Stakeholders and tropical reforestation: challenges, trade‐offs, and strategies in dynamic environments

Abstract

Reforestation involves potential trade-offs: hard choices between environmental and social benefits, individual and community benefits, and among stakeholders who bear different costs and benefits. In this manuscript, we aim to show that successful long-term reforestation requires stakeholder engagement beyond planning stages and a recognition of the dynamism of stakeholder outlooks as stakeholders' opportunities, relationships, interests, and roles change over time. We first summarize lessons from recent literature on stakeholder involvement within reforestation efforts. We then present findings from a multiple-stakeholder workshop organized in west-central Mexico, in which we illustrate their choices on how to navigate trade-offs among different reforestation intervention strategies (agroforestry/ silvopastoral, natural regeneration, native species reforestation, commercial plantations). We confirm that individual stakeholders' circumstances, interests, and roles, as well as the contextual factors shaping them, are dynamic, continually changing the nature of the choices stakeholders face. Finally, we propose a four-phase pathway for addressing dynamic trade-offs and synergies in stakeholder participation in order to select, implement, and sustain successful reforestation activities. The pathway comprises four phases: (1) collaborate to devise a reforestation strategy through dialogue about dynamic trade-offs; (2) pledge robust stakeholder commitments to mutual arrangements for implementing reforestation; (3) implement reforestation interventions; and (4) adjust strategy through continuous evaluation of outcomes. We then elucidate how components of these four phases can be operationalized so that, on one side, scientists and practitioners might better understand the dynamic trade-offs reforestation poses for stakeholders, and on the other, stakeholders might balance their hard choices in ways that promote forest recovery.Abstract in Spanish is available with online material.

The ephemerality of secondary forests in southern Costa Rica

“…Secondary forest persistence may be determined by stakeholder preferences, environmental constraints, and governance of human-environment interactions. As such, planning for forest persistence may entail prioritizing restoration of lands with minimal opportunity costs (Latawiec, Strassburg, Brancalion, Rodrigues, & Gardner, 2015), engaging and organizing local stakeholders (Lazos-Chavero et al, 2016), creating long-term economic incentives (Galatowitsch, 2009), and promoting stable land tenure systems (Le et al, 2012). Without a plan to ensure persistence, we cannot assume that secondary forests will persist long enough to accrue the environmental benefits that we require.…”

Oportunidades y desafíos para la gobernanza de la restauración del paisaje forestal en América Latina

“…Estas ambiciosas metas han llevado la restauración de una escala local a una escala de paisaje y a la necesidad de establecer estrategias para restaurar amplias áreas de tierras degradadas. La RPF se entiende como un proceso dinámico en el que se emplean estrategias para restaurar la cobertura arbórea que sean tanto productivas como de conservación y que se ajusten a las realidades políticas, sociales y económicas del paisaje (Mansourian y Vallauri 2014;Stanturf et al 2014;Lazos-Chavero et al 2016). La interacción entre las dimensiones ecológicas, sociales y económicas de la restauración resulta clave para el éxito de las actividades de RPF (Meli et al 2017).…”

Why we fail: Stakeholders' perceptions of the social and ecological barriers to reforestation in southern Malawi

“…It is also necessary for all parties to recognize that forest landscape restoration goal‐setting and implementation planning must look beyond tree‐planting when defining success, explicitly incorporating outcomes for human livelihoods, equity and well‐being (Brancalion et al, 2016; Chazdon & Uriarte, 2016). Despite global calls to action for these kinds of inclusive planning processes (Chazdon et al, 2017; Lazos‐Chavero et al, 2016), the forest landscape restoration literature currently provides few examples of practical methods for engaging the forest‐dependent poor as critical stakeholders in a participatory environmental governance process.…”