As global attention turns to the challenges of land degradation and water scarcity on this Desertification and Drought Day, the urgency of restoring ecosystems has never been clearer. Each year, an area of land roughly the size of Egypt is lost to degradation, as highlighted by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). The impacts—rising drought risk, surging food price, food insecurity, forced migration and political instability—are deeply interconnected and increasingly hard to ignore.
Yet amid this challenge lies opportunity. The economic and ecological returns on investments in ecosystem restoration mean that it matters on a global scale. As we reach the midpoint of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, it is a timely moment to pause, assess progress, reflect on what has been achieved and consider what adjustments are needed to strengthen our collective impact.
One critical area where there’s still untapped potential is the greater integration of actionable evidence in restoration to enhance both the quality of actions but also for lesson learning, creating an enabling policy environment and greater investment.
Spanning multiple sources and relevant across all stages of the restoration process, evidence is central to effective decision-making.
However, multiple challenges to the integration of evidence in restoration persist. A new insight brief outlines promising opportunities to address these and ensure evidence meaningfully supports impact.
The brief outlines seven practical recommendations to strengthen the role of evidence in restoration. Here’s how those ideas translate into action on the ground.
1. Enhance adaptive or iterative management in ecosystem restoration.
Establishing a process for reflection and iteration within restoration efforts creates an opportunity to consider and integrate evidence.
Within Regreening Africa, a large-scale restoration programme, Joint Reflection and Learning Missions were introduced to promote reflection, learning and iterative management in a collaborative way. Evidence from community-based knowledge, programme partner insights and science was brought together in a safe space for dialogue, reflection and adaptation.
Research on this process suggests that participants found it effective for integrating diverse knowledge forms and adjusting the programme implementation and direction. In Rwanda, for instance, the programme increased the number of tree species to include indigenous species in nurseries and added biomass incorporation for soil health in response to species and land health data.
2. Broaden the evidence base, recognising the value of integrating socio-economic and biophysical data and better considering Indigenous, local and practitioner knowledge.
Restoration efforts are as varied as the landscapes they seek to heal. The drivers of degradation and the people who live on and manage the land differ widely, so success must be measured accordingly. Understanding and tracking biophysical indicators such as tree or grass species, health of the land and soil and diversity of animals is important. Equally important are social and economic indicators such as changes in land manager aspirations, livelihoods, nutrition, income and access to markets. Analysis across socio-economic and biophysical indicators can help understand a wider set of drivers and interactions impacting restoration success. A recent study under Regreening Africa examined factors influencing the adoption of tree-based restoration practices, offering useful insight.
Evidence needs to be drawn from multiple sources and perspectives, including Indigenous and local communities, scientists and development practitioners. In Australia, for example, the Gondwana Link initiative demonstrates how First Nations wisdom can shape restoration strategies at scale.
3. Engage donor and investor responsibility to create better conditions for evidence integration in the programmes they support
Investors and donors often dictate the timeframe and scope of restoration projects and programmes. While landscape restoration is undertaken by those managing the land, projects and programmes can offer support and guidance. Where donors and investors encourage the use of multiple evidence sources for project planning, as well as allowing for flexibility for adaptation and iteration in implementation, the opportunity for evidence integration, and impact increase.
Longer timeframes both for implementation and monitoring are needed to account for the long-term nature of restoration. Yet donor cycles are often short. Initiatives like the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF)’s engagement landscapes offer a model for maintaining momentum across multiple funding phases and partners over time.
An agricultural landscape in Ghana, where the Regreening Africa programme is working to restore degraded land. Photo by Kelvin Trautman / Regreening Africa
4. Strengthen multi-stakeholder platforms to identify and collect locally relevant evidence.
Bringing together different perspectives—through well-structured, inclusive, multi-stakeholder platforms—can help identify, aggregate and discuss evidence for decision-making and action that reflects local realities. These platforms provide opportunities to debate findings, surface challenges, and co-develop solutions. Resources and guidelines for establishing such forums already exist.
The Landscape Restoration Transformative Partnership Platform is one example that provides a shared space for actors to engage with and learn from emerging evidence.
5. Institutionalize a learning culture so that restoration practitioners and decision-makers can seize opportunities to learn from related projects and experiences
Institutionalizing and investing time and resources to create an evidence culture amongst restoration actors is critical. The UN Decade for Ecosystem Restoration supports this through a series of task forces to promote dialogue, learning and action. In Africa, the Great Green Wall is one of the key continental frameworks for addressing restoration. The initiative provides a space where annual meetings bring together multiple organisations and participants, creating a forum for sharing and learning across diverse countries and approaches.
The Regreening Africa Community of Practice is another example. Programme partners meet periodically to explore a topic of importance, look at the existing knowledge and learn from one another. Sessions are facilitated to ensure that all voices are heard and that learning translates into action.
6. Strengthen capacity to collect, analyse and interpret data and knowledge around restoration
Co-production of knowledge involves a diverse set of actors, community members, scientists and government representatives, working together to generate evidence that is both relevant and rooted in the local context. This collaborative approach helps ensure ownership and increases the likelihood that evidence will inform decision-making and lead to real impact.
Within this context, working with partners and community members to collect, analyse and interpret restoration data is critical. For example, data gathered using the Land Degradation Surveillance Framework often involves the community and partners. A case from Kenya, shows how this collaborative process supported both data collection on land health and analysis.
While each source of evidence brings its own strengths, many intended users face challenges in understanding and applying scientific information. Strengthening both the communication of science and the capacity of end users to interpret it will be key to improving how evidence informs action.
Regreening Africa in Senegal. Photo by Kelvin Trautman / Regreening Africa
7. Invest in inclusive stakeholder engagement to integrate diverse evidence sources in ecosystem restoration policymaking and practice
For evidence to be considered and integrated into decision-making, a process of building trust and ensuring understanding through dialogue is often required. Stakeholder engagement processes can support this process when well-designed and facilitated and adaptive to dynamic contexts. The Stakeholder Approach to Risk-informed and Evidence-based Decision-making (SHARED) offers one methodology for structured engagement with evidence.
Research on a SHARED application in Regreening Africa found that this approach led to a shift in decision culture and many changes in the programme were supported by evidence. Lessons from that application include the importance of skilled engagement specialists and facilitators, the need for co-creation of knowledge and the essential role of trust and safety. These ‘soft skills’ and processes are often hugely overlooked in restoration, but can be critical for success and ensuring impact from community implementation through to policy-level decisions.
As we enter the second half of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, a focused effort on integrating actionable evidence and supporting this process across initiatives, programmes and projects, embedding skills and capacities and shifting evidence culture will add significant value to restoration efforts underway.
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