The place of people in restoring nature

April 14, 2025

All too often, efforts to restore forests and ecosystems treat the human dimensions as an afterthought. Biodiversity, or carbon offset payments, tend to come first. Yet ultimately, it is people who shape the need for, take decisions on, carry out, and are impacted by restoration. In a pair of short policy perspective articles led by my colleague Stephanie Mansourian, we outline the importance and relevance of human dimensions. The first one presents a five-pillar framework – stretching across scales from local to global – to help policymakers and practitioners think through the diverse places where a human focus is crucial. The second one uses the forest transition curve to illustrate how people are relevant at every stage of forest loss and potential recovery.

Fig 1 from Mansourian et al. 2025b: A simplified forest transition curve from deforestation to reforestation showing the human dimensions at each stage.
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Global carbon markets or local residents: forest restoration for whom?

January 6, 2025

Seems like everybody is planting trees or restoring forestlands these days. The emphasis is often on carbon capture to attenuate climate change. But this emphasis on carbon offsets (and the money behind it) draws in powerful global actors and carbon market intermediaries. Meanwhile, the costs of forest restoration are all too often unjustly borne by less powerful, local people living in places where trees are planted or restored. How forest restoration efforts be governed so that benefits can accrue at all spatial scales, from global to local?

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