up: From Philanthropy to Market-Based Finance
To meet global climate and biodiversity goals, it is estimated that we need to restore around 600 million hectares of degraded and deforested land by 2050. To meet that ambition, forest landscape restoration needs to scale at an unprecedented pace. This will require a massive increase in funding — far beyond what philanthropy alone can provide. Market-based mechanisms and sustainable finance models, such as results-based payments for ecosystem services, carbon sequestration and water-capture, to name but a few, will be essential to closing the financing gap.
However, many restoration projects struggle to transition from small-scale, timebound grant-funded initiatives to scalable investment-ready models. Bridging finance and blended finance approaches, such as the Trillion Trees Forest Restoration Catalyst - which co-designs forest landscape restoration initiatives with local stakeholders and promotes a fair shift towards regenerative and sustainable economies - can help projects navigate the funding gap between initial feasibility and full-scale implementation.
Watch our short video that explains how mechanisms such as the Forest Restoration Catalyst can help.
Fostering a Culture of Continuous Improvement
Restoring the world’s forests is one of the greatest challenges of our time. Yet if we are to succeed, we must have the courage to learn from failure as well as success. Every investment in FLR — whether large or small — must be maximised, and the lessons from each project applied to those that follow.
Are we fostering a culture of continuous improvement? Are we building on traditional knowledge and learning from what doesn’t work and sharing those lessons openly? Do we have the courage to talk about failure? Can funding models accept there may be some setbacks before success?
By embedding transparency, community participation, and adaptive management at the heart of FLR, we can build a future where restored forests not only sequester carbon and protect biodiversity — but also support thriving, resilient communities.
Forest Landscape Restoration holds the key to addressing many of the interconnected crises facing our planet. But achieving lasting impact will require more than just scaling up restoration efforts — it will require doing restoration better.
A culture of continuous learning and knowledge sharing will be critical to ensuring that every dollar invested delivers the greatest possible benefit for people, nature, and the climate. By acknowledging the challenges, learning from failure, and applying solutions at scale, we can unlock the full potential of FLR and secure a better future for both people and planet.
