The success of restoration efforts hinges on involving local communities. That was the finding of our recent study which explored restoration programmes around the world.

From the English fens, where soils are degraded from decades of intensive farming, to the cattle rangelands of the Brazilian state of Rondônia where the Amazon rainforest clearance has been extensive, the best option for nature may not be conservation, but restoration.

Conservation involves preventing harm to existing nature, while restoration is the repair of ecosystems that have degraded over long periods or due to specific events like an oil spill.

Our research found that many restoration projects are run by governments or private organisations with a target-driven focus on planting trees, improving soils or reintroducing species, with limited local input. This often fails to achieve lasting results because of the mismatch with the lives and livelihoods of those most connected to the landscape.

Restoration can more effectively reverse degradation, address its causes and benefit local people if communities can shape and lead initiatives to align with their own needs, knowledge and aspirations.

Restoration programmes are being established around the world at a staggering rate. For example, 196 nations are signatories to a UN target to start restoring 30% of the world’s degraded land and sea by 2030. Worldwide, pledges have already been made to restore over a billion hectares – an area bigger than the US.

This level of ambition is welcome, but there are social and political challenges to be confronted.

Degraded lands and seas are nearly always occupied, most often by farming communities. Some are cherished, like the UK’s much-loved “sheep-wrecked” uplands where high numbers of livestock suppress the diversity of vegetation in many places.

Restoration may sound universally desirable. Who could be against planting lots of trees or restoring fisheries? But people actively resist restoration that’s imposed on them without their involvement. They might experience harms as well as benefits.

In Wales, plans to require farmers to have trees on 10% of their land were dropped after protests. The Scottish government also dropped plans to designate 10% of its seas as highly protected marine areas (areas of the sea where certain activities – usually fishing – are banned), due to a lack of community input and protests.

A promising alternative centres on local communities shaping the restoration process. We have identified four levels of involvement for Indigenous and local communities in ecological restoration: exclusionary (fully imposed), managerial (with limited consultation or incentives), collaborative (a more genuine partnership) and just and transformative (led by local ideas and values).

Four levels of community involvement

With a short-term focus on environmental results such as area of trees planted, exclusionary restoration projects may ignore local perspectives or even displace Indigenous people or local communities with rights to the land.

In Kenya, logging and charcoal production destroyed parts of the Mau forest affecting downstream water supplies. Since 2009, the government has tried to restore the area, but measures included evicting many Indigenous Ogiek who had sought to protect their forest home. Despite a 2017 ruling of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights supporting their ancestral claim, the Ogiek’s struggle continues.

Sometimes locals are invited to consultations or to manage land for nature, but cannot influence decisions. One example of this managerial approach is Vietnam’s 30-year tree planting programme. While tree planting was performed by smallholders, these farmers had little input and many lacked land rights. The focus on growing commercial trees to fell and sell also meant forests were not native and did not mature, so benefits for nature were limited.

In collaborative approaches, a more balanced negotiation means locals may influence what is to be restored as well as where, how, by whom and how any benefits will be allocated. In northern India, forest planting projects have involved both the Himachal Pradesh Forest Department and communities. In some areas, local people selected which tree species would be most suitable for fuelwood and livestock fodder, or have planted trees and monitored their progress.

Mangrove restoration in Indonesia. U.S. Department of State via Flickr

“Just and transformative” restoration approaches centre around local values, decisions and stewardship. This tends to be more successful for people and nature. The Miawpukek First Nation in Newfoundland, Canada, based restoration around species that are culturally significant to them, like the caribou, blueberries and Labrador tea.

Women in India’s Western Ghats are carefully nurturing the plants, creepers and mosses that hold the forest ecosystem together. And community networks lead mangrove restoration in Thailand’s Phang-Nga Bay.

Restoring the ability of local communities to be the custodians of nature is a promising approach to both ecological and social recovery – and ultimately environmental justice.

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