A diagnostic for collaborative monitoring in forest landscape restoration

Abstract

Monitoring is crucial to meet the goals of the major global forest landscape restoration (FLR) initiatives that are underway. If members of the global FLR community are going to learn from one another, a multi‐scalar, multi‐site monitoring approach is needed to generate information that can provide the basis for social learning and adaptive management, both of which are essential processes for FLR. This requires reframing and expanding the perspective of monitoring so that compliance monitoring is just one component of a multidimensional approach where collaborative monitoring and compliance‐oriented monitoring are complementary. However, FLR planners and implementers often lack experience in applying collaborative approaches in multi‐stakeholder settings, and there are few tools that show how to implement FLR or to engage in collaborative monitoring in FLR. Through a literature review, we identified the factors that contribute to successful collaborative monitoring in FLR and synthesized them into a diagnostic that was vetted by 20 global experts. The result is a checklist of 42 core success factors to be assessed at local, subnational, and national levels at different stages in the planning and implementation of FLR. The tool has practical application by providing guidance on best practices: specifically, how to start collaborative monitoring, and more generally, how to plan, prepare for, and evaluate FLR activities. This diagnostic complements other diagnostics, such as those used to identify FLR sites, as it can identify preexisting strengths and weaknesses in new initiatives, or pinpoint problems with ongoing implementation. The diagnostic explicitly addresses issues of scale, including multiple sites, governance levels, and changes over time.

Consideraciones sobre la gobernanza y la restauración del paisaje forestal: Retos y oportunidades para la presente década

“…Las conexiones institucionales y de políticas a múltiples niveles son fundamentales para hacer funcionar las interacciones entre actores que participan en la gobernanza del paisaje (Buckingham et al, 2020). Sin embargo, las iniciativas de RPF con frecuencia se ven en peligro por la falta de enfoque para identificar y crear condiciones habilitantes desde el nivel local hasta el nacional y a lo largo de escalas temporales (Guariguata y Evans, 2019;Hanson et al, 2015). Sayer et al (2020) y van Oosten et al (2020) subrayan la urgencia de mejorar las capacidades humanas que permitan diseñar, implementar y monitorear los resultados de la RPF.…”

“…Las técnicas para visualizar paisajes y escenarios a futuro son herramientas poderosas para fomentar la participación de partes interesadas, la resolución de conflictos y la planeación a largo plazo (Onitsuka et al, Boedhihartono, 2018). También se cuenta con herramientas de diagnóstico a nivel de diseño de iniciativas de RPF como un diagnóstico de restauración (Hanson et al, 2015), un diagnóstico para el monitoreo colaborativo (Guariguata y Evans, 2019), un mapeo del paisaje social (Buckingham et al, 2018), la identificación de redes de actores (Buckingham et al, 2018) y una guía para la identificación de prioridades e indicadores para monitorear la restauración (Buckingham et al, 2019). Sin embargo, y aunque ahora se cuenta con herramientas para evaluar oportunidades de restauración y planear enfoques de RPF (UICN y WRI, 2014) y priorización espacial (Strassburg et al, 2019), pocas herramientas en la actualidad se concentran en la planeación y evaluación de aspectos como gobernanza, construcción de capacidades y desarrollo de acciones de manejo acordes con los seis principios de la RPF (Chazdon y Guariguata, 2018).…”

“…Los marcos globales que existen para el monitoreo de la RPF podrían beneficiarse del uso de enfoques de múltiples escalas que extraigan lecciones emergentes: de lo local a lo nacional y viceversa. La investigación sobre el monitoreo multipartito y multisitio ya sea a nivel nacional o subnacional puede ayudar a identificar cuellos de botella en los flujos de información (Guariguata y Evans, 2019).…”

Challenges during the execution, results, and monitoring phases of ecological restoration: Learning from a country-wide assessment

“…Monitoring enables assessing restoration outcomes compared to initial ecosystem conditions or to a reference ecosystem [ 14 ]. Evaluate restoration progress allows knowing whether objectives have been achieved [ 31 ]. In addition, collaborative and cross-scalar monitoring generates valuable information for social learning and adaptive management [ 32 ], which is an iterative process allowing projects to adapt to unexpected threats and to learn from the process [ 30 , 33 ] There is still, however, a strong debate about what variables should be monitored [ 34 – 37 ] given that some projects can take decades before showing results [ 38 , 39 ].…”

“…In addition, collaborative and cross-scalar monitoring generates valuable information for social learning and adaptive management [ 32 ], which is an iterative process allowing projects to adapt to unexpected threats and to learn from the process [ 30 , 33 ] There is still, however, a strong debate about what variables should be monitored [ 34 – 37 ] given that some projects can take decades before showing results [ 38 , 39 ]. In practice, monitoring should include biophysical and socio-economic variables [ 40 ] and a multi-scalar, multi-site monitoring approach is needed [ 31 ]. Nevertheless, projects that have a holistic vision are scarce, and the contribution that IPLCs can make to assess the progress of projects is still insufficiently studied [ 16 ].…”