This is a potential threat to drylands, grasslands, savannas and the rangelands they support.

Large areas targeted for forest restoration in Africa, Asia and South America are covered by savanna and grassland. These open ecosystems are incorrectly mapped as degraded forest in the publicly accessible Atlas of Forest and Landscape Restoration Opportunities.

They are in fact ancient, productive and biodiverse and support millions of livelihoods. They also provide many important ecosystem services, which would be lost if converted to forests.

Savanna and grassland store up to a third of the world’s carbon in its soils. They keep streams flowing, recharge groundwater, and provide grazing for livestock and wildlife.

Grasslands can store carbon reliably under increasingly hot and dry climates. The same conditions make forests vulnerable to die-back and wildfires. Restoring grasslands is also relatively cheap and has the highest benefit-to-cost ratio of all the world’s biomes.

Instead of providing guidance on how to restore healthy grasslands and savannas, documents guiding forest landscape restoration focus entirely on increasing tree cover. Rangelands and grassy biomes are barely mentioned on the websites of the Global Partnership on Forest and Landscape Restoration, the Bonn Challenge and AFR100.

A recent review of forest landscape restoration projects in Africa found no examples of grassland restoration. Projects instead focused on afforestation – planting trees where they didn’t previously occur – regardless of vegetation type. This threatens the biodiversity of grasslands and savannas, which is rapidly lost under dense tree cover and is slow and difficult to restore.

Forest targets that aren’t based on science

Meeting the international targets for forest restoration requires large-scale afforestation. Nearly half the land pledged for forest restoration is earmarked for plantations, mostly of fast-growing exotic species. These provide a fraction of the ecosystem services of the natural vegetation they replace. And they store 40 times less carbon than naturally regenerating forests.

Forest restoration initiatives tend to be driven by targets, with little regard for local ecological context. This commitment to fixed areas of forest cover encourages tree plantations in ecologically inappropriate sites and conditions.

For example, Malawi has reportedly pledged 4.5 million hectares to forest restoration. This is over a third of the country’s total area. Planting trees and restoring community woodlots, plantations and riverbanks is presented as addressing food and water insecurity and restoring biodiversity. Yet studies have shown that Malawi’s vegetation has been mostly savanna and grasslands for thousands of years.

The National Mission for a Green India aims to put a third of the country’s area under forest cover, no matter what natural vegetation existed originally. Large areas of natural grassland-forest mosaics have been replaced with commercial plantations. In many areas these species have become invasive and difficult to control.

Why does forest restoration continue to ignore the local ecological context? What is the science that underpins these massive schemes?

The colonial roots of tree planting

Historical research shows that the fascination with tree-planting has its origins in colonial forestry. This in turn was rooted in the centuries-old (and now disproven) theory that forests bring rain and deforestation cause areas to dry up. The colonial forestry approach was to plant trees to make up for deforestation caused by local people. The latter often lost control over their land in the process.

Initially applied in Algeria, this approach was adopted throughout Francophone Africa, Madagascar, and eventually also the British colonies in East Africa and India. Since historical forest cover of Europe was estimated at roughly one-third, this became the target in other places too.

This led to over two centuries of planting forests as a solution for a variety of ills, including drought, warming temperatures, soil erosion and lost biodiversity. It’s remarkable how today’s science-policy platforms continue this narrative.

Promoting appropriate solutions

Forest landscape restoration has become a powerful instrument for guiding global efforts and funding. Its proponents have a responsibility to ensure that the framework is scientifically sound. Rather than setting ambitious but ecologically flawed targets for planting trees, landscape restoration should be appropriate for local social and ecological contexts.

No amount of ecosystem restoration will solve the climate crisis if its underlying causes are not addressed. The clearing of forests and other ecosystems for commodity agriculture and timber urgently needs to be regulated. Emissions from burning fossil fuels need to be drastically reduced.

Rather than targeting developing – and rapidly urbanising – countries for afforestation, incentives should aim to reduce fossil fuel emissions, convert to renewable energy and build energy-saving infrastructure.

