ForRest-ERS (Forest Restoration – Ecosystems, Resilience, sustainability)

ForRest-ERS (Forest Restoration – Ecosystems, Resilience, sustainability) leverages transdisciplinary forest restoration research in the Ngäbe-Buglé Comarca, Panama to harness the potential for Indigenous and other rural peoples to leverage biodiversity to combat climate change while keeping them on their land and improving their livelihoods

Challenge

Forest restoration is a widely promoted strategy for climate change mitigation, biodiversity restoration, and livelihood improvement. In practice, the landscape is littered with failures and “success” in the tropics often relies on planting a few exotic species. The lack of just and sustainable forest restoration examples has hampered the ability of Indigenous peoples and partner organizations to achieve the multiple objectives of restoration. We harness knowledge gained working with individual native tree species that are rarely used in restoration to test our ability to overcome biophysical limitations to restore forests and ecosystem functions in an Indigenous area in Panama. While effects of incentive-based mechanisms on conservation behaviors and local livelihoods are well studied, similar studies in the context of restoration are limited. Our work will produce strategies to overcome the barriers imposed by complex governance structures, social costs, and biophysical limitations that dominate these tropical landscapes and impede restoration.

Insight

Our transdisciplinary research will serve as a transformative model for just and sustainable forest restoration enhancing biodiversity, livelihoods, and climate resilience on Indigenous lands. We seek to demonstrate how environmental payments based on carbon can serve as an umbrella for key ecosystem services that improve livelihoods and resilience, and how this can be done by building equitable and empowering partnerships with traditional authorities and residents of Indigenous territories. Our systems approach is producing new science on linkages between under-utilized species, ecosystem services, livelihoods, incentive-based land management behaviors, and governance complexity, which will be translated into best practices and decision support tools for use by policymakers, investors, practitioners, and landholders in Panama and beyond. Our capacity building and learning exchange strategies ensure that the next generation of scientists and practitioners are trained in biophysical and social science research methods, the integration of Indigenous knowledge, and conducting respectful and meaningful research with Indigenous peoples. In examining governance complexity, and through our communications strategy that leverages existing networks, our actionable, scalable, evidence-based framework will maximize impact on policy and practice and enhance Indigenous representation in land-use decision making. Our economic model can serve as an alternative to extractive industries on Indigenous lands.

Collaboration