Evolving evidence suggests that planting trees alone is not moving the global needle on poverty nor adequately addressing the pressures driving landscape degradation and conversion worldwide. Landscape Restoration goes beyond planting trees to encompass a series of large-scale restoration interventions aimed at providing environmental and socioeconomic benefits to fulfill current and future needs. It is a larger, longer, and comprehensively planned method of restoration and conservation.
What is Landscape Restoration?
Landscape Restoration is a holistic, standards-based approach to conservation and restoration that generates environmental, biodiversity, and socioeconomic benefits for the well-being of the planet and communities. Projects are designed to ensure the drivers of historical deforestation and degradation are addressed through comprehensive programming. Through this approach, Eden Reforestation Projects (Eden) supports long-term sustainability across landscapes, laying the groundwork for healthy relationships between people and the land on which we all depend.
Why is Landscape Restoration important?
There is an urgent, critical need to prevent degradation and restore the world's ecosystem now. Through movements such as the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, it has become apparent that planting trees is not enough to address the high level of global degradation. It is essential to transition from a series of reforestation projects to more comprehensive methods of landscape restoration. This holistic approach will have a more significant impact that generates relevant, long-lasting results for the landscape and local communities.
Landscape Restoration benefits the environment and communities and is effective because it includes:
- Comprehensively designed restoration efforts to generate relevant and long-lasting positive impacts
- Broader restoration targets for the entire landscape
- New initiatives focused on addressing drivers of historical deforestation and landscape degradation in the long-term
- Designated funding to address the landscape's most pressing challenges such as invasive species and fire management
- Revenue-generating activities by and for communities that create additional income streams so the local population can maintain improved livelihoods and increase resilience
- Strategic partnerships with like-minded organizations to amplify environmental, community, and biodiversity impact