Susanne Vetter, Associate Professor in Plant Ecology, Rhodes University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The growing interest in this area means it is more important now than ever before to consider effective tree planting that benefits communities and the environment.

To do this, the right tree must be planted in the right place for the right purpose.

But there are many misconceptions that need to be addressed before the “right” conditions for successful tree planting are met.

“Breaking down the misconceptions about tree planting ensures we do not invest in actions that cause further damage to people and the planet, only to realize these problems after the damage is already done,” says Susan Chomba, a World Agroforestry (ICRAF) scientist, who will speak at the upcoming Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) Tree Planting digital forum on September 29.

She will be joined by Manuel Guariguata, principal scientist at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR); Ramni Jamnadass, co-leader of the Tree Productivity and Diversity unit at ICRAF; and Cora van Oosten, a senior project leader on landscapes, restoration, governance at Wageningen University.

Ahead of the event, the scientists address seven key misconceptions about tree planting and highlight more productive ways of managing these initiatives.

Misconception 1: Any seed is a good seed. Seed quality and sourcing is essential for tree planting success. Tree species are composed of many populations that can be wildly divergent with respect to their preference for the “right place.” Also, some seed sources may have a very narrow range of genetic diversity. One example is Grevillea robusta in East Africa. This tree was originally introduced from Australia, and today millions of these trees are now growing on small farms from Kenya to Rwanda. The entire population of trees all have a small handful of common ancestors and grow perhaps half as fast as they could do had they been from a good seed source with more genetic diversity.

Misconception 2: Once the trees are planted, the job is done. It is important to move beyond tree planting to tree growing. Tree growing means looking at trees as an investment requiring management, protection and realized returns on that investment. A focus on growing trees for the long-term can be particularly beneficial to smallholder farmers who stand to gain the most from realized returns in the form of marketable tree products and ecosystem services. Without this long-term focus, projects risk very low survival rates for seedlings, and wasted resources in the long term.

Misconception 3: All trees are easy to grow. A fundamental misconception is that any tree species can be planted anywhere and will grow easily. Although some smallholder farmers plant native food trees in agroforestry systems to help conserve them and ensure food security, this is not always an effective approach. Many native species are still wild or only partially domesticated, which means they are also under-researched and that optimum methodologies for farming them have not been developed yet. This can lead to major challenges with germination, propagation and management.

Misconception 4: Planting any tree anywhere is better than not planting a tree at all. Ecological niches such as grasslands exist, and these should not be replaced with trees. A diversity of Indigenous trees is also far more likely to restore and support biodiversity than monoculture plantations or plantations with a few species. There are also several niches on farms where farmers can cultivate trees for different uses, including soil fertility enhancement (through nitrogen fixing trees), food and nutritional benefits (e.g. fruit trees) and timber and energy, among other things.

Misconception 5: Tree planting is a top-down process. A common misconception is that successful tree planting initiatives should treat community members like employees who take orders from the top. Many people think that once funding from a big donor is secured, the planting project can simply pay farmers to collect seed, pay them to establish project nurseries and pay them to plant seedlings. That approach disregards the need for small-scale tree planters to have ownership and agency over planting that happens on their land. A sustainable process would ensure that knowledge is the basis for participation. Through capacity development community members can learn more about what a quality tree is; they should know how to source good seeds and seedlings; they should be informed about how they can improve their livelihoods through the trees they’re helping to plant.

Misconception 6: Tree planting is the only way to restore degraded land. The truth is that tree planting is just one of the tools in a well-stocked toolbox of practices. In fact, there are contexts where massive tree planting is a less favorable restoration technique, such as in arid and semi-arid areas where natural regeneration techniques can sometimes offer more effective and cost-efficient options. In arid and semi-arid areas, adding soil, water and livestock management practices increases the chances of success for both tree planting and natural regeneration.

Misconception 7: Climate change, biodiversity loss and food security can be addressed just by planting trees. These are complex challenges that require looking at both the causes (e.g. what is increasing Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions) and the context-specific solutions for each. Natural regeneration, as well as efficient farming and livestock management should also be considered as methods of addressing environmental objectives.  Supporting community-led initiatives, valuing their products and services, and appreciating their efforts through institutional, technical and financial support is more effective than a single-purpose tree plantation.

