The role of incentive mechanisms in promoting forest restoration

Abstract

Forest restoration has been proposed as a scalable nature-based solution to achieve global environmental and socio-economic outcomes and is central to many policy initiatives, such as the Bonn Challenge. Restored forests contain appreciable biodiversity, improve habitat connectivity and sequester carbon. Incentive mechanisms (e.g. payments for ecosystem services and allocation of management rights) have been a focus of forest restoration efforts for decades. Yet, there is still little understanding of their role in promoting restoration success. We conducted a systematic literature review to investigate how incentive mechanisms are used to promote forest restoration, outcomes, and the biophysical and socio-economic factors that influence implementation and program success. We found that socio-economic factors, such as governance, monitoring systems and the experience and beliefs of participants, dominate whether or not an incentive mechanism is successful. We found that approximately half of the studies report both positive ecological and socio-economic outcomes. However, reported adverse outcomes were more commonly socio-economic than ecological. Our results reveal that achieving forest restoration at a sufficient scale to meet international commitments will require stronger assessment and management of socio-economic factors that enable or constrain the success of incentive mechanisms. This article is part of the theme issue 'Understanding forest landscape restoration: reinforcing scientific foundations for the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration'.

Keywords: ecosystem restoration; forest conservation; forest landscape restoration; natural regeneration; nature-based solutions; social-ecological systems.

Figure 1.

Links between (a) financing mechanisms, (b) incentive types and (c) incentive recipients. This shows the proportion of studies mentioning each source of funding or financing mechanisms (left side) supporting the primary incentive assessed in the studies (centre); and the proportion of each incentive mechanism targeting each type of recipient (right side). Links are colour-coded by source and the figure is read left to right. The financing mechanism class labelled ‘multiple carbon offset schemes’ combines REDD+, clean development mechanism and voluntary carbon markets. Institutional or in-kind support and tax breaks were offered only in combination with incentives and were not included in this figure. (Online version in colour.)

Figure 2.

Incentive mechanisms were trialled in each country covered by the reviewed papers. Numbers indicate the frequency of each type of incentive among assessed studies. (Online version in colour.)

Figure 3.

Factors affecting implementation success of incentive mechanisms for forest restoration. Numbers indicate the frequency of each factor among assessed studies. (Online version in colour.)

Figure 4.

Outcomes of incentive mechanisms for forest restoration. Numbers indicate the frequency of each factor among assessed studies: (a) overall number of studies that reported beneficial outcomes, unmet objectives, and perverse ecological and socio-economic outcomes; (b) number of studies for each category of beneficial outcomes, unmet objectives, and perverse ecological and socio-economic outcomes; (c) number of studies reporting impacts in each kind of livelihood asset. In (b) columns sum to more than the total number shown in (a), and in (c) numbers sum to more than the total number of improved and reduced livelihood assets in (b) since more than one type of outcome can be reported by the same study. (Online version in colour.)

Figure 5.

Number of positive [+] and negative [−] outcomes reported across countries in the studies assessed. (Online version in colour.)