Degradation exacerbates food and water insecurity, economic hardship, biodiversity loss, and the devastating effects of climate change. Given that ecosystem restoration is a global challenge, the United Nations declared 2021 to 2030 as the Decade of Ecosystem Restoration.Many ecological restoration projects overlook social perspectives, resulting in unsuccessful restoration outcomes within Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR). Against this background, we review social-ecological restoration frameworks and summarize seven key balanced drivers that could help enhance the adoption of ecosystem restoration in a dynamic social context. The drivers relate to including the most affected communities, privileging local knowledge and practices, empowering local representatives and opinion leaders, ensuring social and environmental justice and equity, targeting deep leverage points, aligning restoration practices with local needs and aspirations, and connecting neighboring communities.We argue that ecosystem restoration will be most effective if approached from a social-ecological perspective. In developing countries, establishing social groups that share savings and credit structures within neighboring households can be a sustainable approach. With increasing global initiatives, taking a social-ecological perspective on ecosystem restoration as a social-ecological restoration approach offers new opportunities for both research and practice. Social-ecological restoration is a key strategy that can support the achievement of sustainable development goals (SDGs) and deliver net positive gains environmentally, socially, and economically. Further studies should focus on two new cross-cutting aspects: the ecological and social effects of restoration at small to large scales and social ecological restoration and peace building within a restorative landscape.
Social-ecological ecosystem restoration involves interacting challenges, including climate change, resource overexploitation and political instability. To prepare for these and other emerging threats, we synthesized key restoration and social-ecological systems literature and derived three guiding themes that can help to enhance the adaptive capacity of restoration sites: (i) work with the existing system, (ii) create self-sustaining, adaptive systems, and (iii) foster diversity and participation. We propose a two-step approach and provide an example from Rwanda detailing the application of these principles. While site-specific activities have to be designed and implemented by local practitioners, our synthesis can guide forward-thinking restoration practice.
Many ecological restoration projects overlook social perspectives, resulting in unsuccessful restoration outcomes within Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR). The factors that influence an individual's or group's decision to adopt innovations, ranging from social-ecological approaches to specific restoration practices, are still poorly understood. This article examines those drivers determining the adoption of innovations in the context of FLR. Our work, based on a systematic literature review, points to the need for meaningful stakeholder inclusion in social-ecological restoration projects and emerging use of the concept of social-ecological restoration in the research projects. Thus, this article specifically focuses on adoption theory and social-ecological restoration frameworks. We derived a balanced framework that comprises seven drivers and strategies of social-ecological restoration built on the degree of restoration actors’ involvement, particularly local community participation across restoration scales. In developing countries, establishing social groups that share savings and credit structures within neighboring households can be a sustainable approach. Further studies should focus on comparing different studies at local scales within which restoration field trials span different aspects of social-ecological restoration and how it is linked to social cohesion.
Protected and conserved areas (PCAs) target at biodiversity conservation and human well-being, but often reflect low levels of effectiveness. Understanding PCAs social-ecological systems in which people and nature interact in socalled social-ecological interactions is key to understanding the roots of (in) effectiveness, and to leverage change toward resilient and sustainable systems.Despite this potential, social-ecological interactions in PCAs are commonly neglected in effectiveness evaluations. To address this gap, we elaborated a thorough understanding of the social-ecological interactions in PCAs through the following steps: In a first step, we extracted from scientific literature which social-ecological interactions influence the effectiveness of PCAs in general and derived influencing factors which shape those interactions. Based on these insights, we developed an analytical framework, which, in a second step, we applied to a case study in North Luangwa, Zambia. We elucidated three dimensions of social-ecological interactions occurring in the study area: care (e.g., conservation programs), conflict (e.g., disease transmission), and use (e.g., hunting). We visualized relationships between these interactions and associated key variables in a causal loop diagram. Finally, we drew on the case study in Zambia's Luangwa Valley to propose system-specific metrics for key variables central to the social-ecological structure of the study area to make effectiveness measurable. Our approach allows for linking site-specific socialecological interactions to PCA effectiveness. More generally, our findings call for the consideration of the relationships between people and nature when assessing conservation effectiveness.
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