Source: Forests News
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

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These forests are home to hundreds of endemic plant and animal species – ones that aren’t found anywhere else in the world. For example, there are five endemic mammals – including the Zanzibar Red Colobus – five endemic birds, six endemic amphibians and three endemic reptiles, as well as 325 endemic plants. More than 300 other species are shared only with the nearby Eastern Arc Mountains.

In our paper we found that biodiversity – and the level of endemic species – is exceptional by global standards. We show that many endemic species are threatened with extinction. This is due to increasing human-use pressures as well as emerging mining, gas and oil exploration. Habitat loss and degradation has continued and the space remaining for the endemic species is shrinking. It’s now often confined to government protected areas and lands managed for conservation by villagers.

The region epitomises the challenges of conserving forests in a developing country with a rapidly expanding population, many of whom are dependent on subsistence farming and biomass for cooking. Both have a direct impact on forest habitats.

Forest loss

The forest habitat where these endemic species are uniquely found has continued to be lost and degraded over the past two decades. Between 1990 and 2007, coastal forest cover decreased by more than a third, and has continued to decline ever since. This is largely as a result of agricultural expansion, charcoal production and logging for timber and firewood.

Endemic species are only able to survive in forest. The loss of their habitat is therefore a direct threat to their survival.

By mapping forest loss we can see that there are areas that are some distance from the major coastal towns – Dar es Salaam and Lindi. The lack of recent forest loss closer to these cities is because it’s already been cleared and replaced with urban areas or farm land. Clearance of forest has spread like a wave from these cities into more rural areas.

Millions of people in Tanzania rely on natural resources – clean freshwater, healthy forests and abundant wildlife – for food and income. And, the destruction of Tanzania’s coastal forests to support the growing population is putting huge pressure on the natural environment.

The main use of forests by people has been as a source of farmland. Tanzania’s economic development in the coastal region is highly dependent on agriculture. Freshly cleared forest is more fertile than established farmland. This has led to more clearance of unprotected forest patches. The need for fertile soil that is close to water courses puts coastal forest patches under even more pressure. Now, almost no forest patches remain in the coastal areas of Tanzania unless they are protected in government – or village-managed reserves, or are within sacred forest or burial sites for local villagers.

The forests and woodlands in the coastal areas have also been used as a source of timber and poles for construction, and as a source of energy – either as firewood in rural areas or converted to charcoal for transport to the growing cities and urban areas. About 90% of Tanzania energy generation comes from wood and charcoal and is a vital source of income to some rural villages. But this has an impact on many of the endemic species.

The challenge

To deal with these challenges – protecting this unique habitat while ensuring people have the resources they need to survive – reserved areas have been created by central and local governments, as well as local communities who are promoting better management. There is also a gradual movement towards private ownership of land.

Between 1995 and 2014, the total area of protected lands increased by more than 20% and now covers 1,233,646 hectares. Much of this is community managed village-land forest reserves – over 140 of these reserves have been developed in recent years, covering many important habitats.

In comparison, the state managed reserve network has not expanded much over the past two decades, and the forested areas within these lands have become more degraded – especially close to major cities.

Reserve managers working along the coastal region of Tanzania are using a simple score card to determine how well their reserve is managed. We also found that the best managed reserves in this area are national parks and village-land forest reserves. This means that these are the places where forest habitat, and hence the endemic species confined to that habitat, are most likely to survive.

What does the future hold?

These challenges will only be solved if the right framework – from policy through to on-the-ground actions – is put in place. Building partnerships with global communities, national stakeholders and involving local communities could improve the effectiveness of managing forests and biodiversity, as well as supporting the country’s development priorities.

Peter Sumbi, independent environmental consultant and Isaac Malugu, former forest officer were co-authors on this article.

Neil Burgess, Professor at the Center for Marcoecology, Evolution and Climate, University of Copenhagen

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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